Either that or it was a mistake and it was drawn on the wrong cheek. Because really it should have been on the left side instead of the right, right? Because if she was running or even turned away the fingers would be pointed more towards the nose right?
or Ruth just gave Mary a “looks like she was slapped with a hand with a dick drawn on it” facepaint job and had just been drawing on her own hand to remind herself what a dick looked like
Really disliking how Willis has handled Mary in DoA. At least she actually had some depth in Roomies. Now she’s too much like SP! Malaya (prior to hooking up with Ultra Car), just sorta being around to be unlikable and bongoy.
Mary’s ‘depth’ only really happened because she was supposed to be one kind of character and ended up a different kind and that needed to be dealt with.
All I remember happening is when she learned she hit a home run with a guy she met, then lashed out at Danny in a violent rage, blaming him for it, and having no further appearances in Roomies! after that. When Sal was on the run in It’s Walky, she broke into Mary’s house, and once Mary learned Sal wasn’t here to kill her, she went right back into her trademark predatory Yuppie Church Lady mode, gloating about how she was married with a bun in the oven, and how it all must be divine favor for being oh so holier than thou or whatever. Sal then called her out on what a lousy friend she was back when they were in high school, causing Mary to call her an “Ungrateful bongo” with an intense ‘HOW DARE YOU!!’ look on her face. Her hubby came into the scene, causing things to cease to escalate, Sal left, Mr. Mary brought up that it was probably the legally responsible thing to do to notify the authorities. His wife agreed while darting her large eyes to her left with an expression on her face like a thief who had just been caught in the act. After that, I have no further memory of her involvement with the rest of the cast.
I must have missed something. Archives anyone can recommend?
Hmmmm…The good taste in clothes didn’t start in DoA, I stand corrected.
Far more of a voyeur than I remember…’Yandere’ would describe her.
I did gather her predatory behavior was motivated by extreme self-inflicted insecurity. Figure Raidah’s desperate control / demagoguery issues with her relationships are motivated by the same.
DoA Mary is still a bit of a time bomb, but not a STEALTH time bomb like the original. The Mary of this strip isn’t catching anyone by surprise with how she turns out to have problems having this new musk ox brand of subtlety.
Mary doesn’t have any depth because no one will stay around her long enough for her to demonstrate any side of her personality other than angry and judge-y.
We’ve already got Raidah.
I kind of like this new oaf of a Mary, despite how she may not be explored much further, beyond serving as everyone else’s foil, that is. The original Mary…….Let’s just say I’m absolutely terrified for her child.
I’ll take the tall, snappy-dresser, occasionally put-upon malcontent Mary over that.
Here’s a relevant question: how many strips has she been in as opposed to how much attention has she received by the comic? You can’t have character depth and development if a character is hardly shown.
I thought maybe she was saying “stupid cow”. The c word seems a bit far for her “everyone is a sinner” attitude. Though one of her defining character traits *is* being a huge hypocrite.
How could she not be? Perfection is unattainable for mere mortals, because there can be only one Jesus, so of course she is holding everyone to a higher standard than she herself can measure up to. That is why hypocrites are really morally superior. At least that’s what Neil Stephenson tells me.
1. Mary needs to be on the left-hand side of the first panel since she speaks first, also so the action reads in the right order.
2. Ruth is left-handed.
3. Mary has to be walking in the opposite direction when she leaves so that the action is clear. The slap also has to be on the side facing us.
Oh. I just thought the Ruth waited until Mary started to stalk off, and then pressed her left hand against the left side of Mary’s face from behind. That seemed (a) more like the imagery, and (b) more like Ruth.
Mary’s first speech was already occupying the whole top of the panel, though. It would be read first anyway, even if Mary is located on the right. See the second panel where Mary is now right from Ruth and, yet, still talks first.
I’m still a bit confused. Her… artwork in this comic does not seem to be such a masterpiece that it could not have been drawn with either hand, so her handedness isn’t all that relevant to the act of drawing itself.
The confusion is that the comic appears to portray 1) Ruth drawing on her right hand with her left hand 2) A left(?) handprint on the right side (opposite left) of Mary’s face.
And the handedness isn’t necessarily a potential clue – this is set in a country that uses a writing system that goes to the right, so “right” and “forward” are arguably conflated in people’s minds regardless of what hand they draw with.
So even easier, you could have flipped the entire last panel.
“I done goofed” works faster and more decently as an answer you know, nobody would nitpick after that. Instead you’re turning this into a Streisand Effect.
I’m just going to believe that Ruth slapped Mary so hard that the picture went through the left side of her face entirely and ended up on her right cheek.
My initial reading was that Ruth didn’t slap across the face, she made a straight push against Mary’s face. While the slap marks do indicate that the left hand was used to slap, the lack of a thumb mark makes it easier to confuse the left and right hands.
You could probably make it less of a sacrifice if you change the hand-mark to be a right hand still on the right side of Mary’s face; it’ll have been a somewhat weird way to slap someone, but it’ll not involve hands suddenly being mirrored.
Though note in future that there is NO way to slap someone on the face so that it leaves a palm print on one side of their face and a thumb mark on the other without breaking their nose in the process.
Step 1: Google Image “slap to the face”
Step 2: GET PRACTICING ON YOUR SLAP DRAWINGS!
Step 3: recieve nothing important in relation to this except a smug sense of self satisfaction comparable to the one that people get when pointing out errors in your art.
The composition is correct.
Now it makes me think that if she drew the dick with her left hand, and hit her with her right. She is somewhat ambidextrous.
Purely out of curiosity to see how hard it would be to fix, I took a stab at it. It took me about an hour, and I messed up Mary’s hair in like three or four different ways, mainly the direction of the hair in the middle and the pointy-bit I ended up making on the right, but it does fix the problem of which cheek the smack mark is on.
Mr. Willis, it’s really your art, so let me know if you want me to delete that.
As someone whos done this before, the trick is draw it on your right with a wet marker, clap your hands and smack the hell out of someone with your stamped hand. The mark can be washed off your hands easy but the slapped one is in for some heavy scrubbing.
Nearly 24 hours since I posted this comment and not a single person made the obvious Major Armstrong reference? What is this comment section coming to?
I dunno about newllend, but my joke was that Ruth’s actions here look a lot like her flirting technique with Billie back in the beginning of the strip.
Mary is facing right. The mark is on her left cheek. The thumb is facing up and the fingers facing her ear. By your logic the slap would have to come from a left hand, not a right.
–oh wait, the cast has already decided it couldn’t be her because she’s left-handed, and indeed, her drawing would’ve been facing the other way. Dang.
I guess I still accuse Malaya, then. (She doesn’t live on this floor, but she could be trying to get Carla’s attention or something. Without Mike, she’s the only character I can think of who is both obnoxious and tenacious enough to do it.)
I like your first idea better! This could be the start of a romantic courtship between Carla and her secret admirer, entirely made of lewd drawings and physical pranks… Man, we need more romantic comedies like that
She’s an insane, self-centred ultra-fundie, who’s not getting her way re: dicks on whiteboards. Panel 3 is the hatred that underpins her whole personality appearing when her fake-niceness fails to cause people to comply with her demands.
Also she enjoys lording (no pun intended) her superior morality over others. Well, her perceived superior morality, anyway. Not sure if it’s entirely evident here, but I’m betting it’s feeding into her outrage. Mary’s the kind of person who gets upset about a thing, and then gets even more upset when everyone else doesn’t find said thing as objectionable as she does. And then she uses their lack of rage as proof that they’re terrible people.
… This is such a terrible thing to do, especially as an RA…
But because it’s Mary, I really can’t blame her. (Amazingly, I’ve voted for more Mary in the DoA poll before. I forgot that that would mean suffering through more Mary being awful in the hopes there might be a layer of not-terrible underneath. Also, I was wrong.)
Still, it’s not the only solution, and I’m surprised that all these college students, with Google at their disposal, have somehow not begun removing the vandalism themselves.
Eh, not really, IMO. Mary doesn’t actually *believe* the stuff she professes. Joyce is actually sincere about her beliefs, but in this comic she is refreshingly non-judgmental compared to the original version of herself.
I hate bongoy Christian girls. They are the worst! There was one on my floor at IU. 😉 I plead the fifth on whether or not I drew a devil and 666 on her whiteboard. *whistles*
So far Ruth has publicly tossed Billie’s ass during a floor meeting, suplexed Blaine during Horrific Parental Abuse Weekend and Mary still thought it was a good idea to go off on her? She’s lucky she only got a smack in the face.
She’s not wrong of course, Ruth is a terrible RA and something should be done about it. That something is not screaming in her face but reporting her to her superiors.
To be fair, Billie and Blaine both took the first swing. Mary may have assumed that, so long as she didn’t initiate actual violence, Ruth wouldn’t respond with it.
Or Mary just thought her scolding Ruth about the issue would make Ruth say “Oh! You’re right. I have been slacking. I’ll get right on that.”
She’s Mary. She’s narcissistic. She thinks everything that is important to her is, or should be, important to everyone. She also thinks she’s perfection itself and that anyone with the brains God gave a goat would agree with her.
And going along with her narcissistic tendencies, when neither of these expectations are met she loses complete control of her emotions and flies off the handle.
So, I doubt she did any real thinking about it before screaming at Ruth. And if she did any thinking about it before approaching Ruth about the topic initially, she didn’t think much beyond feeling certain that her incredibly fake nice-nicey, sweet-as-honey approach would get Ruth to see the light and do as Mary asks/demands.
Also, I suddenly have a new prime suspect.
Her attitude in those first few panels is very much “so, have you seen what I did? How are you going to respond, eh? How about punishing everyone on this floor for being immoral Godless heathens, eh? If you don’t, that means you’re irresponsible and unworthy of your position! One that should be held by someone of unimpeachable moral character, like myself!”
Yeah, this strip convinced me that Mary is the dingdong bandit. She’s being way too confrontational – wait, actually, that’s not out of character – she’s being way too *nice* about this confrontation and then flipped when it didn’t go her way.
Also she drew Joyce and Sarah’s door decorations. She knows how to draw! The pieces fit!!
I’m pretty sure there is no dingdong bandit. A number of people unrelatedly got the idea to do it at the same time. The dingdongs just look too different.
Yup. My money would be on that too. Some girls saw what was happening at Joyce’s door and got the idea to troll their friends. In the mornign they were surprised to learn somebody did it on all other doors.
A number of people independently chose to use permanent, rather than erasable markers, when all the whiteboards would have had erasable markers next to them?
Actually, I read Mary as being more of the type of art student that thinks their style of drawing is absolutely amazing and is insulted by the idea that she should branch out and work in different styles and media.
Or maybe I just had too many of those types in my art classes in college.
She only – I mean, SOMEONE only did it to force Ruth to either act like an R.A. should (again, like Mary, of course), or by failing to do so, reveal her unfitness for the position.
Seeing as there are only two hyphens after the letter c I’m going to guess Mary was going to saw cow, because a Christian would never utter such vulgar language.
I don’t think the hyphens are substitutes for letters here; she’s talking, not typing; she was just cut off abruptly. I don’t think the number of hyphens here indicate how many letters were left out at the end of that sente–
I was just about to say that. Since she’s drawing on her right hand, the slap “should” be on the other side of her face… unless she somehow got her from behind?
If you’re facing someone, you can slap either side of their face with either hand. The actual problem is the orientation of the mark, not it’s placement.
I am sad that this is going to come back to haunt Ruth (how can it not??), because it is such a perfect response to Mary’s unreasonableness. (Other than being violent, that is!)
What is Ruth supposed to do? “Well, better skip my classes so I can stand here in the hall and bring the bandit to justice with nothing but the force of my pure outrage…”???
Mary was being a bongo, but Ruth is also a terrible, terrible RA. I can see why her students would be frustrated with her. I don’t think she’d last very long at a real university before getting fired
Tinfoil, because Ruth is left handed, she drew the penis on her right hand, not her left.
Willis said up-thread that basically it had to happen that way because Ruth is left-handed, because we need to see at least most of Mary’s face as she’s leaving, and if Mary and left by going to the right of the panel, rather than the left, it would read like she was walking toward Ruth and/or just generally be confusing.
I figure it came down to either 1) Have Ruth write/draw with her right hand this one time or 2) have the hand print and dick drawing be on the wrong side of Mary’s face.
Since being left-handed is actually a pretty major character trait for Ruth, maybe on par with her red hair, and that it had been mentioned earlier in this storyline that any left-handed persons couldn’t be the ding-dong bandit, it makes sense that Willis would go with Option #2.
Man, Mary’s gonna find out about her and Billie and makes a thing out of it, isn’t she? And you know she’s going to be a huge bigot about it being same-sex.
Ruth is the most unrealistic thing about DoA. And yes, including AmaziGirl. I can’t imagine not one girl from as way back as *orientation day* didn’t complain to someone about her CRAZY THREATS OF VIOLENCE.
also when billie mentioned it to daisy she didn’t believe her at all, calling it revenge fanfic iirc. the way i figure, between girls who don’t care about her method, girls who don’t really get her method at all, girls who are intimidated by her method, girls who figure it’s normal and a good way to go about managing a dorm wing, girls who don’t think complaining would be worth the trouble, girls who mention it not toadministration and get dismissed… like the ones who do complain about it could be few enough for higher ups to think it’s a particular problem rather than bad method, or not something big enough to get Ruth out of the program, considering that nobody else is complaining. Or something like that anyway idk
I love how Mary focused on the “nothing” in Ruth’s response and completely disregarded the “right now” part which implied that Ruth will be doing something at some point. She just zeroed in on whatever vindicates her negative expectations without any expectation of Ruth ever redeeming herself in Mary’s eyes (which is probably impossible, as hatefilled as Mary appears to be.)
I’m sure Ruth has something in mind for the whiteboard issue, and she will see to it in the fullness of time. It’s not like RAs aren’t students, too.
Yeah, I was surprised that nobody else in the comments section so far seemed to have caught the “right now” part of Ruth’s statement. Or if they did, they didn’t feel it was worth noting.
Somehow I never recognized Mary before. Looking through the archives with her tag, she’s really irritating in the dumbiverse. Much more so than she was in Roomies.
I like Ruth in strips where there is no hint of her duties as an RA, but then when I see strips like this… I just can’t stand people who abuse their power. If you can’t handle power, don’t take a position of power. Ruth has obviously had a shit life. That doesn’t mean it’s OK for her to go around abusing her position whenever she feels like it. Lucky for her that Billie ended up falling in love with her so all’s forgiven (plus Billie ended up being crappy back to her, but NOT from a position of power), but I still haven’t forgotten that she’s a bully, a thief, and incompetent at her job. I hope she deservedly loses her position so I can just enjoy the rest of her character and watch her develop as a person without hating her. And I don’t even like Mary. I just hate people who take advantage of what they can get away with.
Yeah, both she and Mike press my buttons… in a way that Mike doesn’t over on Shortpacked. I think it’s because, while this is a comic strip, it’s more grounded than the other. It’s not that someone pulled a “drama tag” accidentally releasing the drama, but that this started out with the kind of grounding that wouldn’t randomly have an Ultracar character.
In a “real world” kind of setting, Ruth isn’t acceptable and Mike is a serious threat.
Yeah, Mike is a little weirder to get now since he is just a “normal” 18-year-old, not a real-life troll with basically magical abilities. Overall, DoA is just more grounded, which is great! It deals with a lot of real-life issues, which I love. I’m just still waiting for the payoff with Ruth’s RA business. I get that she tried to redeem herself by getting Billie another cheerleading outfit, but it’s like… oh, thanks for replacing the outfit YOU stole (through the keys you have to everyone’s rooms, what a responsible person you are) AND cut up with ANOTHER stolen outfit, awesome. Most everything else has consequences in DoA, so I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop here. And then she wants to talk about consequences of actions with Billie – oh, please. Don’t make me laugh.
I’m relieved to see other people react negatively to the sickening way Ruth abuses power… Maybe I’m just taking the comic too seriously, and of course some if the abuse is recognized, since the unhealthy element was an essential characteristic of her relationship with Billie, but still: so many people cheer her on when she gets oppressive, it’s a little scary. Sure, Mary is HORID, but her lack of authority (and I’m guessing, friends) makes her less of a threat I guess
It started out funny with her forcing everyone to attend the RA meeting, but I assumed she would still be fulfilling her responsiblities, albeit in a gruff manner. Nope, she just doesn’t do her job, except when she has a chance to a) talk down to people or b) beat someone up. If she just didn’t have her job, none of this would be even half as irritating, or really even bothersome to me. Beat people up and call them fatties on your own time, Ruth, not when you are the one being paid to take care of them.
c) will mary ever get characterization beyond asshole? if she doesn’t, that’s ok I guess! but she’s got her own flaws that look good all splayed out, just like the rest of ’em
calling it male anatomy is pretty cissexist, js. i get that it’s the character doing it, not the author, but it would be nice if it was called out or something to show that the author doesn’t agree. what ruth is doing is really gross as well, but it seems like she’s getting called out for it… someone in a position of power shouldn’t be abusing those she has power over.
So, I’ll be honest, This is the first time I’ve tried to comment on any of this but… Whoa, Calm down. Cissexist? A Ding Dong is a piece of Male Anatomy. It is a Sexual organ, belonging to the Male Sex. This isn’t about Gender. 😐
Except if you read the Dictionary, where it is now established that Sex “tends to be used to refer to the biological differences.” Sex is about Biology. Gender is about identity. I don’t get how someone’s Sex is a social construct. Society didn’t make my Dingdong. But by the same token, My Dingdong doesn’t make me a male, it’s simply a Male characteristic.
Uh, Tumblr is not a valid ‘source’ to prove your argument valid. I’m sorry, Tumblr is awesome, and a great place to voice opinions, but It’s not something you list as a source. Sex is not a social construct. Sex is Biology. A Penis is a male characteristic. Can it appear on those who identify as female? Yes. Those people generally go through unfortunately barbaric and invasive surgery to remove that reminder of nature’s mistake.
By saying a penis is only male if it’s on a male, you’re basically saying Transwomen should just close their eyes and focus really hard, and then their penis won’t be an oppressive mistake forced upon them by biology, it’ll be a female penis? I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore without just, flooding everything here. I’m going to focus on the Funny and enjoy the comic that I deeply enjoy.
this person on tumblr is explaining why “biological sex” is a flawed concept, referring to phenomena that all exists and is commonly known
here are links for each of the things they mention: enlarged clitorises micropenises internalized testicles vaginal agenesis cisgender XX males cisgender XY females
I’m not saying trans women (with a space) just have to get over their dysphoria, but not all trans women even HAVE dysphoria, because penises are not inherently masculine
are you a trans woman? bc if not, i do not see how you are in any position to comment on trans women’s bodies. you don’t get to decide what is or isn’t an “oppressive mistake forced on” anyone but yourself.
also, it’s nice that you acknowledge the existence of intersex folks, but you seem not to realize just how common it is for chromosomes, hormones and anatomical features to not match up with the perceived sexual binary. what i’m saying is, gender is a social construct, “biological sex” is way more complicated than you know, and you have no right to designate maleness or femaleness to anything that doesn’t personally belong to you.
The way I see it…biological sex is completely irrelevant to anything that doesn’t involve a doctor’s visit. The only thing that matters in everyday life is gender presentation, regardless of what parts someone has or used to have.
Also, this whole “not all trans people have dysphoria” needs to stop. Sure, “dysphoria” might mean any number of things, not all of which are physical (mine was mostly the “emotional fog” type, which cleared up completely after a week of more spiro than I should’ve been on), but the bare-minimum requirement to be trans is to have some kind of dysphoria.
it’s true that many trans women have surgery if they have a penis, but that does not mean that a penis is a male characteristic. many trans women have dysphoria related to their genitals, but there are trans women who experience dysphoria only in regards to their chests, and still others that experience no dysphoria at all. additionally, as “blegh” pointed out, many trans women DON’T see their genitalia as a “mistake,” and that’s a completely personal decision. additionally, trans women who experience dysphoria with regard to their genitalia but cannot have surgery are harmed by the idea that penises are male genitalia.
Ok, really ignorant cis-person here, but eager to learn (also, not native English speaker): I used to share this belief that gender refers to the sexual construct, and sex to the physical “underpinnings” (sorry for the terrible formulation), and is not necessarily binary, as Kerry importantly pointed out. Though the associations between gender and sex are clearly a social construct, and rigid categories of sex are constructed as well, they might still be helpful to designate phenotypes if not genotypes? My stupid question is the following:why retain the distinction between sex and gender if in the end gender alone should decide of what we name these parts? Or am I missing something important? I really hope my question is not offensive
there is no reason to call a penis “male” or a vagina “female”
labeling bodies “male” and “female” doesn’t actually tell you that much about an individual’s body, especially if said individual is trans
what about trans women with breasts and penises, who are taking estrogen?
what about intersex people who can have all KINDS of bodies that are not accurately summed up with the blanket term “intersex”?
pretty much, there’s too much variation among humans for sexual dimorphism to make sense, so there’s no real point in gendering anatomy
I can’t help wondering how well an ebook on Amazon would sell with the title “The Female Penis” Then fill it up with a mixture of quotes from dry academic papers on gender and whatever the Japanese call their dual-gender art-porn as rendered by the $5. per job people.
“…Transwomen should just close their eyes and focus really hard, and then their penis won’t be an oppressive mistake forced upon them by biology, it’ll be a female penis? I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore …”
Krey, may I quote you in my theoretically forthcoming ebook?
i love it when ppl use the dictionary in defense of their shitty offensive arguments. i call on the power of the dictionary, infallible sayer of truths, last resort of the desperately ignorant!
oh, yes, lemme just ask some old cis white linguists how i should feel about my body in relation to my gender identity, they know the True Meaning of words deep in their hearts
I totally get you here
it bothered me too
I’m just not sure ruth would be the one to say it
like, I could see roz, or jocelyne, or carla calling her out for it, but… yeah, it’s annoying
yeah, i agree, but what put me off most is that the title was “male anatomy,” which indicates that willis thought there was nothing wrong with mary’s phrasing :T
The “title” for comics has traditionally been a word or phrase in the strip itself that serves as a shorthand for its contents and a “spoiler” to append to the comic’s filename to prevent people from just casually browsing through the buffer by manually changing the image location URL.
This one is about Mary and her “male anatomy” “”concerns””. I don’t think it’s meant to be at all indicative of Willis’s own beliefs any mor e than Mary herself is.
Does it need to be said that the author disagrees with how Mary refers to a penis? Besides which, I have confidence that he wouldn’t agree with any view that would offend LGBTQA+ people. Willis is cool like that. 🙂
yeah, it really does need to be said, because people like Krey will pretend that it’s not cissexist unless it’s explicitly stated that it is. it’s not actually all that difficult to take out cissexist statements if one disagrees with them, but if willis explicitly stated that this was cissexist and not cool… then it would be harder for people to argue against that while consuming his creation
If you think me trying to “lay down the law” concerning what is wrong about what my characters are doing is going to affect anybody who already disagrees with me, pardon my irreverence, but you are super new here aintcha. Talking specifically and out-of-universe about Sal’s race issues just made dissenters louder and more obnoxious. Just on yesterday’s page, I clarified for the thirteen billionth time that Dorothy did not break up with Danny just so she could concentrate on her studies. It won’t be the last. I still get Tumblr asks about how I’m only continuing to make comics about Sal and her parents to “artificially cram” the issue into the narrative in response to specific people, and therefore it’s a storyline that can’t be taken at face value and is full of lies.
I can’t make anybody do anything. It will not make people argue less. It will embolden jerks and frustrate me.
Let me give another perspective: Annotating Roomies! for two years was exhausting. There is so much problematic in it, and I became increasingly neurotic about attempting to point out each and every single terrible thing suggested in it. I’ve got sixty thousand pairs of eyes on me every night, and there are so many ways to fail any percentage of them. It’s overwhelming. I lost sleep, thinking I might have missed something, and that in the morning I’d get up to angry emails from folks who were concerned that I hadn’t called something out specifically as being wrong. If you lampshade everything that you think is wrong in a work, then isn’t not lampshading something an implicit endorsement?
But you know what, screw that. I can’t live that way. Sometimes my characters will say awful things. They are fictional characters, with flaws. And I will not point it out every single time. I will not.
Especially when it’s Mary. That’d just be exhausting.
That said, I thought you folks here were handling it better than I would have anyway. This is not actually a topic I know well enough to provide links and explanations. I have tried, actually, to point out similar things on other boards when people said things I thought were cissexist, but ended up getting properly shut down by an actual transgender person who I can’t rightfully argue with. Subsequently, I don’t have a lot of confidence in this subject, so godspeed to you folks.
Thank you, Willis, for this wonderful comic. Even if all your characters are horrible and/or have horrible parents. 😛 I have literally recommended this to all of my friends.
aight, i get what you’re saying, but u need to understand that using casually cissexist and ableist language in a work of fiction without specifically calling attention to it within that work always does and always will serve to perpetuate the cissexims and ableism that are so prevalent in our culture. these things are used casually for a reason; it’s bc they’re perceived as normal, and most ppl aren’t even aware of their meaning or consequence. they do it without even noticing. things like using words like ‘dumb’, ‘idiot’, ‘crazy’, referring to a penis as ‘male anatomy’ etc.
you don’t need to be able to win internet arguments about this shit. u just need to listen to ppl who know what they’re talking about, as it seems u have, and address these things within the narrative, however briefly. lemme just tell u that your handling of sal’s character wrt being mixed resonated with me very deeply and i appreciate you greatly for that. you don’t need to give any lectures or explain anything in great depth. again, you just need to address it within the narrative. call attention to the issue, and that’ll be enough.
it won’t change everyone’s mind; it probably won’t change most ppl’s. but it might make some think, and it’d certainly make me personally a lot more comfortable as a fan of this comic.
that makes sense. i understand where you’re coming from. i’m not trying to say that you need to “lay down the law.” i was just saying that it would be harder to argue, but evidently it doesn’t make all that much of a difference, and you’d know more about that than i would, of course. as i stated in another comment (which you may or may not have read; i don’t expect you to read all of the comments), the most jarring part was that you used the cissexist phrase as the title of the strip. that, more than anything, seemed like you thought that that phrase was acceptable, rather than harmful. i probably wouldn’t have been so put off if the strip was titled, i dunno, “An Outrage.” just a thought.
Call me crazy, but can the terms ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ not have two definitions? If you’re a doctor preparing perform surgery on someone’s genetalia, no damns should be given about how they identify, you need to know if they’ve got a ding-dong or a vee-vee. If we’re not allowed to use the terms for biology, then what terms are appropriate?
We’ve established that Mary is uncomfortable saying ‘Penis’ and besides, there are other differences between biological gender.
You can make up new terms, but for the duration of the English language, ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ have referred to the shape of a persons funny bits and some other various biological differences. Adding an alternate definition to a word and then acting offended when people use the traditional definition is simply seeking out ways to be offended.
I definitely know that transgender individuals face a lot of bigotry and cissexism, but this seems awfully pedantic to me. One needs to pick their battles, (Advice I should probably take myself…), and accusing people of cissexism or bigotry because they use a traditional definition of the word is not a battle to be fought.
the fact that “male” and “female” encompass various definitions outside of “has a penis” and “has a vagina” are the very reasons why they are inefficient as medical terms
as I asked above, what about trans women who take estrogen and have boobs, but have kept their penises?
what about trans people who don’t get surgery, but take hormones?
what about intersex people, all of whom are extremely varied in ways that make it completely disingenuous to slap one broad label on them?
do we just ignore them?
do we neglect to care for their health properly because they don’t fit our rigid societal definitions of what “male” and “female” look like?
Back to my original point though, WORDS CAN HAVE MULTIPLE DEFINITIONS. In this case, ‘Male’ refers to a biological form which human beings can take. The only way it is offensive is if you intentionally misinterpret her meaning or else ignore the intended definition.
I’ll agree that we don’t have enough words to define gender (Biological and psychological) properly, but what we do have is a pair of words (Male and Female) which encompass a wide array of definitions. If you’re going to argue that Male and Female should exclusively be used to describe indentified gender, then… Well… I guess you’d better write a letter to Webster and ask them to please remove a bunch of definitions so that your offense can be justified when people use the term ‘Male’ to mean ‘Person with an X and Y chromosome.’
Sorry if this comes out as condescending, but the idea that I’m not allowed to use a medical term to describe a body part without offending someone is ludicrous to me.
I already read that and find that argument to be bullshit for various reasons, but I’m tired and need to get some sleep so I’ll keep things short:
First, biological, binary gender HAS to exist, because otherwise our species would either reproduce asexually or cease to exist. Neither has happened to my knowledge. If you can’t be a part of the baby-making process, you’re out of the gene pool.
Surgical alterations should not be included in a discussion about what constitutes as biological gender, because it still doesn’t change genetics, nor does it change what I’ll call your ‘Factory setting.’ You were still BORN with biological gender.
There are, of course, exceptions. Certain birth defects can cause people to be born without one gender or another. However, saying that I can’t use Male or Female to describe people genetically because there are exceptions is like saying I can’t call something a Car or a Boat because there are other modes of transportation. You don’t get rid of all terms because you have something different, you MAKE UP A NEW WORD.
Lastly… Let’s consider, for the sake of metaphor, Ibuprofin. (I may have spelled that wrong.) It can be used to treat various symptoms and illnesses, but in 999 cases out of 1000 it is used for headaches.
Now let’s say I’m religiously bound never to say the word Ibuprofin, or it at least makes me uncomfortable.
Can I call it ‘Headache Medicine?’ Or, because there is that one case in a thousand where the term doesn’t apply, do I have to call it Ibuprofin? If I say ‘Headache Medicine’ and point at a bottle of Ibuprofin, everyone will know what I’m talking about. There’s no loss ofclarity. So am I allowed to use the defining trait of an object to define something?
I can’t edit, apparently, but I’d like to add:
Oops, I didn’t keep that short. Oh well.
Also, biological gender isn’t a social construct any more than having hands is a social construct. Sexual identity is a social construct. Biological gender cannot be, because it developed/s before and outside of society.
what the hell does “factory settings” mean in this context?
what do you need to be qualified as male?
what do you need to be qualified as female?
if a person doesn’t meet these qualifications, are they not male/female?
how is it useful from a medical standpoint to know what somebody’s assigned gender is, especially if they’re trans? how is it less efficient to just refer to specific body parts as is necessary?
Factory settings: How you were originally built. What you were born as.
What do you need to be qualified as female? Or male? As a general rule, though, no matter what I say you’ll come up with a contradiction or exception, so I’ll say this: Males and Females tend towards two various sets of traits. However, the defining factor is either the ability to make babies or the ability to fertilize those who make babies. At it’s core, that is what biological gender is. If you have some condition or defect rendering you exempt from these, you’ll still usually have all the right parts.
If a person doesn’t have any defining traits, though, or has a conflicting set, then no, they aren’t biologically male or female. Fortunately though, there is a word for that! Hermaphrodite covers those with male and female parts, I can’t recall what other terms may exist but I know there are other terms. So no, you aren’t male or female, but that doesn’t mean you’re excluded because IT’S NOT A BINARY SYSTEM.
Lastly, why is it important? Because science! Male and female bodies tend towards different conditions. Women get breast cancer more often. Men have heart conditions more frequently. Gender is important from a medical standpoint because it gives information from which you can make a diagnosis. Furthermore, if (for example) a man who identifies as female comes in with vague symptoms, knowing his biological gender will help rule out certain problems. It’s likely not ovarian cancer, it might be a hormonal imbalance… If the doctor has to test for each problem individually, running scans for organs that don’t exist, that’s an issue. As for those who undergo surgery, that’s why we keep medical records.
Call it whatever you like, there are two sets of person-types in the world who have certain sets of physical traits. There are exceptions, as you will find in any set of 6 Billion things, but those two sets exist and you simply can’t pretend they don’t by citing the one-in-a-million cases which we also have words for.
there are no such thing as human hermaphrodites – they’re called intersex
so the people who are actively harmed by the perpetuation of the binary system (mainly intersex and trans people) should just be neglected? only dyadic cis people matter?
and what about people who have medically transitioned in some way, and as such, are more at risk for one thing or another?
what about treating people as individuals instead of lazily making generalizations about how their body works based on their assigned sex?
btw, another way to tell if a person is at risk for ovarian cancer is ASKING THEM IF THEY HAVE OVARIES
like, you realize there are cis women without ovaries, right?
It’s clear that we’re both just restating our opinions and disagreeing here, so I’ll close my argument with this:
People should be able to speak freely and with plain speech without worrying about offending someone.
Furthermore, your insistence that use of the word ‘Male’ in this context on applies due to connotations thay almost nobody intends or considers. You’re expencting billions of people to adopt a new meaning to a word (And then invent two new words) because your definition implies offense. You’re asking the world to change to accomidate words that you’ve added meaning to, instead of using other words yourself and not assuming that everyone is against you because they don’t use your dictionary.
In other words, stop assuming that everyone else is being an asshole because they talk like everyone in the world does.
“People should be able to speak freely and with plain speech without worrying about offending someone.”
…what…
maybe you should try saying things that don’t hurt people and contribute to their stigmatization (which leads to, you know, DEATH in many cases – on average, a person has a 1 in 18,989 chance of being murdered, but a trans person has a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered… so…) instead of advocating for everyone being able to say whatever they want even if it hurts people.
I’m sorry, what? I’ve mentioned several times that I recognize Transphobia is a real issue, and I’m debating this point alone because it’s so incredibly petty. I’m not advocating hate-speech, I’m saying that you should be able to use the words ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ without requiring a thesaurus and a ten-minute clarification.
If you want to deal with Transphobia, there are many things you can do. Spread awareness of issues, run campaigns, volunteer at shelters. But when you attack someone over tiny and petty issues in terminology and speech you’re not getting anywhere. I’ve also stated that I believe we should have more numerous and specific terms for different genders, but this won’t be accomplished by forbidding people from using the words we already have. You can’t have progress in identifying different types of sexuality and gender identity by telling other people they can’t refer to things by their gender.
Can I bring up Star Wars? I’m gonna bring up Star Wars. In episode 6, The Emperor refers to a Lightsaber as a ‘Jedi Weapon’. Now, there are Jedi who don’t use Lightsabers. Very obviously there are Sith who DO us Lightsabers. But when he called it a ‘Jedi Weapon’ everyone knew exactly what he meant: It was a weapon commonly used by Jedi, and only seldom found elsewhere. He obviously didn’t mean it was 100% exclusive, seeing as his right-hand man was a Sith with a Lightsaber.
Now replace ‘Jedi Weapon’ with ‘Male Anatomy’ and ‘Emperor’ with ‘Mary.’
It’s worth noting that I identify as primarily asexual. I have a sex drive and I do seek romantic involvement, but the two don’t meet. I’ve yet to meet or see a person who I consider ‘sexy.’ To me, the entire ordeal of fleshy bits squishing together is just a little gross, so I consider the whole thing to be a purely biological imperative which, by nescessity, society has deemed immensely important to your identity. It’s not super relevant, but might help with understanding my perspective on this.
yes, words are clearly harmless
that’s why it’s okay to use “gay” as a pejorative
language is a tool created by humans to understand the world
we build associations and socialize people with language
all in all, language is freaking important
when people misgender me, I correct them, and if they’re decent, they take it gracefully
letting people be lazy about it only solidifies whatever preconceptions they already have and hurts those most vulnerable among us as a result
You mistake my meaning.
Nobody is misgendering you here. I don’t know what you prefer to be called, but you’re not being mislabeled either way.
As for words being ‘Harmless’, I appreciate the sarcasm, but my point was that *You’re applying negative connotation and offense to a word that doesn’t have any.* I wasn’t particularly clear on the subject, but what I meant was something more along these lines: People should be able to speak without fear of being attacked/accused of anything, unless they’re actually trying to be offensive.
Unlike your example of calling something ‘Gay’, there’s no harm intended in using the word ‘Male’ to refer to something commonly found in a biological Male body. As opposed to taking offense over someone using your sexual identity as a negative, you’re taking offense because someone didn’t refer to your gender identoty at all. Nowhere is it implied here that penises are *exclusively* Male, it’s only brought up that they’re *usually* male. See my Star Wars comment. You’re not asking people not to use your identity as an insult, you’re asking people to make sure to acknowlege you every time a flippant comment is made about dongs. You’re asking for attention and getting mad because it’s not being given.
I know there’s a lot of Transphobia, cisexism, and general crap that your community has to deal with. That sucks. This is not any of that, this is an awkwardly used bowlderization for someone who’s to uncomfortable to say Penis, and this is you assuming that it’s meant to be an insult for no other reason than they aren’t talking about you.
mary using that term in that way is more indicative of her ignorance than her actively trying to be cissexist, but that still doesn’t justify it
if I step on your foot, I don’t have to do it on purpose for it to hurt you
it’d be really nice if willis had someone else address gendering genitals in the comic at some point, like leslie, or carla – it doesn’t have to be right now, but when this was first posted, some of us were unsure whether or not willis endorsed this mindset
That’s the thing, though: Nobody has stepped on your foot! Mary may be an incredible bongo, but her comment was in no way marginalizing of transsexuals or those with atypical biology. The Penis is an organ typically, but not exclusively and not always, found on biological males. Mary is apparently uncomfortable saying penis, so she used this fact to comment on the drawings without saying the actual word. She didn’t say ‘Exclusively Male organ.’ Do I need to bring up the Star Wars metaphor again? It’s not an exclusive statement, nor a completely inclusive statement that has absolutely nothing to do with transsexualism, sexual or gender identity, or anything else similar.
If I refer to a Cross as a ‘Christian symbol’, I’m not saying that the shape of the cross doesn’t have other meanings, nor that it’s exclusively used by Christians, I’m saying that it is commonly associated with Christian imagery because it is prevalent. I won’t, however, take the effort to say ‘Christian symbol, with roots in Roman history and their preferred execution method, as well as a mere marking of two lines perpendicular to each other.’ Why? Because it’s ludicrous, unnecessary, and everyone already knows what I’m talking about. They know that I’m not stating this to exclude other uses, I’m simply talking about it in relation to one common comparison. If anyone thinks that my statement is intentionally snubbing all other uses and history of a Cross, then they are very clearly misinterpreting my meaning, which is not my fault.
This isn’t someone stepping on your foot on purpose. This isn’t someone stepping on your foot on accident. This is you, seeing someone walking, and jamming your foot underneath theirs so that you can yell at them for it.
since you are unwilling to accept the idea that cisnormativity is toxic and just reinforces the gender binary, which harms trans and intersex people, I’m done talking to you
I don’t believe I’ve ever said that cisnormativity should be condoned. I completely agree that it’s terrible.
My point here is that THIS IS NOT CISNORMATIVITY. This is someone referring to one type of biological gender, and using a common trait of that gender as a point of reference. Never in the comic, hovertext, or description anywhere does anyone say something about penises being exclusively Male. Never does anyone say that Penises SHOULD be exclusively Male. Never does anyone say that only Males have Penises.
But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and dismiss me as cissexist and unwilling to accept something which I have already said I do accept and agree with. This will certainly simplify things for you, after all, and it makes it much easier to ignore my argument.
Someone can be legally female and still have a penis if they were born in one of several states (fuck yeah, Illinois!)…if someone’s wearing feminine clothing with a feminine hairstyle, they’re female unless they tell you differently.
nah though, if someone’s female, they’re female. gender expression is different than gender identity. wearing “feminine” clothing doesn’t mean that someone’s female. if you HAVE to assume gender, i guess they’re a pretty good indicator, but i usually prefer to ask or wait until someone else refers to them by pronouns or nouns that indicate their gender.
i usually introduce myself with pronouns (“Hey! I’m [name] and I use [subject/object] pronouns! It’s nice to meet you.”) if i’m somewhere i think is safe (or online) even though i’m cis and pretty obviously female, because it’s good to set that precedent, in my opinion.
Call me crazy, but can the terms ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ not have two definitions?
Crazy, if it is still an issue, why not use `masculine’ and `feminine’ where it’s gender, not sex?
TBH, I don’t think many characters in the comic would get this right unless it was pointed out to them at Leslie’s gender studies class. Carla, of course. Roz, maybe. Dorothy would strive to be mindful of it once she understood it. But these kids are just 18 years old & not well-versed in gender stuff.
oh yeah, I could see leslie being cool about it too
I’d think that trans issues would be brought up in a gender studies class, so I hope it’s at least touched on by her
i’m 18 too, though, and most of my friends get called out about this (by myself or other friends) if they’re being shitty. i also know some pretty awful people who are still educated on trans issues (and aren’t bigots in general)! also, some trans people who are assholes. like, just because ruth’s a jerk doesn’t mean she’s not gonna know about trans issues, you know what i mean? she could be a trans girl. who knows. the only characters whose genitalia are canon are dorothy and walky, right? (i didn’t read the “walky performs a sex” comic, so i’m not sure about that.)
…granted, i live in seattle, so maybe we’re more open than in indiana? i don’t know, i’ve never lived anywhere else since i was a year old.
but yeah, here’s hoping leslie addresses it (off-panel, probably).
All other rudeness aside who the hell just calls their RA “RA?” Like I’m sure she knows her name. I’ve had 3 RAs and I called them all by their first name.
I read it as Mary reminding Ruth to act her position.
If you wanna get biblical, requests under a covenant very frequently start the same way; effectively, “hey mighty ruler, here is our established relationship” and THEN asking for things. So it makes sense for prayer-soaked Mary to think in that order.
I am ashamed to say that I look very similar to Mary though i’m jewish and hopefully not as much of a bongo (or b-word if you prefer) Does this count as Mary losing her virginity? Or did she lose that already?
Mary has a rotten character, but she looks very cute when she’s not m̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶t̶c̶h̶f̶a̶c̶e̶ projecting negative emotions. So I don’t think you have to feel ashamed.
Dude…or dudette, Ruth can defy logic whenever she wants…as long as the logic defying action happens to be an awesome one, which Ruth is in no short supply of.
DoA Ruth is simply a bully. Her idea of establishing her RA “authority” was to kidnap residents who didn’t attend her floor meeting, and then challenge anyone who’d try to a fight.
“It’s a comic strip” is dismissive of larger issues, such as the fact people will say Mary was asking for it [even though she WAS] and that means all violence against her is perfectly okay, like how racists “justify” murdering black kids because they had selfies of themselves flipping the bird.
That said, it is a comic strip about HAVING BAD JUDGEMENT. Saisfyingly bad judgement.
y’know…I do run adblock because ads help keep webcomics up. BUT I get really damn tired of those automatically running video ads that seem to crash every damn browser on the planet except for nutscrape.
We’re all giving Mary a hard time here but let’s consider this. Ruth only slapped her because SHE could take it! It will take more than a dick slap (boy that sounds wrong) to keep Mary down. Mary’s a saint.
This just came to me, but what if Ruth slapped her while her back was turned? This would make the most sense or that Ruth slapped Mary so hard that the drawing showed up on the other side of her face and righted itself.
I’d buy that. I think Ruth doing some kind of roundhouse slap to get more momentum is more believable though. Or possibly slapping her hard enough that the mark and the ink went clear through her face and is on both sides, sounds about right for how hard Ruth slaps and how hard Mary needs to be slapped.
I feel like replies aren’t going where they should.
Anyway, yes, it is a comic about HAVING BAD JUDGEMENT. Badness happening to bad people is satisfying, though, however we “should not” let it happen in real life [but because in real life, there “should not” be “villains” the way people sometimes want there to be to justify getting revenge].
…I think I’m the only one who focused more on the joke than the artwork…I don’t mind that the hand print is “wrong” or whatever. It’s still a funny joke. Y’all need to sit down and enjoy the comic instead of pulling your hair out over a mistake that Willis knows about, and doesn’t intend to change for logical reasons.
I kinda sorta noticed it, but it’s like being cut off in traffic–you can either let it ruin your day, or you can realize it’s not really anything in the grand scheme of things and anyway there are better things to focus on. Like that Mary got a punishment that fits the crime =D [if on the slightly severe end]
I hope Mary has some redeeming qualities. It’s not good for someone to have that much hate in them. I have to wonder, why is she like that? The backstories are…not good.
She hasn’t really displayed any so far. In many ways, Joyce and Mary are two sides of the same fundie coin. My sister,who is like Joyce has a way of dealling with her anger. It is to wish blessings on the people she’s angry at. She figures they need all the help they can get.
Here’s a thought.
Mary goes from polite and freindly to screaming insults in less than a minute. Ruth draws a dick on her hand as an extended “talk to the hand” insult. Mary (off-screen) attacks Ruth physically. Ruth slaps Mary in self defense.
Mary obviously has rage issues, and it isn’t unheard of for someone to go from verbal to physical assault in the same encounter. Ruth has her own issues, and may be falling back on early(i.e. childhood) training on how to deal with someone like Mary.
If the fact that Ruth “let” the whiteboards get defaced when she wasn’t present is “proof of her incompetence”, then how incompetent must you be to end up with your own face defaced the same way? (And yay! I get to check off “face defaced” from my weird-phrases-I-want-to-use-someday bucket list!)
Also, oddly inappropriate smile in the first panel. Mary seems happy about the situation at first.
I’m reading that smile as a “suck up” smile and the subsequent faces as “that sucking up didn’t go the way I wanted; revert to default personality” faces. Had a boss like that.
Pro tip: if someone writes on your marker board with a permanent marker (like a sharpie) simply write over the permanent marks with a dry erase marker and wipe off the marks. Dry erase markers have a solvent in them that dissolves the permanent ink of a sharpie.
I am unsure of how well dry erase markers remove fecal stains. It is probably best not to allow your dry erase boards to become stained with fecal matter.
My theory: Someone on the floor realizes this, but they don’t actually care all that much, and the scandal of what’s going on is far more interesting than a blank whiteboard.
Calling it now, someone in-comic will mention using dry erase markers to clean the whiteboards….and the comments will still be full of tips on how to remove permanent marker.
This is also something similar to the Phantom. What I mean in the comic, if the Phantom shakes your hand with the skull, you’re a friend and is under his watchful eye at all times, but if he strikes you, then you’re evil and the the mark stays with you for as long as you live. While I’m sure the drawing is washable, it implication is the same.
I know Willis said it was an acceptable loss, but I wanted to see how one could pull this off. I came up with the possibility that Ruth clapped her hands to transfer the wet ink (since drawing with her off hand may leave the shape ambiguous) and then used her main hand to whap Mary (since hitting with her off hand may leave the shape ambiguous) which makes enough sense for me to be satisfied with it
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HAW
My opinion of Ruth just went through the roof!
That was a very clever response from her wasn’t it? Hahahaha
I hate to be that guy, but for Ruth to use that hand on that cheek means the other girl was running away and the dick came for her from behind.
Either that or it was a mistake and it was drawn on the wrong cheek. Because really it should have been on the left side instead of the right, right? Because if she was running or even turned away the fingers would be pointed more towards the nose right?
Or It was a mistake and was drawn on the wrong hand – the handprint is clearly of a left hand, to my eye.
Run you fool! The Willis has to kill you now.
OR she drew it on her right hand, clapped her hands together, and then went for the double-slap?
Or she slapped her left cheek so hard that the print appeared on the other cheek.
or Ruth just gave Mary a “looks like she was slapped with a hand with a dick drawn on it” facepaint job and had just been drawing on her own hand to remind herself what a dick looked like
Or maybe Ruth drew on the back of her hand in anticipation of the pimp slap?
So, wait.
If Mary got slapped with a dick-drawn left-hand hard enough on the cheek to leave a transfer….
…. where did the first, right-handed slap land?
Glad to see I’m not the only guy who caught the continuity errors.
nerrrrrrds
See and now you can show others the problem, good job Ruth.
…assault charges notwithstanding.
Mary won’t press any..
because it would involve pictures being required of her now dick-face.
Though I suppose she’s not the best at forward thinking.
HAHA, this is great, never thought of doing that, that’s brilliant 😀
+9000 approval!
Hoo Haa even…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6MhvjUy3DQ
Mary totally deserved that.
Love the dual-wielding Susan avatar, Plasma!
Susan really fits he mood for today’s comic so it’s all good. ^_^
Definitely!
I’ve never loved Ruth more..and Mary should have known better than to ruffle the feathers of Ruthless.
Now thats a dick slap!
You win.
Heh, I can even hear it Cheryl’s voice.
Holy Dongers.
This reminds me of how i meet your mother……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAAtH1HO8L0
I mean how i “met” your mother
For a nickel.
Wow Mary don’t call your RA a conga.
Maybe she was going to say Canuck? Isn’t Ruth from Canada? 😉
that she is
“YOU STUPID CRAPPY RA”
That’s…worse…maybe? I honestly don’t know.
Maybe she was going to go British on us & call her a cow?
Next week she’ll develop a cockney accent and start calling everyone slags.
…Wait. That’s not used outside Britain?
…Huh. There’s the thing I learn today.
We use cow here in Canada. But it’s not a particularly common insult.
Not since everyone realized how pretty cows are.
I am cow, hear me moo
I weigh twice as much as you
And I look good on the barbecuuuuue
some people use it when they want to sound British here in America.
Some people use it in America when they want to call somebody fat.
She’s not from Canada; she’s Canadian, so she’s from Canadia, duh.
college student?
no, no, she was going to say “car” she’s a new reader and still confuses Ruth and Carla
man all the cars around here, amirite???
I can’t distinguish amongst red-haired characters :(:(:(
just kidding they both hotties
Dat Ultracar <3
Really disliking how Willis has handled Mary in DoA. At least she actually had some depth in Roomies. Now she’s too much like SP! Malaya (prior to hooking up with Ultra Car), just sorta being around to be unlikable and bongoy.
Mary and Malaya: Partners in Unpleasantness.
Mary’s ‘depth’ only really happened because she was supposed to be one kind of character and ended up a different kind and that needed to be dealt with.
I never said it was much depth, just more than what we’re seeing now
The original Walkyverse cast dealt with Mary?!
All I remember happening is when she learned she hit a home run with a guy she met, then lashed out at Danny in a violent rage, blaming him for it, and having no further appearances in Roomies! after that. When Sal was on the run in It’s Walky, she broke into Mary’s house, and once Mary learned Sal wasn’t here to kill her, she went right back into her trademark predatory Yuppie Church Lady mode, gloating about how she was married with a bun in the oven, and how it all must be divine favor for being oh so holier than thou or whatever. Sal then called her out on what a lousy friend she was back when they were in high school, causing Mary to call her an “Ungrateful bongo” with an intense ‘HOW DARE YOU!!’ look on her face. Her hubby came into the scene, causing things to cease to escalate, Sal left, Mr. Mary brought up that it was probably the legally responsible thing to do to notify the authorities. His wife agreed while darting her large eyes to her left with an expression on her face like a thief who had just been caught in the act. After that, I have no further memory of her involvement with the rest of the cast.
I must have missed something. Archives anyone can recommend?
Well she was originally Danny’s friend:
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/mary-nono-nono-send-her-back/
Hmmmm…The good taste in clothes didn’t start in DoA, I stand corrected.
Far more of a voyeur than I remember…’Yandere’ would describe her.
I did gather her predatory behavior was motivated by extreme self-inflicted insecurity. Figure Raidah’s desperate control / demagoguery issues with her relationships are motivated by the same.
DoA Mary is still a bit of a time bomb, but not a STEALTH time bomb like the original. The Mary of this strip isn’t catching anyone by surprise with how she turns out to have problems having this new musk ox brand of subtlety.
Mary doesn’t have any depth because no one will stay around her long enough for her to demonstrate any side of her personality other than angry and judge-y.
I do believe you are right. Honestly shes less bongoy here than ever before
Maybe she can get some depth if somebody can put her SIX FEET UNDER LOLOLOLOL
At least Malaya doesn’t beat around the bush about how much she hates you.
We’ve already got Raidah.
I kind of like this new oaf of a Mary, despite how she may not be explored much further, beyond serving as everyone else’s foil, that is. The original Mary…….Let’s just say I’m absolutely terrified for her child.
I’ll take the tall, snappy-dresser, occasionally put-upon malcontent Mary over that.
What child?
If she lied about being pregnant to put in airs with Sal, none I guess.
Malaya had depth in the beginning & always seemed more likeable to me.
She’s had… *checks tag* …35 appearances in the strip, most of them non-speaking and in the background. Give it some time.
Here’s a relevant question: how many strips has she been in as opposed to how much attention has she received by the comic? You can’t have character depth and development if a character is hardly shown.
I thought maybe she was saying “stupid cow”. The c word seems a bit far for her “everyone is a sinner” attitude. Though one of her defining character traits *is* being a huge hypocrite.
How could she not be? Perfection is unattainable for mere mortals, because there can be only one Jesus, so of course she is holding everyone to a higher standard than she herself can measure up to. That is why hypocrites are really morally superior. At least that’s what Neil Stephenson tells me.
I thought “cow” too!
A well deserved bongo-slap!!!
She did not think this complaint through.
Ruth is really starting to leave her mark on people.
Thread winner at 52 posts! Congratulations!
I speed scrolled down looking for the first bongoslap comment, and Pink just made it even better.
I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t go witth he Rick James joke that first jumped into my head.
HAHAHAHA!
Seeing a fellow Rider fan in the comments is great.
There’s more than one of us, but I’ve been using this avatar for twenty years and it’d take one heck of a Rider to make me switch.
(Amazi-Driver. It needs to happen.)
20 years? Evil Midnight Lurker from Sailor Moon Expanded?
I thought that was the Evil Midnight Bomber what bombs at midnight from The Tick.
And another Rider fan here. Started watching weekly with Decade and really enjoying Gaim. Faiz is my favorite suit and henshin.
Mary…is not my favorite anything. She’s an unpleasant bongo, with apologizes to the ladies in the comments section.
It is, but even befoe 9/11 I thought calling myself a Bomber on the internet was just asking for trouble, so I tweaked it.
That’s me, in fact 🙂
Mary’s lucky she only has ONE dong on her face.
And her teeth.
True
Why do you think her mouth is closed? She doesn’t want people to know she got all her teeth knocked out.
Fun Fact. Do not trust anyone who can go from 0 to 100 like Mary just did here. Like…that’s just the sign of an otherwise unstable person.
I know a few people like that. They’re very fun to watch.
From a healthy distance.
I’m not sure if she’d still be visible to the naked eye from a healthy distance . . .
^^^THIS^^^
Haha, so true!
Excellent.
Mary sucks, but lets be real- Ruth is a terrible R.A.
Also, that could count as sexual harrassment.
So could that thing she did to Billingsworth.
And regular assault!
But… wouldn’t doing this actually make her a GOOD RA? I mean a bad RA would just ignore her, or worse, actually do as Mary said.
A good R.A. is always prepared . . . with a sharpie!
Does May know how to get rid of that marker? She just has to go over the penis with dry erase marker . . .
Wait, how did you get in here? What do you mean, deathmark for using the dry erase meme? No! Get away! Someone help me!
Nope. All jokes aside, you shouldn’t be hitting people as a way to handle problems.
Ruth is the RA this dorm deserves, but not the one it needs right now.
That made my day.
Very impressed that she seems to have drawn a dick on both hands before slapping her with the left.
Ha! I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who was wondering how the logistics of that slap worked out….
Yeah, she drew on the wrong hand from what the “slapped” panel indicates
She drew a dick on her hand, then slapped Mary and drew a dick over where she slapped
EASY PEASY
She slapped Mary SO hard that the ink actually soaked through to the other cheek.
Alternately, Ruth caressingly wiped the make-up off where Mary covers a large pink birthmark, then drew a dick over THAT
Yeah, the last panel needs to be mirrored and would be fine, but as is…
Not with “just” mirroring it, then the whiteboard dicks would be the wrong way around.
1. Mary needs to be on the left-hand side of the first panel since she speaks first, also so the action reads in the right order.
2. Ruth is left-handed.
3. Mary has to be walking in the opposite direction when she leaves so that the action is clear. The slap also has to be on the side facing us.
Acceptable losses.
At first I thought Ruth slapped her on both sides but then I noticed it was just her cheeks blushing.
Oh. I just thought the Ruth waited until Mary started to stalk off, and then pressed her left hand against the left side of Mary’s face from behind. That seemed (a) more like the imagery, and (b) more like Ruth.
Mary’s first speech was already occupying the whole top of the panel, though. It would be read first anyway, even if Mary is located on the right. See the second panel where Mary is now right from Ruth and, yet, still talks first.
and you didn’t think to select just Ruth and Transform>Flip Horizontally?
you didn’t think to read #2
This seems much less noticeable since nobody cares what Ruth’s dominant hand is but everyone can plainly see this mistake.
I should definitely ignore Ruth’s handedness in a storyline where the handedness of the titular character is presented as a potential clue.
Ah I see. Still don’t think it matters much though. I doubt anyone really thinks Ruth did it anyway.
What do you mean? Of course Ruth did it.
It was Ruth? I thought Mary did it to disgrace her because she wants to replace
MegatRuth.Motive, opportunity, …
Also, can’t follow AmaziGirl’s logic there. I thought she was trolling for a list of suspects there.
Wouldn’t she want to draw with her dominant hand though? I know I can slap with either hand much better than I can draw with my off-hand.
Of course Ruth did it. Compare the art on Mary’s cheek with the image on the board behind her. Total match. Case solved.
I’m still a bit confused. Her… artwork in this comic does not seem to be such a masterpiece that it could not have been drawn with either hand, so her handedness isn’t all that relevant to the act of drawing itself.
The confusion is that the comic appears to portray 1) Ruth drawing on her right hand with her left hand 2) A left(?) handprint on the right side (opposite left) of Mary’s face.
And the handedness isn’t necessarily a potential clue – this is set in a country that uses a writing system that goes to the right, so “right” and “forward” are arguably conflated in people’s minds regardless of what hand they draw with.
So even easier, you could have flipped the entire last panel.
“I done goofed” works faster and more decently as an answer you know, nobody would nitpick after that. Instead you’re turning this into a Streisand Effect.
Then you disagree with #3?
I’m just going to believe that Ruth slapped Mary so hard that the picture went through the left side of her face entirely and ended up on her right cheek.
I agree Lord Maximilian, that make the most sense.
Also hi, how’s life and all that.
Cartoon physics
;^)
I just thought Ruth did an open palm hit against Mary’s face; no curve, just straight forward. It seemed funnier.
Yup. A lot funnier. (But the palm marks don’t agree; they’re from a right hand.)
Wait, what? The palm mark definitely looks like a left hand to me, which is what’s so confusing.
…let’s pretend I said “left”, so I don’t look like a giant idiot.
This is also what I thought.
My initial reading was that Ruth didn’t slap across the face, she made a straight push against Mary’s face. While the slap marks do indicate that the left hand was used to slap, the lack of a thumb mark makes it easier to confuse the left and right hands.
You could probably make it less of a sacrifice if you change the hand-mark to be a right hand still on the right side of Mary’s face; it’ll have been a somewhat weird way to slap someone, but it’ll not involve hands suddenly being mirrored.
Though note in future that there is NO way to slap someone on the face so that it leaves a palm print on one side of their face and a thumb mark on the other without breaking their nose in the process.
Step 1: Google Image “slap to the face”
Step 2: GET PRACTICING ON YOUR SLAP DRAWINGS!
Step 3: recieve nothing important in relation to this except a smug sense of self satisfaction comparable to the one that people get when pointing out errors in your art.
Can we just say that Ruth slapped her so hard that the imprint went through to the other cheek?
Willis – I completely understand points 1-3. What I’m not completely clear on is why the thumb mark on the face has to be up and not down.
The composition is correct.
Now it makes me think that if she drew the dick with her left hand, and hit her with her right. She is somewhat ambidextrous.
Purely out of curiosity to see how hard it would be to fix, I took a stab at it. It took me about an hour, and I messed up Mary’s hair in like three or four different ways, mainly the direction of the hair in the middle and the pointy-bit I ended up making on the right, but it does fix the problem of which cheek the smack mark is on.
Mr. Willis, it’s really your art, so let me know if you want me to delete that.
Oooh, I like that. The resentful glare over the shoulder feels pretty natural.
I choose to believe she waited until Mary turned her back in disgust. No one ever slaps someone’s face from behind, it can be a new trend.
the finger marks would go towards her mouth instead of up along her eye
I’m going to pretend she actually did a double slap, and there’s a dick on both cheeks, we just can’t see the other one.
Sounds like a perfectly acceptable head cannon to me.
Head cannon?
http://xkcd.com/1401/
Head cannon?
http://turntherightcorner.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/transformers-4-age-of-extinction-still-lockdown-head-cannon-3.jpg?w=1024
Now THAT is a head cannon.
But how did it talk?
As someone whos done this before, the trick is draw it on your right with a wet marker, clap your hands and smack the hell out of someone with your stamped hand. The mark can be washed off your hands easy but the slapped one is in for some heavy scrubbing.
Clearly, moments before the slap, Ruth suggested that Mary should turn the other cheek.
Well played!
Ruth Lessick’s 1,000-Year-Old Secret Technique: Dong-Mark Slap!
Nearly 24 hours since I posted this comment and not a single person made the obvious Major Armstrong reference? What is this comment section coming to?
That just made me so infinitely happy.
What did the five fingers say to the face? Slapppp!
Ruthless, Everybody! Ruthless!
Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead?
In Australia that would count as a peudo-turkey-slap.
Ruth is a terrible RA but funny as Hell. one of my favorites.
Couldn’t happen to a better candidate…suits you Mary.
I feel a strange need to completely agree with Mary on this subject regardless of how my own opinions.
It seems I got slapped so hard I forgot how to type.
Hahahaha….win!!
Wait shouldn’t Ruth be drawing on her left hand not her right?
I’m assuming that it was a back-handed slap.
yes, the slap mark on Mary’s face is of a left hand
Much better than just drawing it directly on her face
Man, Mary should have known better, especially when Ruth took the time to draw on her left hand as well, so she could smack Mary in the right cheek.
I think you’ve got it.
Oh, Oh yes.
Oh god I nearly pissed my pants I laughed so hard!
Kegels would help with that.
Mary totes had that coming. And yeah, that faux-affable smile of hers is creepy.
I don’t trust smiling Mary as much as I’d trust Sal in a Christian uniform.
That’s a nice way to have fun with slapping someone across the face.
Well that’s one way to dickslap someone
truest of dickslaps.
Some dick jokes are just perfect. This is one such dick joke.
Is it wrong? Well it’s Mary, but still, yes.
Did I laugh? Yes, yes I did.
Am I going to hell? WELL, seeing as how I don’t believe in hell, no.
Yep, pretty much. Complete with “well, it’s Mary” as a level of general wrongness.
YAY! Bonus points to Ruth 😀
Soooo…. how long before Ruth and Mary are makin’ out?
As soon as Mike and Carla become a thing….
carla’s gay
…or was that the joke?
Carla’s asexual but homoromantic.
I dunno about newllend, but my joke was that Ruth’s actions here look a lot like her flirting technique with Billie back in the beginning of the strip.
um… Ruth is drawing on the wrong hand for the slap to be on that side
I was just about to mention this
The hand-print on Mary’s face looks like a left hand…but she was drawing on her right hand!
…oops!!!
I can slap you on either side of the face with my dominant hand. We don’t know which direction on Ruth’s hand the art faces. 😀
We do, actually. If you look at the slap patterns, it has to come from a right hand.
Mary is facing right. The mark is on her left cheek. The thumb is facing up and the fingers facing her ear. By your logic the slap would have to come from a left hand, not a right.
You’re entirely right, by my logic the slap had to come from a left hand, which is what I wanted to communicate yet somehow didn’t manage to. ^_^;
I wonder if this makes Ruth the WhiteBREAD Ding-Dong Bandit?
The dick drawing on Mary’s face is the same as the dick drawing on the board behind her.
–oh wait, the cast has already decided it couldn’t be her because she’s left-handed, and indeed, her drawing would’ve been facing the other way. Dang.
I guess I still accuse Malaya, then. (She doesn’t live on this floor, but she could be trying to get Carla’s attention or something. Without Mike, she’s the only character I can think of who is both obnoxious and tenacious enough to do it.)
no wait, Mary!
I am late to the Mary-accusation party
I like your first idea better! This could be the start of a romantic courtship between Carla and her secret admirer, entirely made of lewd drawings and physical pranks… Man, we need more romantic comedies like that
Can anyone fill me on Marys problem? The change in attitude from panel two to three was quite a jump.
She’s an insane, self-centred ultra-fundie, who’s not getting her way re: dicks on whiteboards. Panel 3 is the hatred that underpins her whole personality appearing when her fake-niceness fails to cause people to comply with her demands.
Cool, thanks.
Also she enjoys lording (no pun intended) her superior morality over others. Well, her perceived superior morality, anyway. Not sure if it’s entirely evident here, but I’m betting it’s feeding into her outrage. Mary’s the kind of person who gets upset about a thing, and then gets even more upset when everyone else doesn’t find said thing as objectionable as she does. And then she uses their lack of rage as proof that they’re terrible people.
… This is such a terrible thing to do, especially as an RA…
But because it’s Mary, I really can’t blame her. (Amazingly, I’ve voted for more Mary in the DoA poll before. I forgot that that would mean suffering through more Mary being awful in the hopes there might be a layer of not-terrible underneath. Also, I was wrong.)
In other news: Agatha looks like a female Mike.
Hence their impending ship.
I am ok with this!
No way. The eyes and eyebrows are all wrong.
Maybe they’re long-lost twins.
Uhohs. Mary’s gonna tell on Ruth to the RD.
Looks like someone got a fucking slap.
What so Ruth hand sexualy harassed Mary ?
Gihii…. She just got Cock-Slapped.
Has NO ONE thought of rubbing alcohol yet? Yeesh.
Rubbing alcohol destroys whiteboards.
Takes off the outer layer that makes it eraseable in the first place.
Hmm, didn’t know that.
Still, it’s not the only solution, and I’m surprised that all these college students, with Google at their disposal, have somehow not begun removing the vandalism themselves.
Besides there have been more removing permanent marker posts in previous comics than you can poke a stick at.
Also baby wipes work better on skin. Takes it right off almost immediately.
Fire works better. it ensures a dick wont get drawn there again.
But I don’t want to take off my skin
Isn’t that the bongoy Christian girl?
Yup! Mary is Joyce without the redeeming qualities.
Eh, not really, IMO. Mary doesn’t actually *believe* the stuff she professes. Joyce is actually sincere about her beliefs, but in this comic she is refreshingly non-judgmental compared to the original version of herself.
I hate bongoy Christian girls. They are the worst! There was one on my floor at IU. 😉 I plead the fifth on whether or not I drew a devil and 666 on her whiteboard. *whistles*
Also….physical assault anyone?
That was satisfying.
So far Ruth has publicly tossed Billie’s ass during a floor meeting, suplexed Blaine during Horrific Parental Abuse Weekend and Mary still thought it was a good idea to go off on her? She’s lucky she only got a smack in the face.
She’s not wrong of course, Ruth is a terrible RA and something should be done about it. That something is not screaming in her face but reporting her to her superiors.
RAs can be even more fucked up than their charges. Lord knows my RA had lots of skeletons in her closet. Kinda felt sorry for her.
To be fair, Billie and Blaine both took the first swing. Mary may have assumed that, so long as she didn’t initiate actual violence, Ruth wouldn’t respond with it.
Or Mary just thought her scolding Ruth about the issue would make Ruth say “Oh! You’re right. I have been slacking. I’ll get right on that.”
She’s Mary. She’s narcissistic. She thinks everything that is important to her is, or should be, important to everyone. She also thinks she’s perfection itself and that anyone with the brains God gave a goat would agree with her.
And going along with her narcissistic tendencies, when neither of these expectations are met she loses complete control of her emotions and flies off the handle.
So, I doubt she did any real thinking about it before screaming at Ruth. And if she did any thinking about it before approaching Ruth about the topic initially, she didn’t think much beyond feeling certain that her incredibly fake nice-nicey, sweet-as-honey approach would get Ruth to see the light and do as Mary asks/demands.
My money’s on Mary being the culprit behind all the dick pics.
Agreed. (Posted at the same time – see below.)
Also, I suddenly have a new prime suspect.
Her attitude in those first few panels is very much “so, have you seen what I did? How are you going to respond, eh? How about punishing everyone on this floor for being immoral Godless heathens, eh? If you don’t, that means you’re irresponsible and unworthy of your position! One that should be held by someone of unimpeachable moral character, like myself!”
… I can so totally see that from Mary. Even if she didn’t do it, that is exactly her thought process anyway.
Yeah, this strip convinced me that Mary is the dingdong bandit. She’s being way too confrontational – wait, actually, that’s not out of character – she’s being way too *nice* about this confrontation and then flipped when it didn’t go her way.
Also she drew Joyce and Sarah’s door decorations. She knows how to draw! The pieces fit!!
I’m pretty sure there is no dingdong bandit. A number of people unrelatedly got the idea to do it at the same time. The dingdongs just look too different.
There was a ‘DingDong the Witch is Dead’ sale at the stencil booth.
It was, however, premature, as Ruth did in fact come back out of her room eventually.
Yup. My money would be on that too. Some girls saw what was happening at Joyce’s door and got the idea to troll their friends. In the mornign they were surprised to learn somebody did it on all other doors.
A number of people independently chose to use permanent, rather than erasable markers, when all the whiteboards would have had erasable markers next to them?
That is highly improbable.
Hmm. Mary is an Art major too; that would also explain why she didn’t go for just one style of dick pic. Totally possible!
It is strange that Mary is an art major. I bet she’d throw things at the art model for being nude and immoral.
Actually, I read Mary as being more of the type of art student that thinks their style of drawing is absolutely amazing and is insulted by the idea that she should branch out and work in different styles and media.
Or maybe I just had too many of those types in my art classes in college.
That’s… unfortunate that someone would refuse to branch out. Other styles and media are fun!
She’s going to get a rude wake-up call.
Unfortunately she’s the kind of person who will just keep hitting the snooze button forever.
It’s also very Mary to commit a crime and yet still be completely convinced that she is innocent of any wrongdoing.
She only – I mean, SOMEONE only did it to force Ruth to either act like an R.A. should (again, like Mary, of course), or by failing to do so, reveal her unfitness for the position.
Mary, when you smile you’re sort of adorable.
Yeah, she should stop that…it creeps me out!!!
…Mary is somehow related to Sydney Yus, isn’t she. Just read her dialogue in that tone.
Is this my new favorite strip? This might be my new favorite strip.
it wasn’t back when Dan imagined the kiss?
Did Mary call Ruth a conga? Wow. That is really Christian of her! hahaha
Seeing as there are only two hyphens after the letter c I’m going to guess Mary was going to saw cow, because a Christian would never utter such vulgar language.
You don’t know many Christians do you.
Nope. Just trying to put up a case in the purpose of self interest.
I don’t think the hyphens are substitutes for letters here; she’s talking, not typing; she was just cut off abruptly. I don’t think the number of hyphens here indicate how many letters were left out at the end of that sente–
(Huh. That was two hyphens; when I posted it it converted it to an em-dash. Anyways, two hyphens are an accepted alternative to an em-dash.)
Fundie Christians with anger issues will use any tactic to wound others.
Pot(Mary), meet Kettle(Ruth). Pot calls Kettle a conga, Kettle slaps Pot and the fandom rejoiced.
Isn’t that dick on the wrong side of her face?
I was just about to say that. Since she’s drawing on her right hand, the slap “should” be on the other side of her face… unless she somehow got her from behind?
If you’re facing someone, you can slap either side of their face with either hand. The actual problem is the orientation of the mark, not it’s placement.
Maybe in the last panel we’re seeing her reflection in a mirror.
I can see Willis wanting to do this strip for a loooong time xD
I am sad that this is going to come back to haunt Ruth (how can it not??), because it is such a perfect response to Mary’s unreasonableness. (Other than being violent, that is!)
What is Ruth supposed to do? “Well, better skip my classes so I can stand here in the hall and bring the bandit to justice with nothing but the force of my pure outrage…”???
Someone sure thinks she’s the boss of people.
Well, Ruth is the people’s champion.
Ruth is secretly Dwayne Johnson?
Secretely?
“Don’t step into the pimped out fridge, Jack..”
Mary was being a bongo, but Ruth is also a terrible, terrible RA. I can see why her students would be frustrated with her. I don’t think she’d last very long at a real university before getting fired
You would be surprised. I’ve seen some shitty RAs with even worse behavior get away with shit.
Her superiors seem to think she’s doing a good job, or at least they did before Billie’s false fire alarm. And then there’s this going for her.
It bothers me that the handprint is backwards.
Why wouldn’t Ruth slap with her dominant hand?
Tinfoil, because Ruth is left handed, she drew the penis on her right hand, not her left.
Willis said up-thread that basically it had to happen that way because Ruth is left-handed, because we need to see at least most of Mary’s face as she’s leaving, and if Mary and left by going to the right of the panel, rather than the left, it would read like she was walking toward Ruth and/or just generally be confusing.
I figure it came down to either 1) Have Ruth write/draw with her right hand this one time or 2) have the hand print and dick drawing be on the wrong side of Mary’s face.
Since being left-handed is actually a pretty major character trait for Ruth, maybe on par with her red hair, and that it had been mentioned earlier in this storyline that any left-handed persons couldn’t be the ding-dong bandit, it makes sense that Willis would go with Option #2.
Well, she had to DRAW the dick with her dominant hand.
That is no reason why she couldn’t slap with her left hand also, and then the hand print matches.
And then drawn a dick on the imprint her hand left. Notice how it goes from left to right.
Man, Mary’s gonna find out about her and Billie and makes a thing out of it, isn’t she? And you know she’s going to be a huge bigot about it being same-sex.
Ruth is the most unrealistic thing about DoA. And yes, including AmaziGirl. I can’t imagine not one girl from as way back as *orientation day* didn’t complain to someone about her CRAZY THREATS OF VIOLENCE.
Well according to Ruth, the administration approves of her methods as long as they get results.
also when billie mentioned it to daisy she didn’t believe her at all, calling it revenge fanfic iirc. the way i figure, between girls who don’t care about her method, girls who don’t really get her method at all, girls who are intimidated by her method, girls who figure it’s normal and a good way to go about managing a dorm wing, girls who don’t think complaining would be worth the trouble, girls who mention it not toadministration and get dismissed… like the ones who do complain about it could be few enough for higher ups to think it’s a particular problem rather than bad method, or not something big enough to get Ruth out of the program, considering that nobody else is complaining. Or something like that anyway idk
“…Cow!”. I choose to believe she was about to say “Cow”. XD
I love how Mary focused on the “nothing” in Ruth’s response and completely disregarded the “right now” part which implied that Ruth will be doing something at some point. She just zeroed in on whatever vindicates her negative expectations without any expectation of Ruth ever redeeming herself in Mary’s eyes (which is probably impossible, as hatefilled as Mary appears to be.)
I’m sure Ruth has something in mind for the whiteboard issue, and she will see to it in the fullness of time. It’s not like RAs aren’t students, too.
Yeah, I was surprised that nobody else in the comments section so far seemed to have caught the “right now” part of Ruth’s statement. Or if they did, they didn’t feel it was worth noting.
I didn’t notice she was smiling until the alt text told me so.
Well, realistically this would get Ruth in so much goddamn trouble. But as a gag it is hilarious! 😀
In a liberal arts school? Not really, especially when they obviously sanction her methods. I mean not all do it but a few do
And now Ruth is my goddamned hero. One fell swoop. Heh.
*Fistbump*
Somehow I never recognized Mary before. Looking through the archives with her tag, she’s really irritating in the dumbiverse. Much more so than she was in Roomies.
I like Ruth in strips where there is no hint of her duties as an RA, but then when I see strips like this… I just can’t stand people who abuse their power. If you can’t handle power, don’t take a position of power. Ruth has obviously had a shit life. That doesn’t mean it’s OK for her to go around abusing her position whenever she feels like it. Lucky for her that Billie ended up falling in love with her so all’s forgiven (plus Billie ended up being crappy back to her, but NOT from a position of power), but I still haven’t forgotten that she’s a bully, a thief, and incompetent at her job. I hope she deservedly loses her position so I can just enjoy the rest of her character and watch her develop as a person without hating her. And I don’t even like Mary. I just hate people who take advantage of what they can get away with.
Yeah, both she and Mike press my buttons… in a way that Mike doesn’t over on Shortpacked. I think it’s because, while this is a comic strip, it’s more grounded than the other. It’s not that someone pulled a “drama tag” accidentally releasing the drama, but that this started out with the kind of grounding that wouldn’t randomly have an Ultracar character.
In a “real world” kind of setting, Ruth isn’t acceptable and Mike is a serious threat.
Yeah, Mike is a little weirder to get now since he is just a “normal” 18-year-old, not a real-life troll with basically magical abilities. Overall, DoA is just more grounded, which is great! It deals with a lot of real-life issues, which I love. I’m just still waiting for the payoff with Ruth’s RA business. I get that she tried to redeem herself by getting Billie another cheerleading outfit, but it’s like… oh, thanks for replacing the outfit YOU stole (through the keys you have to everyone’s rooms, what a responsible person you are) AND cut up with ANOTHER stolen outfit, awesome. Most everything else has consequences in DoA, so I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop here. And then she wants to talk about consequences of actions with Billie – oh, please. Don’t make me laugh.
I’m relieved to see other people react negatively to the sickening way Ruth abuses power… Maybe I’m just taking the comic too seriously, and of course some if the abuse is recognized, since the unhealthy element was an essential characteristic of her relationship with Billie, but still: so many people cheer her on when she gets oppressive, it’s a little scary. Sure, Mary is HORID, but her lack of authority (and I’m guessing, friends) makes her less of a threat I guess
It started out funny with her forcing everyone to attend the RA meeting, but I assumed she would still be fulfilling her responsiblities, albeit in a gruff manner. Nope, she just doesn’t do her job, except when she has a chance to a) talk down to people or b) beat someone up. If she just didn’t have her job, none of this would be even half as irritating, or really even bothersome to me. Beat people up and call them fatties on your own time, Ruth, not when you are the one being paid to take care of them.
I’m glad I’m not the only person who can’t stand how Ruth abuses her power.
a) ruth could get in really serious trouble
b) GO RUTH, YOU RULE, THIS IS SO SATISFYING
c) will mary ever get characterization beyond asshole? if she doesn’t, that’s ok I guess! but she’s got her own flaws that look good all splayed out, just like the rest of ’em
I do not ever endorse physical violence in normal circumstances, but JFC, no one needed to be slapped more than this girl. (That said, bad Ruth, no.)
That said, Ruth’s position as Mary’s RA makes this very bad, and an abuse of power. Which is bad. Very bad, and not okay.
calling it male anatomy is pretty cissexist, js. i get that it’s the character doing it, not the author, but it would be nice if it was called out or something to show that the author doesn’t agree. what ruth is doing is really gross as well, but it seems like she’s getting called out for it… someone in a position of power shouldn’t be abusing those she has power over.
So, I’ll be honest, This is the first time I’ve tried to comment on any of this but… Whoa, Calm down. Cissexist? A Ding Dong is a piece of Male Anatomy. It is a Sexual organ, belonging to the Male Sex. This isn’t about Gender. 😐
yeah, no, sex is a social construct
Except if you read the Dictionary, where it is now established that Sex “tends to be used to refer to the biological differences.” Sex is about Biology. Gender is about identity. I don’t get how someone’s Sex is a social construct. Society didn’t make my Dingdong. But by the same token, My Dingdong doesn’t make me a male, it’s simply a Male characteristic.
did you even read the link?
a penis is only male if it belongs to a male person
Uh, Tumblr is not a valid ‘source’ to prove your argument valid. I’m sorry, Tumblr is awesome, and a great place to voice opinions, but It’s not something you list as a source. Sex is not a social construct. Sex is Biology. A Penis is a male characteristic. Can it appear on those who identify as female? Yes. Those people generally go through unfortunately barbaric and invasive surgery to remove that reminder of nature’s mistake.
By saying a penis is only male if it’s on a male, you’re basically saying Transwomen should just close their eyes and focus really hard, and then their penis won’t be an oppressive mistake forced upon them by biology, it’ll be a female penis? I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore without just, flooding everything here. I’m going to focus on the Funny and enjoy the comic that I deeply enjoy.
this person on tumblr is explaining why “biological sex” is a flawed concept, referring to phenomena that all exists and is commonly known
here are links for each of the things they mention:
enlarged clitorises
micropenises
internalized testicles
vaginal agenesis
cisgender XX males
cisgender XY females
I’m not saying trans women (with a space) just have to get over their dysphoria, but not all trans women even HAVE dysphoria, because penises are not inherently masculine
are you a trans woman? bc if not, i do not see how you are in any position to comment on trans women’s bodies. you don’t get to decide what is or isn’t an “oppressive mistake forced on” anyone but yourself.
also, it’s nice that you acknowledge the existence of intersex folks, but you seem not to realize just how common it is for chromosomes, hormones and anatomical features to not match up with the perceived sexual binary. what i’m saying is, gender is a social construct, “biological sex” is way more complicated than you know, and you have no right to designate maleness or femaleness to anything that doesn’t personally belong to you.
The way I see it…biological sex is completely irrelevant to anything that doesn’t involve a doctor’s visit. The only thing that matters in everyday life is gender presentation, regardless of what parts someone has or used to have.
Also, this whole “not all trans people have dysphoria” needs to stop. Sure, “dysphoria” might mean any number of things, not all of which are physical (mine was mostly the “emotional fog” type, which cleared up completely after a week of more spiro than I should’ve been on), but the bare-minimum requirement to be trans is to have some kind of dysphoria.
nope
the bare minimum to be trans is to identify as trans (i.e. a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth)
it’s true that many trans women have surgery if they have a penis, but that does not mean that a penis is a male characteristic. many trans women have dysphoria related to their genitals, but there are trans women who experience dysphoria only in regards to their chests, and still others that experience no dysphoria at all. additionally, as “blegh” pointed out, many trans women DON’T see their genitalia as a “mistake,” and that’s a completely personal decision. additionally, trans women who experience dysphoria with regard to their genitalia but cannot have surgery are harmed by the idea that penises are male genitalia.
Ok, really ignorant cis-person here, but eager to learn (also, not native English speaker): I used to share this belief that gender refers to the sexual construct, and sex to the physical “underpinnings” (sorry for the terrible formulation), and is not necessarily binary, as Kerry importantly pointed out. Though the associations between gender and sex are clearly a social construct, and rigid categories of sex are constructed as well, they might still be helpful to designate phenotypes if not genotypes? My stupid question is the following:why retain the distinction between sex and gender if in the end gender alone should decide of what we name these parts? Or am I missing something important? I really hope my question is not offensive
there is no reason to call a penis “male” or a vagina “female”
labeling bodies “male” and “female” doesn’t actually tell you that much about an individual’s body, especially if said individual is trans
what about trans women with breasts and penises, who are taking estrogen?
what about intersex people who can have all KINDS of bodies that are not accurately summed up with the blanket term “intersex”?
pretty much, there’s too much variation among humans for sexual dimorphism to make sense, so there’s no real point in gendering anatomy
I can’t help wondering how well an ebook on Amazon would sell with the title “The Female Penis” Then fill it up with a mixture of quotes from dry academic papers on gender and whatever the Japanese call their dual-gender art-porn as rendered by the $5. per job people.
Yes, I’m probably misusing gender in that last comment, but you know what I mean.
“…Transwomen should just close their eyes and focus really hard, and then their penis won’t be an oppressive mistake forced upon them by biology, it’ll be a female penis? I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore …”
Krey, may I quote you in my theoretically forthcoming ebook?
i love it when ppl use the dictionary in defense of their shitty offensive arguments. i call on the power of the dictionary, infallible sayer of truths, last resort of the desperately ignorant!
Words mean whatever I use them to mean. Am I right, fellow critogens?
oh, yes, lemme just ask some old cis white linguists how i should feel about my body in relation to my gender identity, they know the True Meaning of words deep in their hearts
The dictionary, like The Bible, is written by fallible, biased people.
Well, yes, but was it then mistranslated by fallible biased people under biased divine guidance to come out right?
And I can edit it to replace “it” with “the dictionary.”
Nor can I replace can with can’t. Maybe I better quit while behind.
I understood you the first time. 🙂
I totally get you here
it bothered me too
I’m just not sure ruth would be the one to say it
like, I could see roz, or jocelyne, or carla calling her out for it, but… yeah, it’s annoying
yeah, i agree, but what put me off most is that the title was “male anatomy,” which indicates that willis thought there was nothing wrong with mary’s phrasing :T
yeah, good point
I hope willis says something about it
He also named a book ‘The Cragged Shame-Pits of the Lustwolves,’ people…
The “title” for comics has traditionally been a word or phrase in the strip itself that serves as a shorthand for its contents and a “spoiler” to append to the comic’s filename to prevent people from just casually browsing through the buffer by manually changing the image location URL.
This one is about Mary and her “male anatomy” “”concerns””. I don’t think it’s meant to be at all indicative of Willis’s own beliefs any mor e than Mary herself is.
seconded! the occasional cissexist bullshit in here is pretty discomfiting
Does it need to be said that the author disagrees with how Mary refers to a penis? Besides which, I have confidence that he wouldn’t agree with any view that would offend LGBTQA+ people. Willis is cool like that. 🙂
Well, let me clarify, for it looks like I’m belittling the issue: Does it need to be said that the author disagrees with cissexist statements?
yeah, it really does need to be said, because people like Krey will pretend that it’s not cissexist unless it’s explicitly stated that it is. it’s not actually all that difficult to take out cissexist statements if one disagrees with them, but if willis explicitly stated that this was cissexist and not cool… then it would be harder for people to argue against that while consuming his creation
If you think me trying to “lay down the law” concerning what is wrong about what my characters are doing is going to affect anybody who already disagrees with me, pardon my irreverence, but you are super new here aintcha. Talking specifically and out-of-universe about Sal’s race issues just made dissenters louder and more obnoxious. Just on yesterday’s page, I clarified for the thirteen billionth time that Dorothy did not break up with Danny just so she could concentrate on her studies. It won’t be the last. I still get Tumblr asks about how I’m only continuing to make comics about Sal and her parents to “artificially cram” the issue into the narrative in response to specific people, and therefore it’s a storyline that can’t be taken at face value and is full of lies.
I can’t make anybody do anything. It will not make people argue less. It will embolden jerks and frustrate me.
Let me give another perspective: Annotating Roomies! for two years was exhausting. There is so much problematic in it, and I became increasingly neurotic about attempting to point out each and every single terrible thing suggested in it. I’ve got sixty thousand pairs of eyes on me every night, and there are so many ways to fail any percentage of them. It’s overwhelming. I lost sleep, thinking I might have missed something, and that in the morning I’d get up to angry emails from folks who were concerned that I hadn’t called something out specifically as being wrong. If you lampshade everything that you think is wrong in a work, then isn’t not lampshading something an implicit endorsement?
But you know what, screw that. I can’t live that way. Sometimes my characters will say awful things. They are fictional characters, with flaws. And I will not point it out every single time. I will not.
Especially when it’s Mary. That’d just be exhausting.
That said, I thought you folks here were handling it better than I would have anyway. This is not actually a topic I know well enough to provide links and explanations. I have tried, actually, to point out similar things on other boards when people said things I thought were cissexist, but ended up getting properly shut down by an actual transgender person who I can’t rightfully argue with. Subsequently, I don’t have a lot of confidence in this subject, so godspeed to you folks.
Willis, you are a gift.
thank you, willis
Thank you, Willis, for this wonderful comic. Even if all your characters are horrible and/or have horrible parents. 😛 I have literally recommended this to all of my friends.
(The reading your comic, not the being horrible or having horrible parents)
aight, i get what you’re saying, but u need to understand that using casually cissexist and ableist language in a work of fiction without specifically calling attention to it within that work always does and always will serve to perpetuate the cissexims and ableism that are so prevalent in our culture. these things are used casually for a reason; it’s bc they’re perceived as normal, and most ppl aren’t even aware of their meaning or consequence. they do it without even noticing. things like using words like ‘dumb’, ‘idiot’, ‘crazy’, referring to a penis as ‘male anatomy’ etc.
you don’t need to be able to win internet arguments about this shit. u just need to listen to ppl who know what they’re talking about, as it seems u have, and address these things within the narrative, however briefly. lemme just tell u that your handling of sal’s character wrt being mixed resonated with me very deeply and i appreciate you greatly for that. you don’t need to give any lectures or explain anything in great depth. again, you just need to address it within the narrative. call attention to the issue, and that’ll be enough.
it won’t change everyone’s mind; it probably won’t change most ppl’s. but it might make some think, and it’d certainly make me personally a lot more comfortable as a fan of this comic.
that makes sense. i understand where you’re coming from. i’m not trying to say that you need to “lay down the law.” i was just saying that it would be harder to argue, but evidently it doesn’t make all that much of a difference, and you’d know more about that than i would, of course. as i stated in another comment (which you may or may not have read; i don’t expect you to read all of the comments), the most jarring part was that you used the cissexist phrase as the title of the strip. that, more than anything, seemed like you thought that that phrase was acceptable, rather than harmful. i probably wouldn’t have been so put off if the strip was titled, i dunno, “An Outrage.” just a thought.
Call me crazy, but can the terms ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ not have two definitions? If you’re a doctor preparing perform surgery on someone’s genetalia, no damns should be given about how they identify, you need to know if they’ve got a ding-dong or a vee-vee. If we’re not allowed to use the terms for biology, then what terms are appropriate?
“person with a penis” and “person with a vagina”
We’ve established that Mary is uncomfortable saying ‘Penis’ and besides, there are other differences between biological gender.
You can make up new terms, but for the duration of the English language, ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ have referred to the shape of a persons funny bits and some other various biological differences. Adding an alternate definition to a word and then acting offended when people use the traditional definition is simply seeking out ways to be offended.
I definitely know that transgender individuals face a lot of bigotry and cissexism, but this seems awfully pedantic to me. One needs to pick their battles, (Advice I should probably take myself…), and accusing people of cissexism or bigotry because they use a traditional definition of the word is not a battle to be fought.
the fact that “male” and “female” encompass various definitions outside of “has a penis” and “has a vagina” are the very reasons why they are inefficient as medical terms
as I asked above, what about trans women who take estrogen and have boobs, but have kept their penises?
what about trans people who don’t get surgery, but take hormones?
what about intersex people, all of whom are extremely varied in ways that make it completely disingenuous to slap one broad label on them?
do we just ignore them?
do we neglect to care for their health properly because they don’t fit our rigid societal definitions of what “male” and “female” look like?
Back to my original point though, WORDS CAN HAVE MULTIPLE DEFINITIONS. In this case, ‘Male’ refers to a biological form which human beings can take. The only way it is offensive is if you intentionally misinterpret her meaning or else ignore the intended definition.
I’ll agree that we don’t have enough words to define gender (Biological and psychological) properly, but what we do have is a pair of words (Male and Female) which encompass a wide array of definitions. If you’re going to argue that Male and Female should exclusively be used to describe indentified gender, then… Well… I guess you’d better write a letter to Webster and ask them to please remove a bunch of definitions so that your offense can be justified when people use the term ‘Male’ to mean ‘Person with an X and Y chromosome.’
Sorry if this comes out as condescending, but the idea that I’m not allowed to use a medical term to describe a body part without offending someone is ludicrous to me.
I’m going to link this again for you, since you clearly haven’t read the other comments
I already read that and find that argument to be bullshit for various reasons, but I’m tired and need to get some sleep so I’ll keep things short:
First, biological, binary gender HAS to exist, because otherwise our species would either reproduce asexually or cease to exist. Neither has happened to my knowledge. If you can’t be a part of the baby-making process, you’re out of the gene pool.
Surgical alterations should not be included in a discussion about what constitutes as biological gender, because it still doesn’t change genetics, nor does it change what I’ll call your ‘Factory setting.’ You were still BORN with biological gender.
There are, of course, exceptions. Certain birth defects can cause people to be born without one gender or another. However, saying that I can’t use Male or Female to describe people genetically because there are exceptions is like saying I can’t call something a Car or a Boat because there are other modes of transportation. You don’t get rid of all terms because you have something different, you MAKE UP A NEW WORD.
Lastly… Let’s consider, for the sake of metaphor, Ibuprofin. (I may have spelled that wrong.) It can be used to treat various symptoms and illnesses, but in 999 cases out of 1000 it is used for headaches.
Now let’s say I’m religiously bound never to say the word Ibuprofin, or it at least makes me uncomfortable.
Can I call it ‘Headache Medicine?’ Or, because there is that one case in a thousand where the term doesn’t apply, do I have to call it Ibuprofin? If I say ‘Headache Medicine’ and point at a bottle of Ibuprofin, everyone will know what I’m talking about. There’s no loss ofclarity. So am I allowed to use the defining trait of an object to define something?
I can’t edit, apparently, but I’d like to add:
Oops, I didn’t keep that short. Oh well.
Also, biological gender isn’t a social construct any more than having hands is a social construct. Sexual identity is a social construct. Biological gender cannot be, because it developed/s before and outside of society.
what the hell does “factory settings” mean in this context?
what do you need to be qualified as male?
what do you need to be qualified as female?
if a person doesn’t meet these qualifications, are they not male/female?
how is it useful from a medical standpoint to know what somebody’s assigned gender is, especially if they’re trans? how is it less efficient to just refer to specific body parts as is necessary?
Factory settings: How you were originally built. What you were born as.
What do you need to be qualified as female? Or male? As a general rule, though, no matter what I say you’ll come up with a contradiction or exception, so I’ll say this: Males and Females tend towards two various sets of traits. However, the defining factor is either the ability to make babies or the ability to fertilize those who make babies. At it’s core, that is what biological gender is. If you have some condition or defect rendering you exempt from these, you’ll still usually have all the right parts.
If a person doesn’t have any defining traits, though, or has a conflicting set, then no, they aren’t biologically male or female. Fortunately though, there is a word for that! Hermaphrodite covers those with male and female parts, I can’t recall what other terms may exist but I know there are other terms. So no, you aren’t male or female, but that doesn’t mean you’re excluded because IT’S NOT A BINARY SYSTEM.
Lastly, why is it important? Because science! Male and female bodies tend towards different conditions. Women get breast cancer more often. Men have heart conditions more frequently. Gender is important from a medical standpoint because it gives information from which you can make a diagnosis. Furthermore, if (for example) a man who identifies as female comes in with vague symptoms, knowing his biological gender will help rule out certain problems. It’s likely not ovarian cancer, it might be a hormonal imbalance… If the doctor has to test for each problem individually, running scans for organs that don’t exist, that’s an issue. As for those who undergo surgery, that’s why we keep medical records.
Call it whatever you like, there are two sets of person-types in the world who have certain sets of physical traits. There are exceptions, as you will find in any set of 6 Billion things, but those two sets exist and you simply can’t pretend they don’t by citing the one-in-a-million cases which we also have words for.
there are no such thing as human hermaphrodites – they’re called intersex
so the people who are actively harmed by the perpetuation of the binary system (mainly intersex and trans people) should just be neglected? only dyadic cis people matter?
and what about people who have medically transitioned in some way, and as such, are more at risk for one thing or another?
what about treating people as individuals instead of lazily making generalizations about how their body works based on their assigned sex?
btw, another way to tell if a person is at risk for ovarian cancer is ASKING THEM IF THEY HAVE OVARIES
like, you realize there are cis women without ovaries, right?
It’s clear that we’re both just restating our opinions and disagreeing here, so I’ll close my argument with this:
People should be able to speak freely and with plain speech without worrying about offending someone.
Furthermore, your insistence that use of the word ‘Male’ in this context on applies due to connotations thay almost nobody intends or considers. You’re expencting billions of people to adopt a new meaning to a word (And then invent two new words) because your definition implies offense. You’re asking the world to change to accomidate words that you’ve added meaning to, instead of using other words yourself and not assuming that everyone is against you because they don’t use your dictionary.
In other words, stop assuming that everyone else is being an asshole because they talk like everyone in the world does.
That is all.
“People should be able to speak freely and with plain speech without worrying about offending someone.”
…what…
maybe you should try saying things that don’t hurt people and contribute to their stigmatization (which leads to, you know, DEATH in many cases – on average, a person has a 1 in 18,989 chance of being murdered, but a trans person has a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered… so…) instead of advocating for everyone being able to say whatever they want even if it hurts people.
I’m sorry, what? I’ve mentioned several times that I recognize Transphobia is a real issue, and I’m debating this point alone because it’s so incredibly petty. I’m not advocating hate-speech, I’m saying that you should be able to use the words ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ without requiring a thesaurus and a ten-minute clarification.
If you want to deal with Transphobia, there are many things you can do. Spread awareness of issues, run campaigns, volunteer at shelters. But when you attack someone over tiny and petty issues in terminology and speech you’re not getting anywhere. I’ve also stated that I believe we should have more numerous and specific terms for different genders, but this won’t be accomplished by forbidding people from using the words we already have. You can’t have progress in identifying different types of sexuality and gender identity by telling other people they can’t refer to things by their gender.
Can I bring up Star Wars? I’m gonna bring up Star Wars. In episode 6, The Emperor refers to a Lightsaber as a ‘Jedi Weapon’. Now, there are Jedi who don’t use Lightsabers. Very obviously there are Sith who DO us Lightsabers. But when he called it a ‘Jedi Weapon’ everyone knew exactly what he meant: It was a weapon commonly used by Jedi, and only seldom found elsewhere. He obviously didn’t mean it was 100% exclusive, seeing as his right-hand man was a Sith with a Lightsaber.
Now replace ‘Jedi Weapon’ with ‘Male Anatomy’ and ‘Emperor’ with ‘Mary.’
It’s worth noting that I identify as primarily asexual. I have a sex drive and I do seek romantic involvement, but the two don’t meet. I’ve yet to meet or see a person who I consider ‘sexy.’ To me, the entire ordeal of fleshy bits squishing together is just a little gross, so I consider the whole thing to be a purely biological imperative which, by nescessity, society has deemed immensely important to your identity. It’s not super relevant, but might help with understanding my perspective on this.
yes, words are clearly harmless
that’s why it’s okay to use “gay” as a pejorative
language is a tool created by humans to understand the world
we build associations and socialize people with language
all in all, language is freaking important
when people misgender me, I correct them, and if they’re decent, they take it gracefully
letting people be lazy about it only solidifies whatever preconceptions they already have and hurts those most vulnerable among us as a result
You mistake my meaning.
Nobody is misgendering you here. I don’t know what you prefer to be called, but you’re not being mislabeled either way.
As for words being ‘Harmless’, I appreciate the sarcasm, but my point was that *You’re applying negative connotation and offense to a word that doesn’t have any.* I wasn’t particularly clear on the subject, but what I meant was something more along these lines: People should be able to speak without fear of being attacked/accused of anything, unless they’re actually trying to be offensive.
Unlike your example of calling something ‘Gay’, there’s no harm intended in using the word ‘Male’ to refer to something commonly found in a biological Male body. As opposed to taking offense over someone using your sexual identity as a negative, you’re taking offense because someone didn’t refer to your gender identoty at all. Nowhere is it implied here that penises are *exclusively* Male, it’s only brought up that they’re *usually* male. See my Star Wars comment. You’re not asking people not to use your identity as an insult, you’re asking people to make sure to acknowlege you every time a flippant comment is made about dongs. You’re asking for attention and getting mad because it’s not being given.
I know there’s a lot of Transphobia, cisexism, and general crap that your community has to deal with. That sucks. This is not any of that, this is an awkwardly used bowlderization for someone who’s to uncomfortable to say Penis, and this is you assuming that it’s meant to be an insult for no other reason than they aren’t talking about you.
mary using that term in that way is more indicative of her ignorance than her actively trying to be cissexist, but that still doesn’t justify it
if I step on your foot, I don’t have to do it on purpose for it to hurt you
it’d be really nice if willis had someone else address gendering genitals in the comic at some point, like leslie, or carla – it doesn’t have to be right now, but when this was first posted, some of us were unsure whether or not willis endorsed this mindset
That’s the thing, though: Nobody has stepped on your foot! Mary may be an incredible bongo, but her comment was in no way marginalizing of transsexuals or those with atypical biology. The Penis is an organ typically, but not exclusively and not always, found on biological males. Mary is apparently uncomfortable saying penis, so she used this fact to comment on the drawings without saying the actual word. She didn’t say ‘Exclusively Male organ.’ Do I need to bring up the Star Wars metaphor again? It’s not an exclusive statement, nor a completely inclusive statement that has absolutely nothing to do with transsexualism, sexual or gender identity, or anything else similar.
If I refer to a Cross as a ‘Christian symbol’, I’m not saying that the shape of the cross doesn’t have other meanings, nor that it’s exclusively used by Christians, I’m saying that it is commonly associated with Christian imagery because it is prevalent. I won’t, however, take the effort to say ‘Christian symbol, with roots in Roman history and their preferred execution method, as well as a mere marking of two lines perpendicular to each other.’ Why? Because it’s ludicrous, unnecessary, and everyone already knows what I’m talking about. They know that I’m not stating this to exclude other uses, I’m simply talking about it in relation to one common comparison. If anyone thinks that my statement is intentionally snubbing all other uses and history of a Cross, then they are very clearly misinterpreting my meaning, which is not my fault.
This isn’t someone stepping on your foot on purpose. This isn’t someone stepping on your foot on accident. This is you, seeing someone walking, and jamming your foot underneath theirs so that you can yell at them for it.
since you are unwilling to accept the idea that cisnormativity is toxic and just reinforces the gender binary, which harms trans and intersex people, I’m done talking to you
I don’t believe I’ve ever said that cisnormativity should be condoned. I completely agree that it’s terrible.
My point here is that THIS IS NOT CISNORMATIVITY. This is someone referring to one type of biological gender, and using a common trait of that gender as a point of reference. Never in the comic, hovertext, or description anywhere does anyone say something about penises being exclusively Male. Never does anyone say that Penises SHOULD be exclusively Male. Never does anyone say that only Males have Penises.
But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and dismiss me as cissexist and unwilling to accept something which I have already said I do accept and agree with. This will certainly simplify things for you, after all, and it makes it much easier to ignore my argument.
Someone can be legally female and still have a penis if they were born in one of several states (fuck yeah, Illinois!)…if someone’s wearing feminine clothing with a feminine hairstyle, they’re female unless they tell you differently.
nah though, if someone’s female, they’re female. gender expression is different than gender identity. wearing “feminine” clothing doesn’t mean that someone’s female. if you HAVE to assume gender, i guess they’re a pretty good indicator, but i usually prefer to ask or wait until someone else refers to them by pronouns or nouns that indicate their gender.
i usually introduce myself with pronouns (“Hey! I’m [name] and I use [subject/object] pronouns! It’s nice to meet you.”) if i’m somewhere i think is safe (or online) even though i’m cis and pretty obviously female, because it’s good to set that precedent, in my opinion.
Call me crazy, but can the terms ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ not have two definitions?
Crazy, if it is still an issue, why not use `masculine’ and `feminine’ where it’s gender, not sex?
TBH, I don’t think many characters in the comic would get this right unless it was pointed out to them at Leslie’s gender studies class. Carla, of course. Roz, maybe. Dorothy would strive to be mindful of it once she understood it. But these kids are just 18 years old & not well-versed in gender stuff.
oh yeah, I could see leslie being cool about it too
I’d think that trans issues would be brought up in a gender studies class, so I hope it’s at least touched on by her
i’m 18 too, though, and most of my friends get called out about this (by myself or other friends) if they’re being shitty. i also know some pretty awful people who are still educated on trans issues (and aren’t bigots in general)! also, some trans people who are assholes. like, just because ruth’s a jerk doesn’t mean she’s not gonna know about trans issues, you know what i mean? she could be a trans girl. who knows. the only characters whose genitalia are canon are dorothy and walky, right? (i didn’t read the “walky performs a sex” comic, so i’m not sure about that.)
…granted, i live in seattle, so maybe we’re more open than in indiana? i don’t know, i’ve never lived anywhere else since i was a year old.
but yeah, here’s hoping leslie addresses it (off-panel, probably).
/gasp
I live in bellevue!
i live two miles away from bellevue! 😮
Yesssssssssss.
yeah, smug grin makes me think mary’s the one who did it
All other rudeness aside who the hell just calls their RA “RA?” Like I’m sure she knows her name. I’ve had 3 RAs and I called them all by their first name.
I read it as Mary reminding Ruth to act her position.
If you wanna get biblical, requests under a covenant very frequently start the same way; effectively, “hey mighty ruler, here is our established relationship” and THEN asking for things. So it makes sense for prayer-soaked Mary to think in that order.
I’m sure that’s not the only time a penis has been on her face
I am ashamed to say that I look very similar to Mary though i’m jewish and hopefully not as much of a bongo (or b-word if you prefer) Does this count as Mary losing her virginity? Or did she lose that already?
Mary has a rotten character, but she looks very cute when she’s not m̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶t̶c̶h̶f̶a̶c̶e̶ projecting negative emotions. So I don’t think you have to feel ashamed.
…I do not like Mary.
I’d be surprised if anyone does!
What no tag for Leslie the Lesbian (I just love Robin in shortpack’s nickname). That looks very much like her in the last panel.
Also.
Damn good job Ruth. I kinda hope that Mary gets pissed at billy with that on her face and Billy just adds one to the other side.
it’s agatha
Leslie is in this universe. But the girl in the last panel of today’s page is not her.
And that, is how you can get cockslapped by a lesbian.
ruth is bi…
and what does being a lesbian have to do with anything…?
Lesbians make everything better.
Mary, if you can’t even say penis, you don’t get to use the C-word.
This comic makes me so happy for reasons i can’t adequately describe.
Shouldn’t she have drawn it in her left hand to get that slap pattern?
Dude…or dudette, Ruth can defy logic whenever she wants…as long as the logic defying action happens to be an awesome one, which Ruth is in no short supply of.
She’s drawing with her left because she’s left-handed.
Dicksmack.
The five fingered dick slap.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary.
This is easily the most satisfactory palm job DoA is ever going to show us.
So THAT’S why everyone hates Mary.
One of the top ten strips in this entire comic.
whoa. such a dick move
Is that a pun? If so, I applaud you.
HA!
Look at the bright side, Mary. At least the dong isn’t releasing it’s payload.
DoA: Random acts of physical violence continue to be fine and consequence free.
-random +justified
It was totally justified the moment Mary came to use the c- word.
Mere words never justify violence.
Except maybe “I want you to use physical violence against me.”
Depends on what is spoken.
Physical violence is apparently only okay if the recipient is unpopular with the masses.
A quick read through the comments section proves this.
Yuk folks. Really nasty stuff.
DoA Ruth is simply a bully. Her idea of establishing her RA “authority” was to kidnap residents who didn’t attend her floor meeting, and then challenge anyone who’d try to a fight.
It’s a comic strip.
“It’s a comic strip” is dismissive of larger issues, such as the fact people will say Mary was asking for it [even though she WAS] and that means all violence against her is perfectly okay, like how racists “justify” murdering black kids because they had selfies of themselves flipping the bird.
That said, it is a comic strip about HAVING BAD JUDGEMENT. Saisfyingly bad judgement.
Alright, so Ruth is using her left hand to draw a dick on her right hand. Then how did Mary get slapped on the right side of her face?
Palm strike. She didn’t slap her, she put her shoulder into it. ;p
Or it’s an oversight.
You can swing your right hand left to right as easily as you can swing it right to left.
This is going to be the new “Hay did you know you can erase permanent marker with regular marker?”, isn’t it?
Can you really?
I’m pretty sure Ruth could get slapped with an assault charge for this…no pun intended.
Uh -huh.
Who needs Amazi-girl when we have RUTH AND HER PIMP HAND OF JUSTICE!
Daughter of the great and fierce Slap-A-Ho tribe, she wrecks great vengeance upon the unworthy and upon those who owe her money.
You mean pimp hand of “I’m too lazy to care”?
Totally deserved.
No I don’t care about the glare, Mary. You deserved it.
y’know…I do run adblock because ads help keep webcomics up. BUT I get really damn tired of those automatically running video ads that seem to crash every damn browser on the planet except for nutscrape.
We don’t like them either, but they keep pushing through. If you could take a screencap so we know what to go after, that’d be swell.
wow, I never considered doing that to write dongs on people’s faces.
And that’s when Ruth was fired…
ok that was hilarious
We’re all giving Mary a hard time here but let’s consider this. Ruth only slapped her because SHE could take it! It will take more than a dick slap (boy that sounds wrong) to keep Mary down. Mary’s a saint.
Of course you’d say that.
This just came to me, but what if Ruth slapped her while her back was turned? This would make the most sense or that Ruth slapped Mary so hard that the drawing showed up on the other side of her face and righted itself.
I’d buy that. I think Ruth doing some kind of roundhouse slap to get more momentum is more believable though. Or possibly slapping her hard enough that the mark and the ink went clear through her face and is on both sides, sounds about right for how hard Ruth slaps and how hard Mary needs to be slapped.
Now the questions come flooding in: “Mary did….did someone slap a dick on you?”
And of course, the answer should be: “No, I got a hand job” but I don’t think she’s keen on the humor of the situation.
fEAR THE PENIS SLAP
that is the best sentence i have read all day
Ruth is just boss.
Of course its a comic.
I’m referring to the comments sections where the opinion is generally “She deserved to have someone hit her”
I’m guessing the rationale is that nobody likes her character and therefore its okay for people to hit her.
If she was a popular character (Joyce maybe) and someone hit her, there would be cries of FOUL!
Its just an eye-opening attitude.
Hey, I come from Texas where “He needed killin” has at times been a perfectly effective legal defence.
Some people do.
I’m shocked, SHOCKED to hear that readers actually enjoy it when bad things happen to characters they don’t like!
I feel like replies aren’t going where they should.
Anyway, yes, it is a comic about HAVING BAD JUDGEMENT. Badness happening to bad people is satisfying, though, however we “should not” let it happen in real life [but because in real life, there “should not” be “villains” the way people sometimes want there to be to justify getting revenge].
Well, she was calling her the c-word in public, soooo
Mary is far too cheerful in the first scene. Calling it now, Mary is the whiteboard ding dong bandit.
Now that’s our Ruth. 🙂
Mary just went 0 to 60 in 4.5 panels!
…I think I’m the only one who focused more on the joke than the artwork…I don’t mind that the hand print is “wrong” or whatever. It’s still a funny joke. Y’all need to sit down and enjoy the comic instead of pulling your hair out over a mistake that Willis knows about, and doesn’t intend to change for logical reasons.
Not the only one. I focused more on the joke too.
I kinda sorta noticed it, but it’s like being cut off in traffic–you can either let it ruin your day, or you can realize it’s not really anything in the grand scheme of things and anyway there are better things to focus on. Like that Mary got a punishment that fits the crime =D [if on the slightly severe end]
I hope Mary has some redeeming qualities. It’s not good for someone to have that much hate in them. I have to wonder, why is she like that? The backstories are…not good.
She hasn’t really displayed any so far. In many ways, Joyce and Mary are two sides of the same fundie coin. My sister,who is like Joyce has a way of dealling with her anger. It is to wish blessings on the people she’s angry at. She figures they need all the help they can get.
Here’s a thought.
Mary goes from polite and freindly to screaming insults in less than a minute. Ruth draws a dick on her hand as an extended “talk to the hand” insult. Mary (off-screen) attacks Ruth physically. Ruth slaps Mary in self defense.
Mary obviously has rage issues, and it isn’t unheard of for someone to go from verbal to physical assault in the same encounter. Ruth has her own issues, and may be falling back on early(i.e. childhood) training on how to deal with someone like Mary.
We’ll see if there’s follow-up tomorrow, but Willis typically doesn’t leave giant off-screen holes like that, does he?
She was screaming the c-word at Ruth. That’s justification enough for Ruth to slap her
Nice :D.
How did that work?
If the fact that Ruth “let” the whiteboards get defaced when she wasn’t present is “proof of her incompetence”, then how incompetent must you be to end up with your own face defaced the same way? (And yay! I get to check off “face defaced” from my weird-phrases-I-want-to-use-someday bucket list!)
Also, oddly inappropriate smile in the first panel. Mary seems happy about the situation at first.
I’m reading that smile as a “suck up” smile and the subsequent faces as “that sucking up didn’t go the way I wanted; revert to default personality” faces. Had a boss like that.
Pro tip: if someone writes on your marker board with a permanent marker (like a sharpie) simply write over the permanent marks with a dry erase marker and wipe off the marks. Dry erase markers have a solvent in them that dissolves the permanent ink of a sharpie.
I fail to detect any measurable amounts of fecal matter, Mr. Holmes.
I am unsure of how well dry erase markers remove fecal stains. It is probably best not to allow your dry erase boards to become stained with fecal matter.
No sh–?
Um, nevermind.
My theory: Someone on the floor realizes this, but they don’t actually care all that much, and the scandal of what’s going on is far more interesting than a blank whiteboard.
Calling it now, someone in-comic will mention using dry erase markers to clean the whiteboards….and the comments will still be full of tips on how to remove permanent marker.
COCK-SLAPPED
Are we sure Mary is a fundamentalist? Is it possible she’s just really really judgmental?
What is she basing her righteous judgement on?
I FIGURED OUT THE COMPOSITION THING
Ruth DID slap her right-handed, but because it LOOKS like a left-hand imprint, NO ONE CAN PROVE SHE DID IT
ruthless INDEED
This is just like when The Phantom punches a guy and his ring leaves a skull on the guy’s face.
Ruth is The Ghost Who Walks.
This is also something similar to the Phantom. What I mean in the comic, if the Phantom shakes your hand with the skull, you’re a friend and is under his watchful eye at all times, but if he strikes you, then you’re evil and the the mark stays with you for as long as you live. While I’m sure the drawing is washable, it implication is the same.
I am kinda late to this, but how is a penis not a male sexual organ? And why calling it such would be offensive to someone?
I think you drew it on the wrong side…?
I did not notice she was smiling in the first two panels until the float text told me so.
Ruth IS incompetent, violent and random in her violence. And drinks on the job and everybody should know about it by now. She should get fired.
I know Willis said it was an acceptable loss, but I wanted to see how one could pull this off. I came up with the possibility that Ruth clapped her hands to transfer the wet ink (since drawing with her off hand may leave the shape ambiguous) and then used her main hand to whap Mary (since hitting with her off hand may leave the shape ambiguous) which makes enough sense for me to be satisfied with it
How did Ruth slap with her right hand and hit the girl on the right side of her face?
Mary has been really unpleasant..
She may not be good at diplomacy but she sure knows how to shut people up.
Do people not know that you can get rid of Permanent marker with rubbing alcohol and cloth?
oh my god this is the best anodyne