“Hillary’s Millennial supporters turn their backs on her! How she lost her key demographic.” -FreedomEagle1776 News on Facebook
Pro tip: Practice aiming the rear camera at yourself without looking at the screen. Front cameras are always lower resolution, and don’t cope with low light as well.
I was watching So You Think You Can Dance a year ago, and was wondering why when the dancer was walking by the crowd all the screaming fans were turning away from him.
It, um, took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize why.
It would be deeply ironic if Robin’s numbers skyrocket because the ‘good’ people of Bloomington thing the idea of their representative having had lesbian sex with a ‘hot blonde chick’ is a positive thing.
Yes, I am that cynical about human behaviour when dealing with large groups.
Most of the people on this comment board are fairly progressive, LGBTQ-friendly types. As such, they all need to keep one important thing in mind:
America is FAR more conservative than our experiences will tell us it is.
Progressives tend to surround themselves with progressive friends, live in progressive-friendly neighborhoods, and filter their news towards progressive topics. This means there are LARGE SWATHS of Americana (and Canadiana? Australiana? Other ‘-ana’s? Are those the right terms?) we are completely unfamiliar with. We walk blindly into elections, confident that our side will win, because everyone we know is gung-ho for it, and we’re completely poleaxed when we lose, because who would have voted against us?
The solution? We need to tear our filters down. We need to listen to the hate rhetoric the other side is spewing, even though it disgusts us. We need to understand just how strong our opponents are, if only to know how hard we need to fight them.
(Wow, that turned out long. Probably not even the best place for it. But then, what is?)
Empathic people who care about others and “filter their news” towards, actual news should listen to the people who None of the Above more? Uh, maybe people who don’t listen or learn need to do some.
And if one side isn’t willing to tear down its echo chamber and rip out its filters and stop acting like there are multiple Americas… then they can’t really ask the other side to do it.
Disclaimer: I’m not American, and therefore not strictly a ‘Democrat’. That said, I’m very left-leaning in my personal views.
We on the left DO have our own echo chamber. Everyone has their reasons for jumping into one, but if you think the right-wing doesn’t also think their echo chamber is “reality”, then frankly, you’re missing the concept. There was a video of some British guy going absolutely ballistic making the rounds after Trump got elected making some very good points about this; above all, he pointed out that the left won the culture war. No, homophobia didn’t end last year with the supreme court decision in June, just like racism is still a thing; that didn’t end in the ’60s either. But we liberals are all too comfortable (myself included) with calling nearly half of America “a basket of deplorables”.
There’s evidence of this echo chamber effect on the left. Ask most Democrats if they remember the “Delete your account” tweet, they’ll smile as they relive the assorted variations of “DAAAAAAMN, SON!” we all screamed like Clinton had just dropped the mic at a rap battle. Ask if they remember Trump’s response, they almost certainly never saw it, and probably didn’t/don’t care. But he had one: “Just like the 30,000 emails you deleted?” Sure, the national security threat was blown out of perspective, but she’s admitted that it happened, and that it was a mistake.
Again, still would’ve voted Clinton… but damn, son.
I’m not saying all opinions are created equal, I’m not saying our echo chamber is just as harmful as the one on the right, but we do ourselves no favours by hiding in it. Step out of it, SNAP out of it, and engage in the debate, because we didn’t win the culture war by simply knowing we were on the right side of history. It came from boycotting buses and the Stonewall riots and people actually communicating with the other side however they could. And sharing every #BlackLivesMatter and #ImWithHer with all your liberal friends ISN’T communicating with the other side.
You’re absolutely right that these aren’t sports teams we’re dealing with, and this is NOT A GAME. This isn’t even a culture war anymore (though it could be if we undo the progress of the last decade). This is now a crash course in advanced civics, and we have four years to pick our grades up or just keep having this conversation. America can’t get away with having an uneducated public anymore. NO nation can get away with it anymore, because the blueprint has been laid out, and to use one more tired cliché, if we don’t learn from history, we will repeat it. But this time, it won’t be centuries or decades later, it’ll be across space instead. Across borders. The demagogues and narcissists will take over, and we’ll be back to tyrants starting wars to soothe their inflated egos.
And yes, I say this as a non-American. I’m watching this from the outside. But the second you think “oh, that can’t happen here”, you’re making the same mistake. All non-Americans reading this, check your political landscape and look around. My fellow Canadians in particular, don’t be complacent because we just elected Trudeau, we’re not them; we are not the liberal haven we’d like to think. I live in a town where “Fuck Trudeau” bumper stickers are common and on my way home from work, I can see “WHITE POWER” literally etched into the sidewalk. I took pictures before the snow covered it. Google “Kevin O’Leary”, and then tell me Trump can’t happen here.
It’s one thing to say a group is deplorable – that can be (and is) true, just looking at what they’ve backed. It’s another not to engage them where you see them. Sometimes you can’t – lack of spoons, lack of time, whatever. But if you can, it can be a good thing.
No, we didn’t “win” the culture war. We’re still in the middle of it. Hell, we didn’t even “win” the racial or gender equivalents. Those are still going on too. We just lost a major battle in all of them, probably more than one.
We’ve won some battles, but the other side has retrenched and is coming back strong.
And we didn’t really win any of those battles by sitting down politely with the racists and the sexists and the homophobes and listening to all the reasons why they hated and explaining why they should stop. The battles were won with boycotts and riots and organization. By people standing up and saying “We are here and we have rights and we are not going away.” And then someone else stepping up when the first one got smashed down.
On the individual level, with friends and family you can sometimes make progress through communication. Especially with someone coming out as queer, since they knew you and liked you before then – not so much with race and gender. Even then though it’s at great risk. Lots of people have lost friends and family over it. Many suffered abuse or worse.
Perhaps “win” is a little strong… but that doesn’t change the fact that the Trump supporters are, in many people’s minds, a pack of racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted degenerates (and let’s sprinkle in some jokes about cousins in Alabama for good measure). And what’s more, this is the accepted party line from the left now. “Basket of deplorables”. As in ‘if you voted Republican, we’re allowed to say this about you’. No, racism is not over, homophobia isn’t over, misogyny is NOT OVER. Anyone who says they are is not paying attention. But short of the drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, the racists at least have to hide that or we tear them apart. And I’m glad we recognize these things for what they are now, and I’m glad bigotry has consequences. But we need to remember this:
We the commenters unleashed all manner of vitriol on Roz for this. Yes, Joyce was already coming around, I read the threads. The point is, insults are a lousy debate tool. No, we didn’t make the progress of the last fifty years with polite conversation and calm, gentle education, and I never said we did. It came from communication, or perhaps more accurately, expression. When words failed, the civil rights movement expressed its anger through actions. They got louder, and they articulated their positions in the language of fire and rage. Birmingham. Stonewall. Malcolm X.
Things are different now. You’re exactly right that we are now LOSING battles, but we are still ahead of where we were in the ’60s. Our side has real power now, even without the political power of the Obama administration. We rarely need to resort to riots anymore, and we sure as hell don’t need to resort to hurling insults. What we need is to continue engaging, in the media (not social media, in our echo chambers, going outside) and on an individual level. NOW is the time for conversation and rational debate. Like BBCC said above, it’s not always possible, it’s still not even always safe. But if we take what opportunities we have, we can finish this. Peacefully.
Three hours ago, I had a friend (trans) tell me about the time he tried to kill himself. I would have been almost the last person he spoke to. I had done everything I could. And this feeling is familiar now. Every time I hear the old lines (‘love the sinner, hate the sin’, ‘pray for them to change’, ‘it’s a choice, they can live differently’), I have to step away and breathe before I tear into them and their worldview. I’ve learned that you can’t smash through the bubble from the outside; you have to be let in first and disrupt the echoes there. Any time I’ve ever seen someone come around on things like this, it has been from inside the bubble. So engage, personally, and teach them how to break out.
The left does not have a monopoly on truth, and the right does not have a monopoly on propaganda/lies/”fake news”. Anyone presenting the news to you has an agenda of some sort–it is important to keep this in mind when considering the “official story,” no matter who it comes from. There is no genuinely neutral, objective read on any news story of consequence.
For instance, consider that 50% of Clinton voters polled believe that Russians tampered with the actual vote count (beyond simple pre-election propaganda/leaks), despite there being no evidence of this whatsoever, probably in large part because generally reputable news agencies keep talking about Russia “hacking” the election. There have been countless examples from this election alone of well-meaning liberals sharing articles and memes built on misleading quotes, misused statistics, or outright fabrications.
Donald Trump is gleeful and blatant in his disregard for facts, in a way rarely seen in American politics. But do not make the mistake of thinking that this means that his political opponents necessarily have facts on their side. I have a healthy skepticism about the whole idea that liberals, leftists, and minorities have to go try to forge connections with their political opponents–as you say, politics is real and important, not just an academic ideological pastime. But do not think for a second that liberals live in “reality” while conservatives live in a fantasy world.
As a trans person, I am perfectly aware that there are tons of people who want me to disappear without a sound. That’s why I place myself in environments like the ones you describe. So I can remain myself, and safe.
Honestly, the minorities are not surprised when this stuff goes down. We expect it. We know who’s out there. We deal with them IRL constantly. That outpouring of disbelief and rage is because we believe that the world is better than the baseline.
The answer isn’t to try to “understand” the extremist normal. It’s to defend what we have with every scrap of fire we can summon, and to make it normal, in little ways and little places, so that others, closeted, out there in hostile territory, will someday find us and realize that they are not alone. Like I had to. Like most of my friends did.
This isn’t about diplomacy. It’s about passing the torch. It’s survival. I will forgive their trespass when they forget that they hate my existence.
Somehow we talk about the broader “right”, and it always snaps right back to “those people who hate _____”… as if everyone to the “right” of line X on any issue is also a bigot/racist/sexist/genderist/whatever. Or maybe as if that’s the only issue in the world.
I have plenty of conservative friends. I’m not referring to them. I am rather displeased with them right now, because I believe their wilful ignorance of part of their community is creating something dangerous for me, but they are not the core issue. The core issue is that there are people who don’t want me to exist. Those people are who I have to consider when I’m building my life.
I’m really tired of the “left’s responsible for this too! take your lumps!” I’m not responsible for the democratic party’s foul. I’m going to take those lumps anyway. So’s the rest of my community. That’s why we’ve been so damn mad.
……You seem to be forgetting that the polls all (or majority wise) predicted a Clinton win too. This wasn’t just people being poleaxed because disagreement. The win surprised everyone – pollsters, election experts, and most people, including Trump supporters too.
Listening to news from either side (as long as it’s actual news and not faux news) is one thing. That said, people will make friends with people who respect them. Bigots fundamentally do not respect marginalized folks and reducing it to partisan issues or ‘political opinions’ is a dismissal of said marginalized people’s humanity.
People also aren’t going to live somewhere they are not safe if they can help it, so for marginalized people, it makes most sense to live around people who don’t want to remove their civil rights.
Keeping yourself safe and your friendships, y’know, friendships are not immoral echo chamber actions. They’re the way friendships and (ideal) living situations work.
There’s also the possibility that they have a heart to heart and Leslie deletes it (like Sal did with that app)… or that she will try to delete it and end up sending it to everyone on her phone.
In hindsight putting the delete option right next to the immediately send to all contacts without asking for confirmation option seems like a deliberate design law.
Having one set of rules for some of the population and one set for another based on what they believe is shitty no matter who is perpetuating it.
Closets keep people safe. You’re not exposing her just to ridicule, you’re exposing her to potential physical harm, death threats, and possible rape. Every single bit of which falls on the heads of those who outed a person forcefully and cheered it on.
I lack the background of that (meaning I never heard about Warhammer 40k in my life) – I was just reminded of Hot Fuzz, but thanks for the info! I never new there were other “the greater good”-mumblers out there!
It might sound familiar because that’s exactly what Robin is doing for a living. Maybe just the threat of becoming someone else’s sacrifice for the greater good herself is enough to get her to realize it’s not how one should behave. Particularly when that threat is implicit in just a picture of her existing.
No, but unless she’s carrying 70% or more of the vote, then those homophobic voters are likely to stay home for the next election–which means you get a moderate Democrat (it’s too much to hope for a liberal in a largely rural Indiana district), instead.
Actually, this district goes back and forth between the parties regularly. It wouldn’t be impossible to get a liberal – maybe more unlikely, but this is hardly the ‘stereotypical redneck’ area Robin thinks it is. She probably thinks so because she considers that to be her voting base.
The politics of outing are extremely complex and context-specific.
Like, yes, outing tends to usually be awful. Largely because for the majority of individuals who are in a sexuality or gender closet, they are that way for a very important reason (either because they are not fully aware of their identity or view it as unsafe to come out). And that second part tends to ring hard.
We’ve all encountered the trans and gay folks who’ve been disowned, kicked out of their homes, ended up homeless, thrown out of jobs, been beaten or raped, or straight up murdered for the “crime” of coming out. And having another person out you means you don’t even get to prepare yourself for the impact of that.
But that’s for most people. For professional homophobes who are gay, the closet they hide behind is not for the protection of their safety, but rather to protect their reputation as a professional bigot, and their actions end up contributing directly to the environment that makes it so fraught for so many to come out.
And many times they use their closet like a weapon, often seeking out for sex the most marginalized members of the queer community, professional sex workers or homeless youth who can be intimidated into silence in order to get themselves off. Taking advantage of the very desperation they create in order to access cheap and readily accessible underground sex.
And while there is no clear consensus in the queer community about outing these figures, it has been the case that leaps in certain queer rights, most notably marriage rights have been tied to the outing of anti-gay figures as the hypocrisy did not play well to the mushy middle.
And the people who outed them tended to be individuals on the raggedy edge who took great personal risk to themselves outing a client, especially one with so much social power and an army of angry murderous homophobes at their beck and call to get revenge through.
Outing this group is less clear-cut and there is value in exposing the hypocrisy involved.
That all said, Robin is not seeking out homeless sex workers to get her rocks off. She’s just happened to fall for a hot college teacher. That feels different in principle if maybe not in practice.
Regardless of anything, it is worth noting that Leslie is not just anyone. She’s lived on the streets as a queer teenager and may have had to do what she needed to to survive. And during that time she certainly saw others make much tougher choices and some starve to death, owing to painful coming out or being outed situations.
Whatever her decision is here, it is not being made lightly.
Outing them literally doesn’t help though. There is no brutal analysis that can avert this fact. It’s not really ‘gray’ without that. It’s just revenge.
When Larry Craig and Ted Haggard were outed, it actually had real measurable effects on homophobic legislation and swung the public perception on the gay marriage debate and robbed a lot of power from the homophobic position. Similarly, outing leaders of ex-gay organizations as still having queer sex on the down-low did a lot to discredit those organizations’ central argument that they were genuinely changing orientations thus saving a lot of kids from those hellish places.
It’s not just revenge. Revenge would be a lot easier to morally process.
I’m from Idaho and Larry Craig still vehemently denies that he is gay. So do his wife and kids. The local paper actually sent a reporter to Washington DC to troll all the local gay hangouts to try and dig something up. They came up with bupkis. So technically his status is still “straight.” He just has a wide stance.
Ted Haggard maintains he prayed himself straight too, but neither of those individuals have loomed so large in their movements since they were outed. It defanged them to a large extent even if their core base still believed that they were straight men unfairly maligned by evil homosexual demons.
George Alan Rekers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Alan_Rekers ) was similarly defanged after being outed having queer sex on the downlow. That one was especially important as it stripped a lot of the strength of the faux-academic case of the homophobes regarding the “danger” homosexuals poised in adopting children thus fast-forwarding the right to adopt in a lot of states.
It’s weird. If someone had seduced Robin on purpose in order to get incriminating photos, I’d have found the whole thing entertaining and I wouldn’t have much problem with it. If that someone had even gone in thinking they’d get to know Robin and decide whether to destroy her when the time came, I’d also have been fine with that.
But Robin reached out to Leslie, and Leslie reached out to her. This betrayal of trust feels bad to me because it betrayed nobler intentions, strayed from the path Leslie was trying to walk. It feels like Leslie is betraying herself.
Also, it feels like a betrayal of Roz’s trust. My understanding is that Roz put Leslie in touch with Robin partly for selfish reasons, partly so Leslie could have her shot at somehow catching Robin’s eye. Roz did not sign up to destroy her sister this way. She might be happy that Robin gets kicked out of office, but I suspect her trust in Leslie would be broken as well.
That’s not to say this issue is cut and dried either way. Lincoln (2012) is a glorious movie about the greatest president of the United States abolishing slavery for all time by bribing people with jobs and actively deceiving Congress on the imminence of peace with the South. Not everything the good guys do is good, and not everything the bad guys do is bad.
There isn’t a clear betrayal of trust until the photo is used. Leslie is, in this strip, merely taking a prudent CYA action. If she’s the thoughtful and considerate person she attempts to be for her class, and Robin has a real change of heart and mends her ways, that is as far as this will go, and years later, this will be just a photo album pic of their first morning together. I mean, maybe next week or two, story timeline. 😉
But this is Dumbing of Age, so of course that’s not what will happen.
Leslie’s taking the picture in anger. She’s used Robin coming over and letting down her guard to create a weapon to take down Robin. That to me is already a breaching of trust, even if it’s a prudent course of action.
Robin is a threat to Leslie and to queer homeless kids like the one that she used to be. How much of Leslie’s trust is she entitled to?
Leslie personally knows people who are suffering as a direct result of Robin’s actions. Sacrificing Robin’s trust in order to help them is not an immoral act. Being precious about it while ignoring the please of Robin’s victims is.
To Jewelfox: That’s one way to view it, sure. I think it might be a net benefit *outcome* to take Robin down through deceit. But to justify current terrible action with speculative future benefit is a dangerous habit that can easily be taken too far.
Also, I’m more worried about Leslie than Robin in this situation. If I had the impression Leslie took the picture with an even-head, she may have been done so with an understanding of the consequences and made peace with her decision personally. This seems like a spur of the moment decision, done in anger, that she may come to regret.
if they believe that queer people or people of colour should die because they’re “inferior” then you bet I’m going to single them out and use different rules for such bigots. You choose your beliefs, convictions and the political ideology you follow, so I have NO sympathy for the people that catch shit for being bigots
I dunno, I kinda feel like the rules are different for politicians. Having your life under intense scrutiny is kinda part of the job. And if you’re furthering anti-LBGT policies while secretly being closeted, the irony of that is just begging to come out.
No, it’s not. And I find this line of thinking dangerous, along the lines of “tolerating intolerance.”
First off, there’s just the basic ethic that hypocrisy is wrong. We often out people to show their hypocrisy. And what is hypocrisy? Secretly doing the thing you claim is wrong. It is inherently an issue of being in the closet about something.
Second, why should you put the wellbeing of this one person who is hurting all of the LGBT community above the community itself? Why must you preserve this one person?
Morality is inherently context sensitive. In this context, I’d actually argue it’s immoral not to out them. There’s a reason such outings have long been part of the cause.
Let me tell you–if I found out that Pence was secretly homosexual, I sure as hell would out him. And I’d feel proud of having done so. He can’t very well be anti-LGBT if he has to admit he’s LGBT himself.
“He can’t very well be anti-LGBT if he has to admit he’s LGBT himself.”
Ha ha no, he absolutely could. You vastly underestimate the kind of pretzel-shaped logic the human mind can pull off. Pence could be caught balls deep in another man on live tv, and he would just double down on his anti-gay bullshit.
Perhaps, but it’s usually been pretty devastating to the career of the anti-gay politician (or preacher). Sometimes they can pull off a comeback with the old “I’ve repented and God has forgiven my sin” routine, but even that rarely works more than once.
Oh he absolutely would claim to be magically straight and might try to double-down, but it would hamper him and his profile and he’d be less willing to go all in knowing that the media would continuously mock him for his hypocrisy.
That might matter less now under fascism, but with the anti-queer surge about to happen, it might matter a lot again soon.
It’s not what she believes, it’s what she does. Which is literally what a “set of rules” is.
Normally it’s against my rule to punch somebody really hard in the face. But if Robin was standing in front of me holding a weapon she was capable of using to murder a bunch of queer kids, and she had every intention of doing so, and I could stop her by punching her really hard in the face?
That would be very much within my rules.
And hey, look, that situation is exactly like Leslie’s. Robin does have a weapon she can use to hurt and kill people, especially queer kids. She does intend to use it. Leslie can stop her by taking an action that does Robin great harm, one that Leslie ordinarily wouldn’t do because it will cause great harm.
Actions that cause harm aren’t inherently evil. They very usually are, but when the target is an evil person intending to do great harm to the innocent… harming them is often the most moral choice. Obviously so.
Any person, really. Gender and sexuality are kinda irrelevant in the face of everyone being human, and deserving treatment as such.
Some actions do affect their perpetrators’ legal rights, but they’re still people.
This is specifically a narrative based around lesbians, closeting, and homophobia, bringing “it’s about being human!!” into the discussion isn’t helping.
That’s a valid stance, but I’m of the opinion that it’s uncomfortably close to the kind of categorism that gets so many queer people victimized.
My above post got away from me a bit; the intent behind it was agreement.
Yep, I can see it now developing as it goes: After having the trust she carefreely gave to a lesbian woman betrayed, facing ridicule, humiliation and the end of her career and an easy life as she knew it, Robin is somehow going to have an epiphany kind of revelation about herself and the world, stop lying to herself, stop taking advantage of the political system and become a near-ascetic lesbian charity worker, travelling the world barefeet teaching and helping others.
Oh hahah, no, wait! That’s not how human nature works. She’ll dig in, invest thousands of dollars in PR and a campaign of discredit to Leslie, a no-name woman that can be “proved” to have doctored the picture, then proceed to double down on her policies since now she has personal reasons to hate queer folk. She’ll probably also marry some high profile dude asap and live a miserable life trying to be straight to keep the appearances. That would be our Leslie bringing lots of positive change to the world by the transformative powers of petty revenge!
Well, if Willis has kept orientation consistent with Robin as he did with the other characters, she’s bi. That’s not to say she wouldn’t be pretending to be straight, but as a bi woman she wouldn’t necessarily be miserable in a marriage to a cis man because he is a cis man. She might end up miserable if they’re a poor match – and if she rushes into things that seems quite plausible.
Except that sometimes outing DOES result in the closeted homophobe changing like you’ve described. Some outed politicians spend the rest of their careers working to undo the damage they’ve done. Outing politicians just isn’t the same as outing a private citizen.
I am going to have to ask you for some notable examples here because it sounds heavily hypothetical. I agree that outing politicians is a whole different shebang than outing a civilian, though: Not only do they possess the means to ignore, silence, discredit, buy out, gaslight, threaten (or worse), they also tend to be much more prone to value their reputation above anything else in the world. The world would be a very very different place if politicians in general were the self-redeeming types.
Worth also noting that yeah, she’d probably do that, a lot of the other outed queer politicians sort of quietly left politics in general while maintaining their straightness and trying to double-down with different gender partners to try and hold that illusion. But she would likely lose her seat, she would likely lose her power and she’d be one less voice for anti-queer legislation.
They gaslight, sure, about it, but politicians are not super-human and even the ones in Republican-safe districts found it more convenient to simply not put in for re-election.
That’s what I intended to note. She would likely rush into marrying a big-name guy to “restore” her heterosexuality, and that would most likely lead to a very poor match and a miserable marriage. I meant to say she wouldn’t be miserable in a marriage to a cis man simply because he is a cis man – that is, his gender would not be the thing to make her miserable.
They are both completely clothed, and there is no sex going on here. This isn’t porn, and Robin isn’t a private citizen — she’s a politician who has made LGBT oppression a key part of her platform. Outing her is both newsworthy and laudatory. Were she just a conservative politician who happened to be gay, then outing her would be malicious, but she put this issue on the table by making it a key part of her work.
Alright, you make a case for her having somehow diminished rights to privacy and decency for being a politician. Can we now make a case for the fact that she is a human being, possibly queer folk?
It all depends on what you actually prefer. Would you rather Robin go back on her anti-queer policies and even become a herald for positive policies, or would you rather have this bigot’s life upended, her career destroyed in delicious, justly poetic comeuppance, yessss #deathtothebigot *foams at mouth*?
Because what we have here is a confused woman in a vulnerable moment, probably for the first time being friendly with a queer person, questioning a sexuality that she has desperately kept repressed. What do you think will push her towards continuing this exploration? Continuous contact with a loyal, but stern (and attractive(?!)) friend who can teach her to see things from the point of view of LGBT people and encourage to explore her sexuality? Or a person who betrayed her trust to manipulate her opinions and/or cause her harm, so corroborating any misgivings she could have about LGBTs?
What would /you/ do in her shoes? Probably you are supplying your own narrative and say “oh for sure being betrayed and humiliated would make me change my mind as opposed to make me embittered and revengeful!” However, see here. We both are on opposite sides of an argument. The position you support would suggest that in order to change your mind (disregarding the fact of who’s wrong or right) I have to yell at you that you are being hateful, petty and shortsighted, and perhaps dig your personal information on the Internet and expose you on Facebook or something. I won’t do this, of course, but if I did… would your response be sitting down quietly and considering carefully whether I may had been right after all, or seeking to get back at me in any way you could?
I would rather an enemy of LGBTQ individuals’ ability to oppress us be neutralized than rely on her demonstrably unreliable better nature. Why are we obliged to preserve the closet she uses as a shield while she campaigns against the rest of us on the off chance she could one day learn to be less of an awful human being? Why aren’t we allowed to defend ourselves?
And? You have to draw a line somewhere. Even the pacifists tend to.
Outing Homophobic candidates is already a tried-and-true tradition. It exposes not just their own hypocrisy, it can put a hard stop to campaigns of hatred. In this case, the needs of the many outnumber the needs of the few; when the community is in the gun sights – sometimes literally – of a political and social crusade that’s being led by anyone, they are fair game.
Now, in this case, in this comic, I would say pull the brakes, because it’s at worst drunken sex and at best no-sex being made to look like sex. That can hurt the community in its own myriad ways. “The Liberals say a drunk woman can’t say yes. I was drunk when that happened. I wasn’t fully there. I was used.” Wham, now you have the hypocrite accusing you of hypocrisy, everything can fall apart, especially as it adds onto very negative stereotypes of the community, from gay people targetting straight people to ‘convert’ them to very solid questions about consent that won’t go on to help anyone as those questions will – WILL – be warped by a faction which also tends to not value women highly at all; a sort of ‘two birds, one stone’ situation, and so on.
But if you have a Homophobic guy going cruisin on Tinder, that’s fair. If you have el sexo in college and then the guy goes on to enter politics with homophobic campaigns, well, it could lead to rumours, meh. If they scoot out of the office to the local underground club, taking a pic of them there getting a lapdance from a twink is more than fair. So on and so on.
Queer folk defended themselves from Pat McCrory in North Carolina, working with coalitions to bring him down, putting their pain on national display with regards to his hateful HB2.
Pat McCrory lost a state he actively tried to steal (and I do mean steal: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article122593759.html , one he successfully stole for Donald Trump in the presidential election). And what brought him down were queer folks speaking their truth in defense of themselves.
Shitty white cis straight people are trying right now to spin the Trump/Pence victory as a “rebuttal” to “identity politics”, but it is bullshit by white supremacists who hope that the election of terrifying bigots will convince scared marginalized groups to stop speaking out about issues that matter to them.
“Identity politics” has nothing to do with “marginalized people speaking out about issues that matter to them”.
It’s a toxic methodology of entrenching divisions between sections of the people of a country for cynical political gain.
The election of Trump isn’t a rebuttal of identity politics, it’s the ultimate victory of identity politics, and a setback for the dream of an American nation undivided by color or creed or gender or origin.
You have definitely seen a different internet than me, because I’ve only ever seen “identity politics” as a dog-whistle for “this marginalized group member spoke out about an issue central to their oppression and we want to dismiss that as narrow and meaningless and not worthy of fighting for”.
If I fight for trans rights or gay rights or ace rights or I try to take pride in those identities despite a system that has historically punished me for it, that’s been dismissed as “identity politics” in my experience.
I think you may be saying the same thing. “Identity politics” is a dog-whistle for dismissing social struggles, but if you apply the term broadly, Trump won on identity politics – white identity politics.
You are not obliged to anything. However, you are encouraged to show love and compassion to other human beings regardless of their position, especially when they are opening themselves to you. Robin has already demonstrated that she’s not an evil and hateful bigot with an agenda, she’s merely bafflingly ignorant and self-serving. Am I saying that this excuses her? No way. But I am saying that her lack of agenda (other than the pursuit of an easy life) and her willingness to get close to the object of her policies and listen to what she has to say makes her ripe for a change of mind.
You dismiss this as an “off-chance” possibility for improvement, but you are no one to deny someone a chance for redemption especially in the kind of delicate turning points in life that Robin is just going through. Especially for someone on a seat of power whose redemption has the chance to bring positive change to dozens of thousands of people. Not to mention that as I explained, the possibility of being outed actually doing something to stop Robin’s policies (instead of giving her more ammunition) is also “off-chance”.
——–
Real talk here. I have to say that I’m quite disappointed by a big number of the commenters on this webcomic. For folks who have experienced discrimination, diminishment, and shame and who more than anything want to be given the free right to love whomever they choose, they are quick to discriminate, diminish and shame those who they disagree with and are incapable of showing common decency, let alone love to anybody who’s not in their circle. If only you saw how heartbreakingly similar you are to them, the only difference being who is in power and the default right now, perhaps you would be able to stop this neverending cycle of hatred.
Yes, I know there are truly, truly awful people there that are likely unredeemable. People steeped in hatred (and/or fear) for others that reveal in causing them pain or want to eradicate them. But if you think they constitute the thick of the the anti-LGBT (or indifferent) community you are wrong. Most of them are people like you and me, only ignorant or insensible perhaps because they didn’t have the privilege of a progressive education or simply because they themselves have not experienced the hardship of being discriminated against and have no idea how bad it is. Not saying that this excuses them, merely that they may be educated and their minds changed. In fact, that’s what /happens all the time/ otherwise we wouldn’t have today a more progressive society than we had yesterday (even if it obviously needs more work).
However, when you, angry, disillusioned and hurt lash at these people, you are not educating them. You are merely giving them emotional negative reinforcements to their ignorant opinions. To maybe catch in a righteous attack one horrible bigot, you are showering with hatred people that don’t even understand why they are being yelled at, but by golly they now have reasons to do things to get yelled at. To silence a bigot you may be making a hapless ignorant into a bigger bigot.
“But”, you’ll answer, “sometimes violence is not only warranted, but in fact necessary! And sometimes it does work!” For sure. Just be aware that if you truly want to change a whole society with violence you’ll have to go all the way in, weapons and insurgence and stuff. Do note that, historically, whenever an insurgent force takes down an unfair system by violence, they themselves are quick to become an even worse unfair system, which shouldn’t be surprising at all. On the other hand, all the positive, lasting, cumulative change in the world have come from the minds and hands of individuals or communities that using love, sacrifice and peaceful reason actually managed to change the collective minds of the rest of humanity. Doesn’t sound badass or even fair, and may take one or two generations, but it does work and it makes us all better human beings.
A message is aimed at her to encourage her to stop being hateful. Oh no!! But wait, she uses Sarcasm to deflect it! It’s super effective! Back to hatin’ hatin ‘ hatin’, but it’s ok because they hated her first and who cares that they will hate her more after she hates them back? All that matters is how good it feels to hate hate hate.
Pylgrim, honey, if hating hatred is so bad… you hate the hatred of hatred! You’re a super-ultra-mega hypocrite!
Love those who hate those who hate them!
One or two generations is too little, too late, for too many who need not had perished or suffered.
Dialogue with people occurs all the time. But against selfish politicans who pine on thousands or millions, against politicans full of hate, all the dialogue and pretty language will change nothing. They have to be beaten, either by their own falling and tripping, by the grinding and straining of the system, by time, etc.
And guess what? The world is far better now than it was 20 years ago for the community. The USA is apparently more liberal than it has ever been. Yet the moment we lapse into VSP territory or a false sense of security, it’s taken away. This fight is not over, and it has always included far more than pretty words and trying to talk to the opposition that doesn’t care that we might be smeared across pavement for protesting and fighting for the same rights they have.
But my point is that Robin is not a “politician full of hate”! Just a self-centred airhead with a conservative upbringing that lucked into a position of power. This is precisely my problem with the use of blanket terms and condoning of default attitudes. They fail to take in account the human beings. By dehumanising everybody who holds a position against what you believe as “bigot full of hate” you are doing exactly the same kind of thing that the worst of them do to you. In this particular case for example, Robin, more than an odious enemy that deserves to be “beaten and grinded” (jeez) is an enormous opportunity to convert a cog in a corrupt system into a herald of change.
Also I agree that the USA is more liberal than it was 20 years ago. But, how did it happen? By violently insulting, blackmailing and silencing the opposition, or by an increase in channels of communication showing the real people behind the previously poorly understood label of “homosexual”? Maybe by celebrities with a positive reputation coming out or speaking in favour of queer people. With public, peaceful, colourful celebrations, etc, etc.
Yes, Trump’s victory may represent a setback. Yes, this means that you must keep fighting for representation and your rights in the same way that people have been doing it for the last 20 years. No, it doesn’t mean that you must destroy this enemy and every single of his supporters in any way you can.
I think this might sound crazy to both sides, but I think we need both.
I agree that meaningful, lasting change is very likely best accomplished through teaching, and changing minds on a massive scale.
But not everyone can do that, and those who can, can’t do it all the time.
Also it is a very slow process. I think it would be a mistake to *neglect* the present at the expense of the future, and I strongly suspect focusing *solely* on the teaching would result in this neglect.
I think if we want to save every life we possibly can, we need to focus not only on the long term, but also the short term. That can include things like lobbying, to try to get better laws in place earlier than the teaching alone would trickle through to the legislative floors. It can include things like asking legislators who already agree with us to use things like filibusters to help slow down some of the ways in which we might be attacked, while we wait for our other efforts to turn the floor numbers in our favor.
But it can also include much more grey things. I don’t currently think outing of politicians should be blanket-permitted, but I don’t think it should be blanket-prohibited either.
“Ideally,” the person having the information would make a very careful and considered case-by-case call. If the politician can be convinced, then obviously that will be more effective long-term.
But at some point the information-haver has to make a judgement call. Is this going to work? Will it take too long, and leave too many other lives at risk? And how big that risk is to weigh against depends heavily on the specific platform of the politician and how influential they are at accomplishing the things they’re working on.
Think about the way the majority of civil rights were won in the 60s. Does history praise Malcolm X for his radical, sometimes violent, Black Panther movement? Or does history praise Martin Luther King Jr. and his message of peace and love, regardless of race? I’ll admit, there are still steps that need to be taken to completely end the hate of that time, but great strides have been made, and most agree that peaceful, civil disobedience was responsible for the legal changes that made racism so much more difficult.
Who history praises doesn’t always line up with who gets things done. Would the civil rights movement have been as successful without Malcolm X or without the Black Panthers? (not actually connected to each other, by the way. Malcolm X was more associated with the Nation of Islam.)
Holy LORD Pylgrim, there are ways to state your position without coming off as a sanctimonious and condescending victim blamer, but you have not found one.
Martin Luther King Jr was not about forgiving your enemies no matter what and famously despised white moderates who breached brotherhood and forgiveness while black folks were dying. He was a pacifist, yes, but he’s not the holiday Christmas card he’s been made out to be in the history books.
He was also despised as “violent” by the white press, who tried to smear him and his organization as being responsible for “violent looting” despite a history of non-violent protests (sound familiar to modern civil rights organizations?).
That all changed after he won and there was no longer benefit in smearing him as an evil communist, and so in trying to quickly rewrite themselves as backing him, the white folks also rewrote his legacy to be this weird mealy-mouthed identity as a kumbiya activist who only wanted white people and black people to get along regardless of how oppressed black people were.
This was not true, what he wanted was gross violations of black people’s civil rights to end and he’d gladly reach out to white groups that wanted the same and viewed everyone as part of the same brotherhood of man, but that does not mean he did not notice the heel prints on his face or the bullet that threatened to take his life every day until it did.
Also, history depends largely on who wrote it. If you look into history books written by the black community vs written by white folks, you’ll find their portrayals of the black panthers and Malcolm X are very very very different.
Trump’s victory is not just a setback. It is something I’m increasingly seeing as something I will not be able to survive, though I have no intentions of giving the bastards the pleasure of seeing me take my own life.
His biggest fans want folks like me dead, are seeing this as their moment to eliminate us once and for all so they never again have to think complicated thoughts about gender.
I don’t know what the movement will look like in 20 years, but right now, it’s a desperate fight for mere survival. And there’s a lot to be gained from organizations like ACT-UP and how they survived a time that was similarly eliminationist as well as the actions of the French Resistance now that the literal nazis are back in power.
“By dehumanising everybody who holds a position against what you believe as ‘bigot full of hate’ you are doing exactly the same kind of thing that the worst of them do to you.”
If I hurt somebody because that person, specifically, is a bad person who was doing bad things and my actual goal was to prevent innocent people from being harmed, that is quite different from that person trying to hurt innocents en masse in the first place. The opposite, in fact.
Even if the nature of the hurt itself is the same.
Also in the case of outing, it’s their own attempts to do harm coming back to them.
I don’t know how likely I am to survive this “setback” incidentally. Nor how likely you are.
MLK was despised and hated by much of white America, not until he “won”, but until he was safely dead and could be turned into a nice symbol of how we fixed all our racial problems. Then he could be loved.
@Everybody. Thanks a lot for the discussion. I have learned a few things myself. I only want to leave one last clarification in the thread: I am actually not against the punishment (lawful or otherwise) of really terrible people. If I could travel back in time you’d bet I’d put a bullet on Hitler’s brain rather than trying to friendly ask him to stop being so bad and negotiating for years while millions die. The only thing I’m advocating here is to stop a more generalised hatred and distrust. Not all anti-LGBT people are unreasonable, perversely hateful imbeciles and certainly don’t deserve to be treated as such (and I argue, it is more likely to make them perversely hateful than changing their minds)
Some of them are just ignorant, some were just raised like that and hold half-baked beliefs without foundation, some are confused, some have been lied to by fearmongering organisations and individuals, etc. etc. As I always say, this does NOT excuse them, but it means that they are capable of changing their minds and that like you and I, are more likely to respond favourably to reason, positive reinforcement and love than to violence, abuse, and assumptive accusations. Avoid blanket generalisation and deal with each person according to their actual deeds, not according wit what you assume of them from their labels or affiliations.
Bullies rely on their victims taking the High Road so that there will be no consequences for their cruelty. If you actually want them to stop, there have to be real negative consequences for their actions, in the form of harms or removal of rights that would not be justified if inflicted on some random innocent person.
Agitation that doesn’t actually agitate anything is worthless and useless feel-good preening.
Involuntary outings exactly like this are one of the main reasons why the LGBTQ rights movement has gained steam in the US over the last decade, doing more to discredit anti-LGBTQ activits, legislators, and organizations with the political middle in the US than almost anything else. I’d argue the visibility of that hypocrisy has been almost as politically important as the visibility of queer people in main stream media like Ellen Degeneras or Ian McKellen.
It is because of the involuntary outing of multiple high-profile anti-LGBT activists and legislators that whenever a public figure starts to be *too* dedicated to the cause of denying the rights of LGBTQ people, the political middle in the US begins to suspect they are secretly queer themselves and starts to tune out and distance themselves from that assumed hypocrisy.
People are entitled to their individual rights… unless they are using those rights to infringe on the rights of others. You should have a right to privacy on the internet… unless you’re using that anonymity to harass and threaten innocent people, in which case someone would be entirely justified in doxxing you. You should have a right to carry weapons… unless you’re using those weapons to attack innocent people, in which case someone would be entirely justified in taking them from you. You should have a right to keep your sexual orientation closeted… unless you’re using that closet as a platform to advance the marginalization, abuse, and even outright killing of an entire community of innocent people… in which case someone is absolutely justified in outing you, an act that not only discredits you, removing your ability to harm and infringe on the rights of others, but also brands your entire movement your hypocrisy in the public eye, impacting the ability of whoever takes your place to do so.
Leslie has tried to ‘convert’ Robin. She will most likely continue to do so, but the very fact she’s already going to snap proof of a compromising position and has premeditated this with the stances Robin has already shows that maybe she’s giving up on trying to ‘convert’ Robin. And this is in webcomic time and logic. A chat or two later, Robin might very well discard her ways, get with Leslie, give her voters a lesson, and live a happy life. It barely happens, however, in real life, even Ted Haggard took years to come around after being ‘exposed’.
How we got to this point is a little bit of A and B. Mature, realistic and solid representation went a long way, sure, the culture changed. But also exposing hypocrites such as Bruce Barclay or Roy Ashburn and making it unacceptable which happened to Milk is also more than needed. No soft power lives without the backing of hard power. This goes to your last paragraph – unless we want to see a constant see-saw of revoking, giving, revoking, and giving rights. It is not enough to be given those rights, if they’re taken the next year. It has to become not just culturally but legally cemented. That won’t come about by trying to hold the high ground without sealing and counter-sallying the tunnels under the tower the opposition makes, even if that means we have to get dirty.
And I repeat what I said before: We already try to ‘convert’. We try dialogue. We try public discourse. I’m not saying it’s worthless or without merit. Winning the hearts and minds works. However, what happens when it doesn’t work and those people who can affect your life and members of the community so much up to death and improvishment are still in power? You fight them and you topple them. Brownback isn’t going to sudddenly have a metamorphisis. Nor will Pence or Ryan. How about Milo? They’ve been part of civilized debate and discourse for decades, won’t change, and still hurt us. It obviously won’t work.
And the self-centered is just as dangerous as the outright malicious, because they’re more than willing to throw everyone else under the bus because they’re the ones doing the throwing. They won’t be chucked under there or even hit the ground- unless they trip. For their own selves, they destroy countless others; their livelihoods, their futures, even their lives. And they’re so high up that even tripping them doesn’t bring them down to the mud where everyone else is. Why, then, for *those* people, the hardline bigots and those so self-centered and safe, should we go at them with kiddy gloves? They can take hits. They surely dish them out.
You are disappointed in me. That is fair. As I’ve noted, this issue is fraught and hotly debated within the community and I respect those who have this as a strong line they are unwilling to ever cross.
And it’s clear a lot of people are equating outing with a more troubling general online trend at the moment of using callout culture to harass folks, justifying violences against them like doxxing, online harassment, emotional abuse, misgendering, etc… by the reasoning of them being a “bad person” and that’s very resonable, I also despise that toxicity hiding behind a shell of supposed righteousness and how it’s used to defend abusers who just like to hurt people and are trying to find a socially-acceptable excuse to bag on people without much in the way of power in order to feel strong.
Is the ideal to reach out? To show love and support and acceptance?
Yeah, and we do that. Marginalized folks are good at showing forgiveness and love even to our enemies, even when they kill us en masse. And different groups of us have shown our grace in the face of truly horrifying levels of oppression and threat (see anti-lynching activists or suffragettes for historical examples, Black Lives Matter and muslim rights organizations for modern examples).
But…
Blanket statements for that ideal and against violence run into a central problem, one that is really hard. And it comes to the problem of survival.
We tell our children never to be violent towards bullies, to be the better person, but what the marginalized learn from that is that no one will ever come to their defense and even their ability to call out the violence against them will be dismissed as “rude” and “uncivil”, while their bullies learn that there are no consequences in harassing another person to feel stronger.
And so the bullies become empowered, feel comfortable voting for the king bully, relish in the power of being able to cause someone pain. Robin may not have her heart in bigotry, but she is willingly serving as the mouthpiece for those who do, seeing them as her core constituency, the people she relies upon for her position and the people she is in place to give voice to.
People who demand from her the right to continue to beat down groups of people already made second-class citizens by accidents of who they love and want to get down and dirty with.
And it ignores the reality that ignorance can be weaponized, can be willful. My family had access to a wide internet of resources on trans issues. I carefully sought to teach them, sent them books by trans individuals. They rejected them all, still demanded more education every time they continued to hurt me. They used my willingness to see the good in them to string me along in an abusive relationship.
And it hurt, a lot. It took abandoning that vain quest to see how much letting these people abuse me hurt me and before that happened, it had already cost me a relationship and a lot of mental health I’ll never get back.
Universal statements that we should “love our enemies” and carefully teach them out of ignorance implies that all our enemies care about our pain. Are willing to do more than listen politely for a few seconds before going right back to not giving a fuck if we live or die.
And universal statements against violence… well… when I was in Denmark, there were these two neo-nazis I was on a bus with. And well, they took a lot of exception to me wearing a skirt. And they wanted to kill me for it. If I had been alone in an alley, if I had been in America. I imagine they would have while others watched passively on.
But in Denmark, the whole atmosphere of the bus changed when they threatened me. Folks were getting out of their chairs willing to savage these neo-nazis on behalf of some American stranger they knew shit-all about. And that threat of violence likely saved my life. The neo-nazis retreated at the next stop and I never saw them again.
I’m only here because people were willing to do violence to hateful men to protect me and communicated that clearly.
Good stuff, I fully agree with you and you do well pointing the flaws in my blanket statement about blanket generalisations. I do believe that truly terrible people must be dealt with and not extended an undeserved corner of the love blanket. As in everything in life, there is a balance.
@Pat You misunderstand me (or maybe misrepresent me?) There’s nothing wrong with hating hatred. Do hate bigotry. Also hate the hatred that allows victims to become abusers. What I am against is hating people, especially in a blanket generalising kind of way. It is bad regardless of who is doing it.
But perhaps you just needed to find a way to call me hypocritical and ad-hominem me right out of the argument?
I’d hope that, getting to know a queer person directly, and getting to explore that side of herself in private, might lead to some revelations as to the harm the policies she’s been supporting have been doing, and her therefore changing her stance and using her position to try and mitigate the harm done, and actively support LGBTQ* people.
Looks like focus on the photo composition and duckface overcorrection to me, though I’m sure a small part of her is still conflicting with the parts that are in motion.
I’m hoping she’s just seizing the opportunity to get the blackmail material while she has it, and will get around to agonizing about if/how to use it later
Also that she finds out just WTF Robin is doing here first
Yep, after all, Robin is fully clothed and fast asleep after a night of drinking. Therefore the sexual conduct and inclination being implied are both actual and consensual.
Like on one hand Robin is a dick, on the other I don’t approve of LGBT people having things like misgendering or forceful outing done to them just because they’re dicks
People are complicated; narrative savvy can get bent. Besides, even in the implied likelihood that she elects to use the image as leverage over the Congresswoman, there are multiple ways to do so that vary in degree of upfuckedness.
Well it’s definitely for leverage but we don’t know how exactly she’ll use it. She could just expose Robin right away so she loses her Family Values voters, or she might use it as blackmail, but only demand that Robin actually listen to her, with no intention of ever actually using it, or anything in between.
And it’s worth noting why. Noting the “sweet lesbian facts” Leslie dropped on Robin. That she let slip that she watched other queer youth with her literally starve to death because of policies like Robin’s.
Like, you can disagree with that choice, but this is not something she’s doing casually whether she decides to immediately delete it or not.
This. Those points stand just fine on their own, but it’s also worth considering that Leslie hasn’t done much on impulse in DoA. She’s regretted a lot of her actions regarding Robin, but they were premeditated; she’s not going to rush into this either.
She’s not going to rush into any follow-up, but I’d say that this was very much done on impulse. In fact, showing up for the midnight rally seemed fairly impulsive as well. Les doesn’t do big things on impulse; the rally spiralled unpredictably and this picture will only have consequences if she makes a big decision later. But little impulsive things are, in my opinion, part of her charm and a big factor in her wry humour in the classroom.
Now, I’m a straight, cis- male, and I acknowledge that my opinion on this situation carries less weight than others simply because I have never and will never be in this situation. But as for what she does with the picture… Well, Cerberus noted earlier that this is kind of a grey area. I don’t think it’s appropriate to out anyone, regardless of political influence or leanings, but I understand the counterarguments to that position. I think we’ll see Les fight with these arguments in her head for a while as well. Just my two cents.
(Aside: I live in Canada; we got rid of the penny nearly four years ago, and our smallest coin is now the five-cent nickel. Feels weird to say ‘my two cents’ now, but it’s kinda permanently in my vocabulary now.)
Naw, naw; Canada still has pennies; we just don’t have the actual coins anymore.
See, if I buy a coffee at Tim’s and it’s $1.83, then yes, I will be paying $1.85 at the till if I pay in cash. But if I pay by debit? Then I’m paying $1.83, which is a loonie, three quarters, a nickel, and (I love this bit), three cents. Three pennies.
Three imaginary pennies. 😀 <3
Canada: We have plastic, holographic astronaut bills, and imaginary coins. 😀
You’ll also be paying 1.85 if it comes to 1.87, for the benefit of the yanks. It rounds just like any other number. (This should go without saying, but I’ve seen people argue against eliminating the penny on the basis that it will always be rounded up.)
Yeah. If right now she’s actually remembering the names and faces of the friends who are dead now because of people like Robin? I mean, I was thinking in terms of Leslie doing a pragmatic cost/benefit of what the future looks like, but this moment could instead be all about Leslie’s dead.
This is for you, name-of-street-girlfriend-who’s-never-been-mentioned-before.
Every time a new hateful bill is passed, I think of those I’ve lost or nearly lost because of the bigotries those bills represent.
That shit hangs on you for a long time. And there’s no way that she hasn’t been being constantly haunted by some old ghosts starting right about Panel 4 of this comic right when Robin says “nothing bad would have probably happened”:
I’ve mentored a lot of kids by this point. I have only very loose eyes on most of them. Some I’ve lost contact with completely. I know I’ve lost a few I’ve kept loose eyes on and I have no delusions that I’ve lost more than a few of those I’ve lost track of completely.
I try not to let it get me down and still show hope. That’s been getting a little harder of late thanks to recent events.
Downside of doing emotional support work, I suppose.
Yeah. I try to keep in touch, and constantly check up on the various queer and trans hatchlings I’ve mothered over the years. There are some who’ve just straight up vanished, and it fucking tears my heart out, because I know the odds are that at least a couple of them are dead now. I grieve for them, and sometimes, when I see the data ghost of someone I *know* we lost, it wrenches something inside of me so hard that I’m sobbing for hours – but I don’t stop. Somebody has to be there to care for our youth, to help them, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be society or cis folks. It’s all on us, so all we can do is keep doing the best we can.
For whatever it’s worth, Cerberus, I’m so damned glad those kids have you.
@ Cerberus and Mika – I’m sorry this is such a rough time. If either of you need to talk, you can message me on Patreon. I’ve not got half the experience I’m sure you do, but I have an ear and lots of e-hugs.
I think that – if nothing else – we can all agree that making that decision lightly would be horrible.
Leslie of all people knows the ramifications of what she’s considering, as well as those of simply letting Robin continue as is. I highly doubt this will end up being an easy decision for her.
What Leslie is thinking of doing with the picture may be irrelevant. In this day and age, if it’s on your phone, it can escape into the wild in a heartbeat.
And think about this from DYW’s perspective. Which is more likely to result in wacky hijinks: Leslie deliberately releasing the picture, or someone else accidentally getting ahold of it and then Leslie and/or Robin scrambling to deal with blackmail and/or public reaction?
But what if outing her torpedoes the next homophobic legislation she would have authored? Is it better to defend the right of millions of gay women at the expense of one queer women who they need defended from?
… no, I’m seriously asking, this has always been a gray area for me.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Outing one congresscritter to save thousands of queer kids from torture or starvation is not a bad bargain unless you happen to be the congresscritter in question.
Yes, the protection of an immoral aggressor is a lesser priority than the protection of their victims so if you have to tear them down to protect the people they’re attacking then so be it.
Yes, she’ll lose the support of her party and her current base, but that is not the same circumstances or consequences of outing as a youth on the raggedy edge.
No matter what, she will be wealthy thanks to her congressperson salary. She will likely have a walk-on in most lobbying firms because access is still access. She will still have the support of her family (at least her younger family who do not seem to share her politics).
She will land fine from outing, same as other powerful homophobic men who’ve been outed having queer sex on the down-low.
The politics of this are fraught but it is definitely not as simple as “she did bad things to X group, so hurt her by doing bad things to her” and she’s not going to have the same interactions with a homophobic society that say an 18 year old Leslie did.
I’ve got to say, your analyses are a little more unnerving when that cheerfully smiling box of Roz next to your name is attached to a breakdown of how much damage being outed could hypothetically do to Robin.
She isn’t JUST being a dick, though, she’s using her closet as a platform to advance the oppression of an entire community of innocent people. An individual’s rights end where their use to infringe the rights of innocent bystanders begins.
You’re centring Robin’s experience inappropriately, and acting as though using her political power to kill people and destroy their lives is a morally neutral act. It’s not.
Robin and Leslie’s feelings here matter less than the people whom Leslie is mad on behalf of.
Yeah, she hasn’t done anything irrevocable yet. I don’t think I have the right to say what she should or shouldn’t do. I just hope that, whatever she does, she does it after thoughtful consideration with all the facts in evidence, not on the spur of the moment out of ire when she appears not to have any idea how or why Robin even ended up in her bed.
And, like I said back when Dorothy was considering what to do about Amazi-Girl’s identity… it isn’t “not outing her”, it’s just “not outing her right now”.
What she’s actually doing there is largely irrelevant unless it’s “professing her complete and total change of heart vis a vis her policies about LGBTQ people and promising to change her platform accordingly.”
That, or at least something close enough to that to make the carrot a more promising tool for further development than the stick, is not out of the question, and may be one of the more likely of the many unlikely scenarios that got us from where we left these ladies last night to Leslie waking up with a Congresswoman in her bed and apparently no idea how she got there.
Though my current favorite hypothesis is, “This is actually Walkyverse Leslie waking up next to her wife, having dreamt the latter part of Shortpacked! and all of DoA to date.” This has the advantage of also explaining the Soggies.
Is Mary really capable of using blackmail? She achieved literally none of her goals from it, even minor ones, and the only significant consequence was Ruth falling into a depression for tangentially related reasons, as well as Mary herself getting punched in the face and ostracized. Everything was terrible for literally everyone in that storyline except Carla; it was a shitshow
Furthermore, Robin has taken part in hortatory activities, her sister has taken part in thespian activities, and she is rumored to have attempted to interest a 13-year-old girl in philately!
Nah, anger is the only reason we’ve managed to claw what rights we have from a bigoted society that would have been perfectly happy shoving us to the margins indefinitely.
Eesh not cool, Leslie. I see the justiceporn of it all, but outing someone like that is brutal no matter what your motivations. She trusted you enough to fall asleep there 🙁
If anything this is just going to show her that she can’t open up anymore.
Well, it depends a lot on how she’s here. If she broke in during the middle of the night rather than being invited up as some theorized yesterday, then Robin has already breached a major boundary first.
Which is still pretty disgusting. Levying fear over an LGBT person’s identity being forcibly outted is something I expect monsters to do. Not people who are into rights and respect.
She’s a congresswoman voting against LGBT rights, and has expressed the idea that she doesn’t think anything really bad happens because of those bills. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of fear there to leverage.
There does, Robin knows she can’t be seen as gay because she is the traditional families candidate. This is evidence to that horror show of a scenario for her. I think Robin just underestimates how much power and damage her bills do because she’s never seen it affect anyone herself and she doesn’t really know any gay people to enlighten her.
I don’t know if she knows, Robin clearly felt attraction to Leslie at the bar.
If that was Robin’s first experience with attraction to someone of her own gender then no she isn’t. I think she has felt attracted to woman before thought based upon her dialogue regarding appearances and presenting yourself differently.
Also even if she has felt it before denial is a powerful thing, especially when the truth hurts everything you’ve worked towards. Robin isn’t an inhumane machine and is having difficulty accepting that she is bi because it changes absolutely everything so it’s easier to deny it at least until the issue is forced which I suspect Leslie will do though not with the photo as that compromises herself.
@Pat Post at 4:12pm
Can’t reply to it for some reason so I’ll do it here…
As I said before it is a horror show to Robin NOT because being gay means subjecting yourself to being hurt but because it would be a shot to the head for her political career. Robin is in a unique position where being so would go hypocrisy and sway the voters to the other side. That’s why the photo could be used as blackmail and why it’s important that Leslie took it even if she will never use it.
It’s not about the policies affecting her, it’s about giving the weapons.
Also I don’t really want to change topics when this entire page and perhaps arc is revolving around Robin and Leslie. If you want another topic then perhaps speak to someone else because I find this arc very enjoyable and like to discuss it.
Doing one wrong action in opposition to someone else’s wrong action isn’t karma, it’s just lowering yourself to their level.
Besides the only reason she has political power was because of those ideals she campaigned originally with, if you want to be mad at someone then be mad at the people who voted it in. A politician that uses that as a basis is a result of the people not the other way round…for the most part.
The high road was invented by people driving the low road to make sure there was more room for them to do whatever the fuck they like down there without consequence.
A politician is not the will of the people incarnate they are a human being who is fully responsible for their own actions. They CHOSE to exploit and encourage the prejudices of the lowest common denominator for their own gain and they absolutely deserve the ire of the people they endanger to do so.
People are still on the hook for whatever politician they elect, we don’t get a bye simply because they have there own will. We knew this before voting for them.
Welp, that is a thing Leslie Bean has now done. Maybe we’ll be lucky and she’ll just blackmail Robin (it’s the least unethical thing she could do with this pic besides have personal doubts and immediately delete it).
I forgot to add I expect that she’ll likely not post it online or otherwise intentionally use it, but that having taken it she’ll fail to delete it and it’ll end up getting around anyway.
I’m still wondering how Robin ended up in Leslie’s bed. Last we saw of them, Leslie was leaving Robin at the bar. Unless Leslie remembers inviting Robin back to her place, maybe wait until she knows how Robin got there before doing anything with that picture.
I have so many questions about that. Like, the context of how we got from last comic set to this comic set paints this moment in a lot of different lights.
I’m convinced that she must have broke in. How and why are the questions that vex me. Also, how drunk was she?
Did she keep drinking and considering what Leslie said, freaking out more and more, not wanting to confront the truth but not knowing where else to go? Or did she keep drinking until “go snuggle up with the cute professor” seemed like a really good plan, but she passed out at the last second?
Or did she decide to find Leslie to talk to her more, but drank so much to work up the courage that she completely forgot what the hell she wad doing?
Is she even going to know where she is when she wakes up?
As I said above, sure, outing LGBT people who are in a position of power and then HURT other LGBT people is fine, but yes, *how* did she get there is a big concern. The question of Consent is major here if they did anything. The question of making utter lies if nothing happened to blackmail is also major here. Unless Robin got in with her to do the do, and they remember this, then nothing should be done, because faciliting lies at best or throwing around dubious consent at worst will do far more damage than good.
No, seriously, you must have seen ME make that post, then used temporal reversal to plagiarize it and post it yourself, thus pre-empting my usage of the pun.
Curse you and your malevolent time-traveling ways.
Jut one example: take the Curse of the Black Pearl script back to 1967, convince Disney to film it as a tie-in to the ride opening that year, and somehow get them to cast Keith Richards as Jack. 😀
Outing is terrible, and you should never, EVER, do it.
Unless, of course, the person you’re outing is a public figure who has actively supported measures that will directly harm LGBTQA people. Then you expose that motherfucker’s hypocrisy to the world.
I applaud Leslie’s pragmatism. I sincerely doubt she’ll ever share that photo, or even tell anyone, even Robin, that she has it. But now she has it. She has options. She can try to talk to Robin, like she did last night, try to get her to see reason and come around on some of her policies. And if that fails, she can destroy her.
It’s a rare occasion if the two of us are on the same page, I mean I have no problem crushes those who uphold injustice but how far are we going to go until we draw the line and say “This is not right.”
The GOP is an organization. Like any other organization, it is made up of a combination of extremists and moderates, people toeing the party line to advance their own agenda and people who blindly believe in what their peers believe, and vile creatures of spite and kindhearted people who want what they think is best for the people of the world.
Robin has proven difficult to teach, but Leslie might have made some progress already. Crush her and there’s no telling who might well up to fill the gap. They could be as misguided and short-sighted as her about pushing discriminatory legislation to get re-elected, or they could be a heartfelt bigot who makes ot their personal mission to scourge the queer community from the district if they can.
Or maybe a person with more reasonable ideas about letting people be who they want to be might crop up – but which one sounds more likely to you?
Considering how few GOP members have stepped up to condemn the literal nazis crawling out the woodwork in support of Emperor Trump, I’m not sure there are any “moderate” GOP members left… at least not on the national stage.
There are advantages to forcing turnover, though. Unless the replacement is assured to be worse, then simply forcing them to adopt a new person means they lose some committee seats, and so forth.
Yeah, even the ones like Graham and Romney who I’d started to respect for opposing him based on principals are falling in line and wringing their hands about the prospect of controlling all three branches of government, ignoring the horrible cost of it, even by their standards
And they have a nice blue scapegoat to deflect bláme onto. Oh, look! It’s even holding out an olive branch!
The Trump wing of the GOP thrives off the visceral, emotional reactions they get from their base. Feelings are powerful political tools. They take minimal effort to put in place, but they’re exceptionally difficult to change by presenting new information and critical thinking. Maybe they want a nice, easy to digest, binary world view and don’t want to think about shades of grey or consider people who aren’t like them. (I’m absolutely not saying all Republicans are like this, but considering the outcome of the primary there must be a subset that is.)
That’s why the “moral high ground”, “compromise” approach hasn’t been working with this vocal minority of the GOP; Dems are trying to override their self-centered emotions with logic. They feel something is true, therefore to them it is true. We’ve been seeing this since the rise of the “Tea Party” in 2010. (Remember them?) They like their comfy, warm worldview and see no reason to change it just because some people who aren’t them will benefit. What’s in it for them?
It is okay to out people who are using their closet as a weapon to cause other queer individuals harm while using that harm to still get their rocks off in secret.
Or at least its complicated and debatable as to the ethics of outing this group of people.
Like, I have no clue why we insist as a culture on reducing “actively harmful legislation that makes it harder for one group of people to survive” to “disagreement”, but it’s kinda… awful.
And the reason it is awful is because it erases that the “disagreement” is on the humanity and right to live of a group of people and makes it easier to normalize being against the humanity or right to live of certain groups or individuals based on identities they have no power to change.
Someone being a conservative and facing ire and consequences for supporting hateful laws is a lot different from being gay or being black or being a woman, something immutable.
Look, I’m not saying Robin should be immune to criticism or anger. She’s done some legit terrible things as part of not only being part of a political voting block supporting anti-lgbt legislation, but as someone who is vocal about supporting those stances in the first place, even though it’s been increasingly clear she doesn’t truly believe what she’s parroting.
The fact that she’s bisexual herself is just another layer to this mess, and while there’s pathos to it, it also makes her a big ol’ flaming hypocrite, and I don’t think Leslie would be out of line to point this out to Robin firmly and angrily and privately. That doesn’t mean I think it’s okay to OUT Robin. Like, fuck, at least when politicians are trumpeting family values but visiting a bunch of prostitutes on the side, exposing that is exposing a crime. It’s not a crime to be bi, no matter how much some people wish it was!
There are lines you shouldn’t cross. Don’t out people, not even to make a really good point. Don’t misgender people even if they’re being horrible bigots. Stuff like that. I can’t believe this is even a serious debate in the lgbt community at this point.
I mean, I agree 100% about misgendering no matter what, but the politics surrounding outing professional homophobes has been hotly debated for years and I do not think the community has ever had a clear consensus of opinion on the matter.
Honestly, there’s strong arguments for either side and having grown up during the time of Larry Craig and Ted Haggard, I’ve seen how much outing powerful bigots did to puncture the mystique those powerful figures surrounded themselves with, in much the same way as discovering Strom Thurmond or Thomas Jefferson slept with their slaves or servants on the side.
Hypocrisy cuts through the “moral” arguments of bigots like nothing else. Not for the screaming base, but definitely for the mushy middle that likes to think of themselves as “above the fray”.
It’s not an easy choice to make one way or another, on either moral or practical grounds.
That’s true, but the problem is that destroying the political career of a single person, satisfying as it may be, doesn’t fix the underlying problem. Homophobia/transphobia is strongly ingrained in the politics of far too many people for that to be the case. This is not a case of “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one,” it’s a choice between the status quo (with Robin maybe reconsidering her stance in the face of new information) and Robin and Leslie’s lives both being destroyed and oh by the way, that awful legislation passed anyway.
People often cling to bigotries or flock to bigotries out of social normalcy. If bigotry is seen as the social norm, as the “moral” thing, as the thing that is supported by your friends and family members, it becomes easier to fall in with it.
Analyses of hate group members show that a lot of what got them sucked into hate group membership was the social factor, having people who were their friends for other reasons sell them on extreme bigoted hatred. And it’s easier to hold on to bigoted beliefs against reality if it seems like all your family and friends share the hateful beliefs or at least you can convince yourself that they all secretly share them.
Being laughed at as a hate movement, having your bigotry exposed as hypocrisy and dangerously uncool has real effects in pulling people out of said bigotry as can having real relationships with members of the group you are predisposed to be bigoted against (it’s easier to hate black people as a theoretical entity than to hate your friend Carl who got your back when you struggled with cancer).
There’s a great example with Superman and the KKK. Basically they published a comic of Superman fighting the KKK using smuggled information about actual rituals and titles the KKK used. And the KKK lost membership because of it because bigots went home and watched their kids play Superman versus well… them, using all their titles and themselves as the bad guys.
It doesn’t work on everyone, but it works on some.
And we’ve seen outing a bigot have real effects on homophobic legislation, stopping some terrible bills, weakening others, especially when the outings are happening close to each other temporally.
And this particular district is a toss-up district where votes actually matter. If Robin were to hit a scandal that depressed the turnout of her base, that could mean one less Republican in place for what is shaping to be at least 2 years of pure terror for LGBT folks.
Her outing Robin would definitely ruin Leslie’s life, possibly inconvenience Robin’s life, and could have real meaningful impact on a close election.
And that’s some fodder for the intense moral and practical calculus Leslie is performing right now.
I’m torn on all of this. In this case, I think it’s probably a bad idea. Robin isn’t Craig or Haggard. She’s a bi anti-LGTBQ politician, but she doesn’t seem to be a hypocrite in the same sense. She hasn’t been preaching against the evils of homosexuality while picking up strange women in airport bathrooms. Judging from SP & from what we’ve seen here, she’s very much in denial about her bisexuality.
That suggests to me that there’s far more chance of her changing if she’s put in a position where she’s forced to accept it herself – for example falling for Leslie, especially this universe’s take no shit version of Leslie.
Both morally & practically I think the argument for outing Robin is much less than for outing a Craig or a Haggard.
If Leslie rethought that and invited her home, then that’s one thing and this smacks of desperation and regret over her weakness. If Robin wasn’t invited or coerced her way to Leslie’s home…
Well, that’s another matter entirely and unlikely to be the same situation and more a type of obsession and bad boundaries from a politician who wants a down-low girlfriend and isn’t going to accept no.
But yeah, very much torn myself as I am on outing as a political tactic in general.
Except that it WAS a crime to be bi, not all that long ago, and Robin (and people like her) are pushing for it to be moved back into that category, in incremental steps. Remember, we’re down to an even split the SCOTUS, with the orangutan getting to pick the next body. Damaging the cohesion of the GOP’s Congressional block could very literally save lives.
Fine. It’s still a line I am not comfortable with being crossed and I don’t think it’s wrong for me to be uncomfortable with rhetoric like ‘crush or be crushed’ even though I agree that it’s pretty damn bad that one of America’s two major political parties has gotten to the point where it’s considered acceptable to appoint literal, unapologetic neo-nazis to Cabinet positions.
Also, please don’t act like I’m reducing the bigotry and oppression I FACE to ‘disagreement’. I said ‘disagreement’ because this applies to a TON of shit. Like, there’s a lot of people who think it’s okay to misgender other trans people or threaten to out other lgbt people because they disagree with them! Oh no, someone likes fiction they don’t like, GUESS I’D BETTER TRY AND DOX THEM.
And you know, fighting for our rights and for our SURVIVAL is important, but outing Robin wouldn’t actually stop the big hate machine. At best, Robin would get ground up, left in the dust, and some other photogenic pundit would take her place, because she’s just a cog in a big machine right now. At worst, all that would still happen, but Leslie would also get targeted, and she’d lose her job, or one of them could get physically attacked or worse.
Like, what the frick. You realize that’s what bigots believe about the people they’re bigoted against, right? Someone could just as easily say they HAD to turn all those lgbt people away from the homeless shelter they run, because it’s ‘crush or be crushed’. After all, those lgbt people are merciless! And they could even BELIEVE it. And yet, their actions wouldn’t be right either way.
Right now, the GOP is poised on day one to pass legislation to make it illegal for individuals like me to hold employment, to hold housing, or to receive medical care. It is called the First Amendment Defense Act.
At the same time, they are seeking to eliminate what little healthcare those like me receive, which will massively increase suicide rates and death rates of trans individuals who are relying on HRT for survival.
And they have been passing various bills directly aimed at large scale harassment of the community, making it almost impossible to survive in public spaces, introducing legislation that lays literal bounties on trans individuals seeking to pee (interestingly enough, when you end up homeless because your landlord can kick you out just for being trans, the only legal places available to pee are public spaces), and even trying to pass legislation in Texas that would require schools to out their trans and queer students to their parents even when those parents are violent or abusive.
LGBT people have no similar power over the homophobes. Nor are we seeking that power in any way.
We are merely attempting to survive a hostile force that actually enjoys driving us to suicide because they view us as literal monsters and because they couldn’t possibly even be bothered to pretend to respect us.
And that’s all before noting all the nazis cackling about sending us (yes, us, directly, by name sometimes) to death camps (no literally, my trans fiancee has coworkers “joking” at them all the time about how they are going to divide up all their video games when they’re thrown in the camps).
So yeah, someone adopting defensive posture of “no quarter” is not even remotely the same thing. And never will be.
Sorry I snapped. Obviously I understand it’s in the best interests of the bigoted establishment to narrow down ‘acceptable’ options to protest their bigotry. Even with peaceful protest, you need to rock the boat to get attention and results. I just feel like outing people is crossing the line even when they’re, well, in the position Robin is here.
I don’t think it’ll come to that in comic, mind, because Robin’s ability to keep even PRETENDING she agrees with where that leads is crumbling fast, but…
I think basically what bothers me is the implication some people give that outing is ever a GOOD thing to do. It’s not, any more than killing someone is, even though the scale is different. However, sometimes circumstances line up such that a person is forced to kill someone else in self-defense or immediate defense of others, so maybe you could argue the same could happen with outing. But it’s still never going to be a GOOD act.
That’s absolutely a fair line to have and it’s good to know where your lines are and what boundaries you refuse to cross for either self-survival or in protest.
I think that everyone deserves privacy and respect up until the point that they consistently try to wrest human rights away from minority groups. When a rabidly anti-gay politician (not Robin, but real world members of the House and Senate) get caught sucking dick in the bathroom, the right thing to do is to publish it.
In this case, I think speaking with Robin before releasing the photo is the right thing to do. I hope that she doesn’t publish the photo immediately. If Robin repents of past wrong doings, that would more than satisfy my need for justice.
That is true – I can see Kyle trying to frame it as ‘two lady friends taking a hungover selfie, hahaha, isn’t that so funny, Robin never do that again, drunk reps are bad reps’.
A lot of comments saying that you shouldn’t out someone bc their not nice, and I truly get their point. As a lesbian, I abhor the idea of outting someone bc you don’t like them, but you have to realize, Robin could kill ppl with that legislation. Did y’all hear when Leslie said she was homeless and could have starved? This is the sort of thing where there is always a grey area, but I stand on the side that protects as many LGBT from homelessness and starvation as possible
Uh, about potentially “leaking” that picture. You know, that’d probably be one of the worse things she can do, since.
-Robin camp’s fan won’t believe it. I mean, look at the recent US and British votes, do you honestly trust people care about facts ?
-They will also try to harass and smear Leslie any way they can, including trying to get her fired and attacked. Again, lot of recent RL examples to fetch from.
So, no, she won’t distribute that picture, if only as a matter of self preservation.
Exactly. We now live in a political climate where partisanship outweighs blatant hypocrisy. It’ll be discredited/ignored, because Robin has the right letter next to her name. Just like all of a certain other someone’s indiscretions were rendered meaningless.
Also, preventing Robin’s re-election won’t have the desired effect of stopping anti-LGBTQ legislation in its tracks. She’s not the only one advocating for such things, and she’s clearly not even a true believer. Probably the best move here would be to try to get Robin to change her stance on the issue. Maybe self-interest, plus “I have a lesbian friend who I like” will be enough to tip the scales.
Time to find out if Leslie believes the ends justify the means! I don’t think she’d release that photo unless she understood that Robin was too far gone to stop killing her own. The problem arrives when you consider what a scandal like that could do to destroy the life that Leslie’s fought so hard to live, and just who is going to replace Robin once she’s inevitably forced out of Congress. Cutting off the head of an evil hydra still leaves you with an evil hydra, after all.
The Joe and Roz thing was different. That was an actual video of them having sex. And it Roz posted it online. And half of the problem was that it reflected badly on Robin’s finely crafted “family values” political persona.
This picture doesn’t contain any nudity. Yes, Leslie could still ruin Robin’s career with it, but all we know is that she took it. We don’t know if Leslie is going to release it to the public.
I’d really like to know how Robin got there. That’s a potentially awkward story. Whether Leslie posts that or not, that’s at least “not cool.” I get that Leslie is angry, but: a) I doubt Robin would want someone to have a picture like that anyway, that’s a bit uncomfortable for a “first-night drunken sleepover” between acquaintances, and b) it’s at least unethical to try and force someone’s sexuality out into public via outing or blackmail. Even if Robin’s politics are bad, she’s still a person.
And, as tempting as it would be to wreck Robin’s career if it would help, there’s no guarantee it WOULD help. It would certainly have serious backlash on Leslie, Robin’s campaign will try to discredit the photo (“Leslie posed her” “she was passed out drunk”, etc.), and other politicians could use that as fuel for worse things.
I’m not being cute here. From a realpolitik standpoint, at /best/ all you’ve done is ruin one politician’s life. In all probability, they’ll /still/ do heterosexist, cissexist bullshit tot ry to make amends with their base. Whether or not this fails, as it often does, it doesn’t matter. That electorate is still there, and still heterosexist and cissexist.
And as your reward for doing nothing, you’ll weaken the idea that decent people don’t out people (and most people think of themselves as decent people). Great. Glad you accomplished less than nothing.
Even if outing her would help, which I agree, it probably won’t- it’d be nice to think a politician being found in a hypocritical situation would do something, but that often isn’t the case- there’s still the fact that outing is ethically dicey at best. Yes, Leslie might politically help, and I understand and sympathize with that goal. But it’s still a personally compromising ethical decision. If Robin finds out about this, it could kill any trust she has in Leslie. It could push Robin into more extreme policies. It could really jeopardize Leslie’s career and relationships with her students. Leslie is kind of getting leverage from Robin’s drunken decisions(not assault or anything, of course, but a “You got drunk and trusted me, and I got an incriminating picture out of it”), which is uncomfortable. I don’t think Leslie is a TERRIBLE MALICIOUS PERSON for wanting the photo, or even potentially doing something with it to stop bad policy. But it still isn’t a harmless act. Even with the best intentions, there will still be damage, not just to Robin’s bad political platforms, but to Robin and Leslie (and others) as people.
” It could push Robin into more extreme policies.”
er, most definitely not this. Robin supports anti-LGBT legislation because her electorate does, not because it aligns with her personal views. It doesn’t. She doesn’t want LGBT people to come to harm, even if it’s a ‘lalalala cant hear youuuu’ kind of ‘benevolence’. I doubt she will suddenly want to just to spite personally Leslie, particularly given how VERY BI she herself is.
Robin is bi, and might not have seen the blatant effects of her policies, but she’s also not above doing what she needs to stay in office, such as support anti-LGBT policies and avoid confronting the consequences, and insistently deny that she is bisexual. Maybe this was a wake up call for her, but people do drastic things when they feel backed into a corner (the way Leslie is doing), so if Leslie were to out her or try to blackmail her? I don’t think Robin is completely above overcompensating or letting her managers overcompensate to save her political reputation for her supporters, even if she personally doesn’t agree with the policies, especially if Leslie forces her into that position after Robin trusted her.
The “random” gravatar is algorithmically determined from a hash of the email address you provide. Even just changing the capitalization will give you another spin on the roulette wheel.
Oh, this is going to be messy. It’s going to get very messy, very quickly. Because no day in the life of DoA characters is truly complete until some very messy drama happens.
Pretty sure Robin is well known enough to not be confused for her younger sister whom’s five minutes of fame were used on hurting her sister and as a result is associated with Robin, plus Leslie knew of Robin before Roz considering this is Roz’s first year here and Leslie voted against Robin in the previous election.
Panel One: Ohhh, Leslie. She looks very surprised and very freaked out here. Very much ‘what the hell are you doing here’. I don’t blame her for checking if she’s dreaming. This is definitely a shock for her. And it adds to my questions about what the fuck Robin is doing here. Did Leslie let her in, thinking she was dreaming and now realizing she’s not? In the course of doing so, did they screw?
And also, Robin is a heavy sleeper. I wake up fairly quickly if touched. But nah, Robin’s sleeping like a rock here.
Panel Two: And here is Leslie’s freak out. Robin is here, in her bed. After last night, that has to be a shock. And potentially could mean that something very emotionally unhealthy happened last night. Plus there are consequences and running for Congress and oh jesus christ what happened, there’s so many factors and Leslie is terrified with them running through her brain.
Panel Three: And then the reality of the situation hits her. Robin is not just a congresswoman – she’s the congresswoman who can very well get people killed. Or homeless. Or lose civil rights. And embolden homophobes. And Leslie knows the consequences of those things all too well. She’s seen folks starve to death. Do you know what happens when a person starves to death? It’s horrific. And that is on Robin for supporting the legislation that helps things like that happen.
Panel Four: Leslie is definitely out of it here. She is in shock and her options hit her. It’s not something she seems to like, but it’s an option out there.
Panel Five: She seems…kind of sad and kind of nervous as well as angry here. She is not happy with Robin, but she knows how dangerous outing can be. On the other hand, Robin is not a teenager dependant on their family to stay alive. She is not someone who’s been thrown out into the world and needs to find food, a house, documents, a job, etc. on short notice. She is independently wealthy and would likely remain so for some time even if she lost election. She can fall back on whatever her degree is in. She could be a veteran and have a pension. She could just keep comfortable on her money while she finds a job. Robin would have access to lobbyists and her supportive family, like Roz, who could point her towards LGBT+ resources. She’s probably got legal contacts that could put any attackers in a cell. It’d be bad – but it’d be better odds than the kids Leslie knew had.
Panel Six: And now Leslie is ANGRY. Robin made a career partially out of screwing LGBT+ folks over. She refuses to listen. And now she’s somehow ended up in bed with her, what the fuck?
Panel Seven: Aaaaaaand the clicker. I take back what I said about this storyline being less dramatic. Fuuuuuck.
I don’t know how I feel about this. And frankly, how I feel about this is irrelevant. I’m a straight cis girl. I don’t get to decide how the LGBT+ community goes about it’s business and politics with each other. I will admit most of my education has been from anti-outing folks, but I understand what people like Cerb are saying and there have been positive affects from exposing hypocritical bigots.
I wonder what her plan is and what is going on with this. It makes me nervous though.
Robin definitely sleeps like me. Partners have been shocked the sort of things I’ve happily slept through.
And yes, the starvation thing is critical. The things a body does when it starves to death. It’s nightmare inducing. Leslie witnessed that stuff first or second-hand. That’s some major demons to deal with.
And yes on your panel 6 analysis. That’s important that Leslie has shown grace at every step, but now? She’s screwed folks like her over, shown disrespect to those she’s hurt and those Leslie has lost, refused to listen or absorb her thoughtful kind advice, and possibly has just broken into her home to demand more of her emotional care at fuck-o-clock in the morning.
Yeah, I think Leslie’s done playing around and being kind.
I am a medium sleeper. I’ll probably sleep through talking but touch me and I will bolt out of bed and probably slap you (general you, not you Cerberus) because what the fuck do not surprise me when I’m sleeping/waking up.
YUP. We’re looking at your body breaking muscles and tissue to keep the vitals going, vitamin deficiency causing diarrhea, rashes, edema, and heart failure, atrophy, dehydration, painful movements, fungal infections in your THROAT, cells will cannibalize molecules to get amino acids, hallucinations, and I’m sure it gets worse. This is not a pleasant way to go.
And what action this end of niceties will cause is going to be a thing to watch.
Panel 1: That face, she’s not just surprised as her eyebrows show, but that deep frown and glare… whatever this moment is, it is not a happy one. So if this was the morning after sexy times, they are sexy times she deeply regrets and feels sickened by.
Panel 2: And assuming this isn’t a pleasant wake-up, this panel becomes deeply relatable. I don’t know how many times I’ve woken up in the last month or so wishing everything had been a dream, that this isn’t actually our reality.
And if this is negative, then this moment must feel so bitter and sour. She’s probably had fantasies about this moment, waking next to the congresswoman… or rather waking up next to the fantasy she could be made to represent in her sexual hopes. But this is wrong and unwanted. A dream poisoned by the reality of what a bigot she is and how hard she closed that door or tried to close that door the night before regardless of whether or not her will failed.
Panel 3: I love the hands cringing, the voice shaking. It communicates her almost raw terror at this moment. And that focus at the beginning. That matters.
She’s not just a bigot, she’s a bigot with power who tried to use that power to harm queer youth and in a few short months in comic, will be/have been using that power to hurt them much more directly and in a much more intensely lasting manner.
And that feeds into the second half. There’s a lot of debate about the ethics of outing as you can see if you scroll up, but there’s a practicality to this information. Robin is in a hotly contested race and her opponent has her on the ropes. A scandal this close to election could push the tide, shorten the buffer between the worst laws possible and something survivable and make it so a few defectors could save a lot of lives.
Leslie I doubt that Photo’s gonna carry much weight. I mean…barely anyone knows who you are. I doubt they’d immediately figure out you’re a lesbian. As long as we’re staging photos you might want to get a bit more scanty or at least a bit more touchy feely. Because right now it looks like you’re just taking a selfie of you and your friend after getting hung over. You don’t even look happy to be there. For all your viewers know you let her sleep in your bed and wanted to take a selfie with her when her guard was down.
I just say that to say, unless she’s usin’ the picture for personal reasons (y’know, wink wink nudge nudge say no more) I don’t think it’ll be very useful.
you underestimate the power of political propaganda and just how easily angered the extremist right wing nutcases are. Leslie sends this photo to Robin’s political opponents with a message saying “btw I’m lesbian” and said opponents will make that shit go viral with all sorts of scandalous theories. In a closely contested election where Robin’s main appeal is “I’m straight and hate the gays” a propaganda storm with an image like this would DESTROY her. It doesn’t take much to provoke the right wing bigots to hate somebody, and the political propaganda machines are very good at provoking people using very little material
What Yotomoe said was that either far side of the political spectrum is easy to anger, which is straight-up fact, if only because it’s very easy to anger people who are open about things that make them angry. People who don’t have obvious angry-buttons are harder to anger.
In a closely contested election where Robin’s main appeal is “I’m straight and hate the gays”
Do we know that this the case? Is she running on the message of “I’ll protect you from teh gays”, or is she running on some other message, and just going along with the other Republicans? In the former case, I’d think she would have been more glib with her rationalizations. Or more defiantly refuse to make any.
We know that Robin’s constituency has a lot of bigots. Roz threatening to make out with other girls to get out of being dragged to that rally gives a strong hint as to their feelings about gay people
Perhaps normally, but this is at a time where their campaigns are running. To release it now wouldn’t only just cause a scandal but also give a weapon to her enemies.
Panel 4: And the weight of that hits her like a tank engine. As I noted above, there’s no way she hasn’t been haunted and shamed by the names and faces of those who did not survive the streets she lived on for her time. Who starved to death around her, who froze during the winter, who took their life in an alleyway or overdosed on drugs trying to cope with the pain and loss.
That that hasn’t been weighing on her every time she tries to paint an apolitical fantasy of a life with Robin.
Panels 5 and 6: And we see the rage and hurt of that rise up beautifully. By Panel 6, she feels their deaths on her conscience and feels the rage of being a hurt and scared 18 year old on the streets with no hope because of the type of bigots that form Robin’s base of support.
And that’s not a small thing. Robin is not just a bigoted politician, she is running specifically on “family values”, a platform based entirely on the open hatred of LGBT folks, women, and religious minorities. That’s hitting hard.
And hitting harder if Robin actually did sneak in as some suspected yesterday or got her impaired. Because a major boundary has been crossed after she already stated the full weight of her disapproval and why a romantic relationship between them couldn’t work and would feel like a betrayal.
Panel 7: I said above this is not a choice she is making casually and she’s got a lot of time to rethink between this moment and a moment of sending it to a media source.
And we see that on her face. That frown, that thousand-yard stare. This isn’t joyous revenge or cold calculation or moral certainty. This is doubt even in the act of whether this is even the right thing.
And even if she does decide that this is necessary for the greater good, it is a sacrifice of her self. She would risk the faculty position she has been fighting for so long for. She would definitely lose her privacy and open herself to the full hateful obsession of her fanbase who would see her as a demonic interloper spreading lies about their leader who “says it like it is”.
And that may end up costing her her life. I mean, in this universe, Robin is extremely Trump-like and we know what Trump’s fans are like and what they did or threatened to do against everyone who tried to warn the world about our new Hitler-in-chief.
And just like in reality, it’s hard to know if this is the right call to make or a line too far.
And Leslie’s going to have to battle a lot of personal demons to make that final call one way or another.
My read on DoA!Robin is that she’s more passively anti-LGBT than actively. She’s not doing anything to make anything better, she’s not supporting any LGBT causes, she’s positioned herself as a “Family Values” candidate, she’ll almost certainly vote party line…
…but that doesn’t mean she’s actively seeking to do LGBT people harm. She’s not a leader, she’s a “Yes Man”, she does what the party says because that’s what keeps her in office, and maybe she does one or two things on her own initiative… but we’ve literally seen zero specific causes she champions. Take her down and she’ll be replaced by another party-line dullard that rolls off the assembly line.
…so, the question is… what would blackmailing or exposing Robin actually accomplish? Maybe 2 years of the district being swung Blue if it comes out at the right point? Maybe?
Well, we know she’s taken an active role in anti-LGBT legislation, though not out of any real conviction, more out of pandering to what she perceives as her base as a “family values” candidate.
She’s actually an interesting form of bigoted politician, because it doesn’t even have the dignity of being personal animus that drives it. It’s just LGBT folks are the convenient scapegoat for the much more important task of getting her re-elected.
And, afterwards, an even more hard-right ‘real conservative’ chosen to replace her who will not be passively anti-LGBT but actively and angrily so; drop DeSanto, get Pense.
FWIW, I got the impression that Robin’s problem is that she’s something of an empty suit. She uses the rhetoric of the right but, ultimately, lacks any significant substance let alone plausible amounts of sincerity. She is just someone reading off an autocue and comes across as someone reading an autocue. The whole ‘genuineness’ thing comes into play here.
My guess is that Robin’s numbers aren’t good amongst ‘likely voters’ for that reason. As was evidently the case with Trump, the election may be decided not on who wins the argument or even who can inspire people to turn up to vote for them. Rather it will be decided by which party will have more voters abstain because as much as they hate the opponent, they cannot put a tick by their party’s candidate no matter how hard they try.
IIRC it was mentioned in a strip earlier that Jake Manley was making serious inroads into Robin’s support, so there’s at least some textual evidence to support the idea that Robin’s own support isn’t deep.
You’re missing the point. Failure to motivate the base is what led to Trump. Basically, it means that, in two years time, Bloomington is a Red Landslide with a Trumpist.
So you’re on the “keep her in power because even though she’s trying to pass laws that might kill you, she’s not all that good at it” side?
And don’t try to change her either, since that also leads to her getting booted out of office. Robin’s the best you can get so LGBTQ folks should support her for fear of someone worse?
Fucking everything is “why Trump won”. Climate change, BLM, identity politics (ie “trying to make bigots feel bad about it”), goddamn emails, her charitable foundation which actually gave to charity, and now “failure to motivate her base”?
Complete fucking bullshit. She won the popular vote by a landslide. Gerrymandering and shit media coverage focused on ratings instead of truth are why she lost. Strategic mistakes were made, but there was no single, fatal flaw to blame.
No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that the current path has only led to both sides getting further and further apart. Madness is defined as continually doing something that doesn’t work and an ever more segmented and violently divided nation is something that doesn’t work.
I’m not smart enough to know what the better option is but it is increasingly clear that both sides becoming entrenched and militant is most assuredly not it.
You say “identity politics” is about trying to make bigots feel bad about their bigotry, but that’s not how “identity politics” is being perceived. What is being perceived for “identity politics” is that it’s about saying that X identity is good, and Y identity is bad. “Nonwhite is good, and white is bad”. “Trans is good and cis is bad”. “Female is good, and male is bad”.
Dividing people into the good oppressed and the bad oppressors, based on the characteristics of their birth, rather than actual acts of oppression they commit. That in any conflict/dispute between two people, one doesn’t have to judge the facts, one can just take a look at the people’s races/genders/sexualities and side with the one who’s in the appropriate “oppressed” category. Is a white person disagreeing with a black person on an issue of race? Then obviously the white person is wrong, and the black person is right. Is a woman disagreeing with a man on an issue of genders? Then obviously the woman is right and the man is wrong. You don’t have to know what their opinions actually are, you don’t have to use arguments, you already know who to support based on who the people are!
That may be how it’s perceived on the right, but that’s not actually what anyone is working for. That’s a perspective pushed by right wing media, think tanks and talk radio jocks, that’s soaked over into the mainstream. It’s bullshit. It’s the same kind of smear campaign that’s always been used against any marginalized group trying to claim their rights.
Meanwhile, the people who actually believe “white is good and nonwhite is bad” are cheering on the winner of the presidential election as one of them.
That’s certainly how the right likes to spin it, but that doesn’t match what the left is actually saying and doing. It is utter horseshit.
There is probably more that could have been done to counter that spin, but there’s only so much that can be done before you fall into the trap of constantly being on the defensive and letting the other side control the narrative.
In any case, the blame for that perception belongs entirely to right-wing media. There the ones painting Black Lives Matters protesters as violent thugs, peaceful Muslims as terrorist sleeper agents, the LGBT community as whiny, mentally ill perverts, and people who are actually mentally ill as entitled, ungrateful drags on society.
None of those interpretations are valid points of view. They’re not based on fact, nor being made in good faith. It’s nothing but gas-lighting and rationalizations.
On the flip side, the same pretty much applies to her changing her attitude and supporting LGBTQ rights – she’ll lose her base and be replaced by a more extreme Republican. Depending on the timing, you might get a couple years with her on the right side or a Democrat slipping in. You might also just have her lose the primary.
None of that means that opposing anti-LGBTQ politicians isn’t a good thing.
Actually, there really isn’t much reason to think she’d get booted for not hating LGBTQ+ folks – this district goes back and forth all the time. It’s hardly the paragon of Republicanism Robin thinks it is. If she put effort in, she could definitely swing this election, and if Robin puts effort into ANYTHING, it’s getting elected.
She’d get booted for not hating LGBTQ+ folks because she’s a Republican. She’d probably lose a primary to a more extreme one and she’d likely lose the general when her base is demoralized by her taking sides with the sinners and the Democratics will keep voting for the Democrat who probably already is at least decent on LGBTQ rights.
Just because the district goes back and forth doesn’t mean she can suddenly switch which group of voters will back her.
If she was well entrenched incumbent with years of constituent service and a record of bringing pork back home, she might be able to survive switching parties. It’s rare though.
That is true. It’d be easier to be ‘the Republican who doesn’t hate LGBT+ folks’ if she was just starting her campaign now, rather than trying to change in the middle. Not ‘easy’, I’m sure, but ‘easier’.
Suppose that Leslie’s going to have second, third, fourth, and twenty-eighth thoughts before outing Robin.
And suppose she’ll ask Roz for advice, because Roz is about the only person she CAN ask for advice without outing Robin. (Okay, probably not, but conservation of characters.) Which… might not be cool given the teacher-student relationship, but that’s not the point.
What I want to hear people weigh in on is, what advice would Roz give?
Not so sure about that. She could also be planning to be more crafty, and use it in a blackmail fashion. She is manipulative and sneaky.
That said, the one thing I would not expect is for her to get all upset and argue that outing people is wrong. I may not think well of her integrity, but she clearly knows you have to fight for your rights. You don’t have the luxury of creating a set of steadfast rules you never violate regardless of the circumstances.
Granted, part of that is just that she’s not the type to get caught up in moral quandaries. I on the other hand am convinced that outing a hypocritical homophobic politician is the right thing to do.
It never even occurred to me otherwise until I read some comments on this site, and nothing here has been remotely convincing. There is no “except if they’re gay” to the duty to out a hypocritical politician. They are our representatives.
(I might now quibble on outing just an average Joe.)
I have to agree, you have to balance what’s good for an individual against what’s good for society, and every outed politician has to potential to erode some social conservatives’ belief in their positions.
That I’m not so sure about. It’s possible, but she’d never even hinted it to Leslie, which would make it a betrayal of her as well.
IIRC, she’s said that the hope was that Robin would listen to Leslie in a way that she wouldn’t listen to Roz. I’ve assumed that the real plan was that Robin actually hooking up with Leslie would be admitting her bisexuality to herself and that would lead to her changing.
Scariest thing here is that Leslie apparently has no idea how Robin got there. I hope that she at least checks out Robin’s side of the story before doing something with that photo. Because I think she really needs to find out what is even going on first. This is no way lines up with where we had left them. Did Robin get so drunk that the barman, who might know Leslie if she’s a regular there, phoned her and asked her to take her somewhere? But then surely Leslie would remember this? Unless she went home and drank further herself, getting to the state where the best course of action that her brain could come up with was… take Robin home, dump her in her bed, get in same bed, sleep?
I feel like comics like this are really good for making me feel extremely old for having been on the ground during the Bush years and the fights for queer rights that occurred during them.
It’s weird seeing how quickly people seem to forget how viciously queer people had to fight for even basic human rights (or really how any marginalized group had to fight for that matter). Like, people are so quick to pretend it was some peaceful, kumbaya drum circle deal and not a protracted and unpleasant battle where we had to fight tooth and nail for every concession of our humanity.
Yeah, and times we had to get nasty simply to survive.
Like, Pride’s origins are a black trans woman living on the streets throwing a brick at a police officer arresting her and others. We’ve had to scrap to survive. Our origins are rooted in that.
…… okay, I’ve finally come to a decision about the morality of outing people at the intersection of queer, homophobic, and powerful.
And that decision is: Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma.
If you’re not familiar with this game (and I’d guess a lot of people here are; it’s one of the most popularized parts of game theory), the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a scenario wherein two parties are given a chance to turn on each other and profit in doing so. They are both better off if both cooperate rather than if both defect, but there is no scenario in which any individual is better off for having cooperated than for having defected. We can imagine models in which the players value additional immaterial elements like loyalty or somesuch to such a degree that it throws off the basic assumptions of the game, but if so then the game isn’t really the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The only rational solution for the players is for them to both defect, and thus the collective outcome is the worst possible.
Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma is just the Prisoner’s Dilemma played over, and over, and over, and over… but the result is actually the opposite. Unlike in the normal Prisoner’s Dilemma, where the only rational solution is to defect, in the Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma, the rational solution is to repeatedly cooperate. It’s possible to arrive at a sort of cooperative truce, because there exists the possibility of long-term mutual benefit that is absent in the normal Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The problem is, what do you do when the other player defects? When they’d rather screw you over for their own benefit?
What you DON’T do, at least not for more than a few rounds, is just sit there choosing to cooperate while your (suddenly) opponent keeps screwing you over. Being a perpetual pushover does NOT move the game into a pattern of stable, mutually-profitable equilibrium. That’s a strategy for nothing except being shit on. This is something that I think liberals in this country by and large fail to see.
The only thing that works is to punch back. To make them suffer in return. To instill in them, bone-deep, the realization that if they hurt you, they will be hurt in turn.
And yes, when they get whipped out of the pattern of selfish betrayal and back into mutually-beneficial behavior, accept them back into the fold and (perhaps with some glowers and mistrust) and get back to mutual coexistence as best possible. That’s not revenge. That’s the only path to ending the abuse.
But don’t delude yourself into thinking that they will get back to a place of coexistence unless you force them back there. People like that are legitimate targets, because drawing and holding a hard line against certain behavior is the only deterrent to be had.
Maybe give Robin a few days or a few hard conversations to change her ways, just in case. But if that doesn’t work?
Out her, Leslie. Out her hard.
(So opines a straight cis white man, so who knows how much I’m qualified to speak on this.)
I agree with you, and as for your last sentence, I hope nobody has ever told you that you couldn’t speak because of who you are. That’s the opposite of what progress should be about. The only qualification you need is knowledge, and you clearly have that in spades. 🙂
Everyone has the right to their opinion, but not everyone’s opinion holds the same weight. For instance, I’m cis, so I don’t experience transphobia. Since I don’t experience transphobia, I should probably shut my talk hole regarding how people should feel and respond to it (barring things like mass murder, etc. that are obviously wrong). Sure, I can learn more about it from people who do experience it and use their experiences and the facts they give me to try to educate people or call them out as necessary, and I can try to help, but since I’m not the one the transphobia is aimed at, the discussion reaaaaaaallllllllllyyyyyy doesn’t need to be about my feelings or opinions about the situation. The people that transphobia gets aimed at deserve the centre spot on that talk.
That’s definitely true to an extent, but I feel like people discount the value of an outside perspective. As a gay guy, I can’t tell you what my problems look like from the outside. I can’t tell you how straight people are going to react to a gay character or perceive gay stereotypes. Part of a solid, thorough understanding of a subject includes not just personal experience, but also more distant perspectives. Sometimes I may not be able to remain objective, see the forest through the trees. There’s value in that.
Well, sure, but then you get into the discussion about whether it’s more important to please outside members of the group or be authentic to the actual group and whose reactions you value more to the portrayal (ex. I’d be pissed if people played epilepsy inaccurately to be more appealing to non-epileptics rather than accuracy and listened to people saying it was funny over epileptics saying this is really lousy writing of epilepsy).
People outside a group have their place, but it’s definitely not in the centre of the rights discussions.
First hand experience isn’t the only kind of knowledge. Sometimes it’s helpful to seek the perspective of someone who knows about a situation but isn’t personally entangled in it. Do you discount the opinion of psychologists because they don’t have the same neurodivergencies as the people they help. Should sociologists and anthropologists just quit because they aren’t part of the groups they describe?
There is a trend in discourse right now of shutting people out of conversations, creating echo chambers and academic in-groups. That feels very dangerous to me.
We’ll see just how ruthless and tough Leslie can be by what she does with that picture. Me, I’m guessing that she’ll threaten to use it, agonise privately over whether it’s fair or right to do so and then secretly delete it.
Meanwhile, we still don’t know what Robin is doing there other than the fact that Leslie clearly doesn’t know what she’s doing there either.
Shit. Huh. On the one hand, I’m not ok with outing anyone ever but I can also understand Leslie’s desire here. Although I’m hoping she just takes the picture to send to Robin whenever Robin starts spouting off anti lgbt stuff. Not to out her but remind Robin about what she’s saying.
Well, if it’s just to remind Robin that she’s part of that whole LGBTQ thing, then it’s not blackmail.
Blackmail requires demands and threats. Not just a picture.
It could be taken as such, since it could be read as an implicit threat to release the photo if she didn’t stop spouting off, but it also could just be a nudge at her conscience.
I mean, they’re both fully clothed (pajama’d?) So I dunno if she “slept” with her in the sexual sense. Honestly missing the context of what happened between the bar and now dont help matters
My own thoughts, from a position of admitted privilege:
Go ahead and fight the monsters; somebody has to. But like the man says, be real careful you don’t become one in the process. (You are, supposedly, the more enlightened and aware person in the transaction, so it’s on you to watch out for that.) If you can defeat the enemy without using the enemy’s worst moves, you should probably at least try first. And if at any point hurting and punishing the bad becomes more important than helping and protecting the good, you’ve lost the fight.
I’m thinking that this entire arc will be a Leslie self-discovery arc wherein she learns that, yes, she can be a monster and she has to decide whether she likes the face she sees in the mirror as a result.
People assume the selfie is for revenge, or perhaps encouraging Robin to change. What about insurance, in case Robin–someone with a history of doing things that harm LGBT people–tries to harm her?
Robin doesn’t strike me as that sort of personality – She doesn’t seem capable of that level of conscious and contemplative malice. Malice through total absence of thought, yes; dliberate malice, no.
Her staff probably are capable of it but would drop her like a red hot coal in the event they do not believe they could make any potential problem go away in a way that didn’t make the headlines.
In any case, what could they say that would surprise anyone? That Leslie is openly homosexual? Everyone already knows that. That she was married once, that it imploded and that she was disowned by her family? Again; no secret. The only card is the use of force and Leslie is too public a figure for that to be plausible a solution, no matter how deniable it is.
Well, lemme try again, because that was FAR more dismissive than I wanted it to be. That would be interesting, but I don’t think it’s supported by the facts as they are on the ground. Leslie isn’t and has never been afraid of Robin, because despite being a lesbian she’s in a decent enough position that she’s insulated from a lot of the effects of Robin’s callous policy-making. And Leslie’s expression here has much more of a ‘taking advantage of an opportunity’ feel to it.
But then, I’ll also admit that I’m just done with Robin as a character and have been for some time, and what bothers me is that this latest act is sort of making me done with Leslie by extension.
I can’t blame Leslie for taking that picture as “insurance”, because you never know. I don’t think she has inmediate plans to use it, but better to have it.
Because she’s already shown she is at best wholly uninterested in changing if not actively opposed to it and her continued activities as an anti-LGBTQ politician pose an existential threat to queer people (especially queer youths) which outing or blackmailing her could very possibly end. How could she? Because she values the actual safety of queer children over abstract morals.
Except if Robin doesn’t work the “traditional family” value angle someone else will, it got her voted in so it’s proven to work. If Leslie took down Robin it will shake the foundations a little but that’s it really. I think it’s better to enlighten Robin than just throw her out otherwise nothing really changes.
I doubt the photo will be used by Leslie though, above all else Leslie values her principles and standards and very rarely compromises them especially since the only time she has (by letting Robin into the class) she regretted it. To use this photo to blackmail or just outright screw over Robin would compromise her integrity as well lower herself to the “enemies” level because you’d be using someone elses sexuality as a weapon.
Besides we don’t even know why Robin is there, it could change the entire context of this.
As most others here have been saying, this is a SMART move, but I wouldn’t say it’s a GOOD (in a moral sense) one. I trust Leslie enough to think that she wouldn’t leverage it as blackmail unless she had to protect herself from fallout, but I really hope that Leslie never has cause to use it, because this sort of act is really not much different from creeps uploading revenge porn of their partners.
“The greater good” is a fine bit of sophistry to make, but we can talk real and immediate threats here. North Carolina’s current wave of anti-democratic people-hating policies is going to kill people. President Trump is going to kill people – his own constituents, for hurting no one. I believe one gay man was beaten to death in the street already by November 10. It’s safe to assume Robin over the next two years is similarly going to pursue legislation that will get people killed.
If she can’t be reasoned with, torpedoing her campaign is the only way to potentially keep those people alive for the next two years. The personal convenience to Robin of maintaining her hypocrisy is worth less than several peoples’s lives.
So much for ethical calculus. But, Leslie knows this and we have no reason to believe she can’t try to sit Robin down and teach her. The picture may be to help Robin remember, or in worst case help keep her honest. At least that was my thought, as a boy so innocent the idea of “revenge” didn’t cross my mind before I read the comments above.
I can see where this is going – she’ll either post it (thus violating personal rights for photos) or she’ll threaten her to post it online, trying to make Robin see her errors.
But Leslie that’s no way to do that! It’s something I’d expect from a teenager, not from a grown-up woman, regardless of how threatening Robin’s agenda might be.
It’s so… political 🙁
(On a side note, I understand that this is still a very likely scenario, and of course, if the world’s unfair to you, be unfair back is a rather logical choice – though unethical imo)
… that’s a rather interesting statement. Because “being fair back” sounds more like “retaliation for what other people did to me”. So per se I’d say it’s still “unfair” because Leslie doesn’t do it to the people who did something to her but to Robin, who -yes- here has the role of those people – but is also an individual who did not have anything to do with Leslie’s past. And it’s still unethical. So where’s the line drawn? Can I start bullying some children because they are bullying another child and I was bullied in my past? Where would you draw the line?
…Wow. No, Leslie! TBH I’m a bit nervous to read the comments today because I know a lot of people hate Robin for her politics, but forcible outing is wrong no matter who the victim is or what the rationale. I really respect Leslie, and I hope my interpretation of the reason for her selfie are incorrect. ☹️
I can understand that. Doesn’t mean though that it’s in the description of my personal ethics, which is basically based on “Don’t do unto others what you wouldn’t want them do to you”. Doesn’t always apply, but it’s a good basic concept. In the case above, I’d be more about showing Robin face-to-face what her politics could cause. I think Robin’s doing what she does because she can perfectly well ignore the probable results of her agenda, since she doesn’t know anyone who’d be affected by it personally. It’d probably affect her in some way to bring her to a homeless shelter or showing her the hate – but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should FORCE her to encounter it on her own behalf – it IS a life-changing thing. A stupid comparison but imo a possible reference: Compare it to knowing a friend of yours drives after consuming alcohol, and you let him go and wish him “that something happens” or that he’ll be “stopped by the police” just because he’s a danger to others and himself and your first moral talk didn’t ring with him.
I think we’d agree that trying to talk more to him would be a better option, and only in the worst case scenario you could call the police and tell them about it. But that should be your last option, not your first.
But I’m also overly-sensitive, empathetic and naïve, and if I weren’t blessed with the family and friends I have, I’d probably be dead already because of my emotional sensitivity, so…
Well, it seems I did not express well what I meant. And the example I provided is not that related, so I probably did not describe it the way I meant it. :/
My example above is addressing the fact that it’s not good to send someone on their way to drive home drunk, just because the first “You’re too drunk to drive” is done off with a “Ah, what do you know, I only had —- glasses of wine/beer/whiskey/whatever”, as mentioned here:
“…, and you let him go and wish him “that something happens” or that he’ll be “stopped by the police” just because he’s a danger to others and himself and your first moral talk didn’t ring with him..
I’m criticising the fact that the hypothetical “you” ‘gave up’ with their talk and just wishes their friend to err, even though they could have talked to them a bit more or stopped them from driving by taking away their keys, or offering them to drive them home (when not drunk themselves). I’m thus pointing out the fact that Leslie only had one-on-one talk with Robin once and she saw that Robin was deceiving herself somewhat. And then she wakes up with her next to herself and the first thing she makes is thinking about whether this is real, and then how she can take the situation towards her advantage. It irks me.
But of course I’d want my friend to be stopped when driving drunk – that is, if I ever befriend someone that’s irresponsible like that (which I usually don’t). Reminds me of this one time in the waiting room of an oculist as someone asked whether they should drive later (after getting pupil-widening drops into their eyes) and a man just answered “Yes, you can, I do that all the time.” I actually butted in telling them that they need to be careful, because the drops given after the examination don’t always work that well, depending on the person. But I’m drifting off here, sorry.
Yes, I emphasize with the victims – more than with most villains. I thought by stating that I am overly sensitive and emphatic this was made clear. I emphasize with all kinds of people, and I never even got the idea that someone would think I would only emphasize with villains, just because I stated my opinion on something going on in this comic strip where the victim and villain-roles seem to be interchanged by Leslie doing something which she obviously knows is not that good of an idea (I spot guilt feelings in the face she makes).
Woops, need to add something:
– Where I wanted to go with the oculist-thing: I could’ve kept my mouth shut and just hope they’d do the right thing. But I didn’t; I told them about the possible dangers (being easily blinded etc.). Still doesn’t fit that well in accordance to my other example (besides driving when actually you shouldn’t), but I thought I’d add this so that it at least makes a little sense.
– Aaaaand, there’s a typo in the last paragraph. Of course I wanted to write “empathetic” not “emphatic”. Sorry about that.
GAH, I should not write long comments right before going to sleep (I’m not American, this was written at about 2am)
– I also did not mean I “emphasize” with victims but of course “empathise” (such a stupid slip of my mind I cannot ignore and feel the need to correct)
That’s demonizing Robin a little, it’s not like she has no humanity and is purposefully hurting the LGBTQ community. She only does it to pander to the voters and likely doesn’t even realize how much her policies hurt others, she seemed to have believed that the church shouldn’t refuse others and that shelters have enough money so I’m guessing she hasn’t thought about it that much or how severe her policies hurt them as she wrote off the effect her bill would have had.
Not that she hasn’t done awful things and I wouldn’t vote for her but I’m saying that she isn’t a villain but someone that simply says what people want to hear but could be very easily changed.
She purposely hurts the LGBTQ community to pander to voters.
That she doesn’t care who gets hurt and has another motivation doesn’t change it from being purposeful. Look, you can even put them together in a sentence. No exclusivity there.
Villains reform sometimes. That doesn’t make them not villains.
And hey, if everything is perfectly fine for queer people, than outing her doesn’t harm her anyway–right? You can’t have it both ways here.
We don’t know to what extent Robin believes herself to be hurting them at all, we have never been shown how much Robin thinks she has and it matters whether or not Robin knows herself that she has been doing extreme damage. When brought up by Leslie in the bar Robin thought that the situation was better than it was, churches didn’t refuse and shelters had money which shows how ignorant Robin is of the reality for the community. We don’t know that doesn’t care because she’s heartless (which I doubt because she’s fine with gay people herself) or because she thinks she’s doing no damage which would change whether or not she would care when enlightened or woken up to the reality of the situation.
Calling her a villain is silly because I fully doubt she purposefully ever hurts anyone and just underestimates to what extent her actions have, which while horrible does change what she is and what she will do. It wouldn’t be a reform because it wouldn’t change who she is or what she believes just whether or not she will continue. I don’t see how anyone can think she’s done it to be malicious when every interaction with her is just pandering and maintaining her own image except when it came to interacting with Leslie.
It would be damaging to her career because of the angle she went for not for her as a person, to think that the context of when and where she is being outed doesn’t matter would be foolish. Robin’s in a unique position where being revealed as being gay or bi means more than just her own sexuality as she’s a representative.
That Robin doesn’t think about the people she’s hurting doesn’t change that she’s hurting them on purpose.
Calling her a villain is using words to accurately describe things. We know she purposely hurts people. It’s about the only thing we know about her.
She’s willing to get a lot of people killed to bolster her prestige, as long as she doesn’t have to look at it. Maybe that’s not malice; maybe it doesn’t matter.
It changes the context of her actions and as a result what we learn about her.
If she doesn’t think she’s really hurting them then why should she be vilified as a malicious heartless monster when really she made a mistake, a big one but still a mistake.
We also know she doesn’t believe her own politics, we know she slept in on her previous election indicating she doesn’t take it that seriously, we know that she didn’t think that her bill would seriously hurt anyone but we also DON’T know that she HAS hurt anyone. The only thing she has done to hurt others failed, everything else others like Leslie faced wasn’t because of Robin but because of the people before her and the church.
She doesn’t think she’s getting anyone killed so she’s hardly willing to.
She puts effort into not thinking about it. Of course she knows.
“I would like a new question please!”
I literally said she’s not malicious. You’re dishonest; why?
She’s not “vilified,” she’s a villain. She’s an evil fictional character opposing the protagonists. She could go in the dictionary as an example.
@Pat 4:45
Can’t reply…
She puts effort into not thinking about it. Of course she knows.
“I would like a new question please!”
She’s Robin and has always been like this even when it came to things that weren’t political. Her attention span is a well known flaw.
“I literally said she’s not malicious. You’re dishonest; why?”
You called her a villain, being malicious is an integral part of that. I’m not being dishonest to put it bluntly you just like twisting my words to suit your image of her.
“She’s not “vilified,” she’s a villain. She’s an evil fictional character opposing the protagonists. She could go in the dictionary as an example.”
…You know what you said makes no sense right? You’re vilifying her as a villain right now, you just said it yourself that she was one.
You say she’s evil but I don’t believe so and am not willing to go into why again with you as you’re intent on not listening which is fine.
Actively avoiding thinking about the victims of your actions is not related to attention span.
“You called her a villain, being malicious is an integral part of that.”
Do you just not read what I’m writing? Why are you replying if you’re not reading any of it?
“You’re vilifying her as a villain right now, you just said it yourself that she was one.”
Robin is a villain, Finale doesn’t know what “vilify” means, and Pat is suspecting this isn’t worth the effort. And you know she’s not real, right?
Blackmail/revenge only FEELS good. It really will only accomplish nothing but destroying one person who had a negligible amount of power to begin with. Robin isn’t “the enemy” (what a childish worldview btw), she’s just one cog in a system that was in place long before she was born.
You think you’re being righteous and hardcore, when you’re just trying to justify being an ass to people you don’t like.
If she isn’t “the enemy”, she’s been colluding with them in their attempts to pass laws which, as Leslie noted, would literally cost lives.
It doesn’t matter how damn long the system has worked like this, the system is monstrous. The only reason Robin doesn’t have actual blood on her hands (that we know of) is because that bill was defeated.
She herself might not be a irredeemable monster, but that doesn’t make her less of a threat NOW.
It’s true that the system is monstrous but Robin is just a small part of it and if it wasn’t her then it would be someone else.
She’s pandering a horrible message and ideology because it worked the first time so the problem that the LGBTQ community faces isn’t necessarily because of Robin but because it’s what the “people” wanted. If such policies weren’t popular in the first place then people wouldn’t use it in their campaigns, even people like Robin that don’t actually believe in it.
Anyone in Robin’s position will always be a threat but at least the person in her position IS Robin whom is someone that can be swayed if given the proper context.
The fact that her replacement MIGHT be worse is not a good reason to do nothing. Accepting the Devil You Know out of fear if the alternative is part of how the devils keep getting in.
And yes, Robin can almost certainly be made into an ally, if only because she lacks the attention span for dedicated evil, that doesn’t mean she’s not still an enemy. She continues to be only a potential convert, until that potential is realized.
I certainly hope Leslie won’t jump straight to outing Robin without looking at other options first, but I completely get why she would consider it
Well there is a good chance that the replacement would be worse, Robin only supports the traditional family value angle because it’s popular and easy but she doesn’t really believe in it. Whomever else replaces her could very easily actually believe in it and be far more active with such policies as opposed to Robin who only did it to keep the voters happy.
It’s really not a matter of attention span rather than Robin herself not believing in the cause, in the time she was in Congress she could have done so much more damage if she really wanted to push through the anti-LGBTQ agenda. Robin does have a terrible attention span but not when it came to things that matter to her.
I am 100% certain Leslie won’t. The Walkyverse! and Dumbiverses characters may be different people but their overall personalities as well as their insecurities as a result of them have stayed relatively the same. Leslie, at least in the Walkyverse, was always good at being able to see past what people represent and what they actually are ass we see with Jesus and to a greater extent eventually her own parents.
“The Walkyverse! and Dumbiverses characters may be different people but their overall personalities as well as their insecurities as a result of them have stayed relatively the same.”
@Pat 4:19pm Post
Again can’t reply directly to your post, sorry.
What about Robin? She’s still shown to be naive, overly-energetic, foolish but willing. She listened to what Leslie had to say and wasn’t even close to being repulsed by her being a lesbian and never judged her for it something that goes against her own policies. I don’t see any evidence of her core personality changing at all.
She went from being a superhero putting herself at risk to defend other people to being willing to sacrifice the well-being (at least) of others for her own prestige. That’s quite a change. Yes, she still has some traits in common, but she didn’t stay the same.
Or Mike. Or Amber. There are differences.
But Robin seemed kinda… obvious, as she’s the topic and all.
“She went from being a superhero putting herself at risk to defend other people to being willing to sacrifice the well-being (at least) of others for her own prestige. That’s quite a change. Yes, she still has some traits in common, but she didn’t stay the same.”
Robin being a superhero was never important to the core of her personality. She considered it a job as we know by Shortpacked 642. Her personality was spontaneous, energetic, slang-filled, self-absorbed with issues regarding her sexuality for a long time. In that respect she’s practically the same, just without super-speed. She’s more active in congress but that might simply be because it’s near the election and she’s more active as a result just like with her first re-election in shortpacked.
A replacement candidate would almost certainly be worse, but there’s no guarantee they’d win.
With less than a month until the election, that means either Robin stays in the race, loses many of the bigots who won’t vote for any kind of sex weirdo,
OR she drops out of the race, and her last-minute replacement has to struggle just to file the paperwork to get their name on the ballot in time, and has to go up against Robin’s opponent, who now has a significant advantage in terms of name recognition, and has to struggle to get Robin’s demoralized constituents motivated to show up to the polls.
If this ends up being a mid-term election, it goes to Manley almost by default. Either way it pushes the odds heavily in his favor.
Not purposefully though, I think Robin is a bit ignorant to the extent that her policies actually affect others and I believe could easily have a change of heart but NOT if the only person who she thought liked her outs her.
It’s easy to write her off because of what she had done but it wasn’t exactly out of malicious intent and can be improved upon. Destroying Robin’s career is by no means a guarantee that thing’s would improve because the voters voted her in, she was successful with those ideals and as such it is reasonable to believe that anyone else that uses those policies that hurt others could very easily just take her place, and that’s assuming Jake Manley himself does support the LGBTQ community because if he doesn’t all Leslie does it destroy a single woman’s career, someone that probably could have actually changed. The fact Robin returned at all shows that she does and can care if given the proper push.
Definitely purposeful. I get that she was a superheroine in another universe, but this version is quite unabashedly evil. Read her actual lines and actions. She hurts people because it’s useful to her prestige, and deals with the guilt by ignoring the victims. She’s bad.
Can she reform? Possibly. But Leslie doesn’t owe her anything–or rather, Robin wouldn’t like what Leslie does owe her. “How dare you hit me back!” is not a good position.
And hey waitasec, if her policies aren’t hurting anybody than why would outing her be a bad thing? Queer people are just fine and not being hurt at all–right?
She’s tried to put through hurtful policies not expecting it to pass and outside of that she hasn’t been shown doing anything “evil”. Her policies don’t even align with her own beliefs and she’s only done it to support her image of being a “traditional family” candidate. I have read her lines and seen her actions several times and she has clearly not understood the extent to what she has done. She didn’t think the bill would really hurt anyone, she thought shelters should have enough money and she thought that churches wouldn’t refuse anyone. I don’t believe Robin has put through anything that would hurt anyone yet and she doesn’t believe her policies WOULD hurt anyone, she’s ignorant and as a result can be very easily educated. I haven’t ever seen her in this be malicious in the least and definitely not purposeful.
Outing her would be a bad thing not because her policies hurt anyone but because it would go against everything she has been campaigning for which is a traditional family structure. The voters would see that she was a fraud and as such would go to her opposition. The fact that her policies could hurt someone is irrelevant to the scandal that would ensue, there was a scandal simply because someone associated with Robin wasn’t following what Robin was campaigning.
“She’s tried to put through hurtful policies not expecting it to pass and outside of that she hasn’t been shown doing anything ‘evil’.”
You realize that doing that one extraordinarily evil thing is actually enough, yeah?
“Her policies don’t even align with her own beliefs and she’s only done it to support her image of being a ‘traditional family’ candidate.”
I only punch innocent people in the face because it supports my image of being a “innocent person face-puncher”. Wait that’s still bad.
Also that’s an image she chose.
“She didn’t think the bill would really hurt anyone, she thought shelters should have enough money…”
Funny, thinking shelters should have enough money sounds like she knew it would really hurt anyone. After all, shelters would be needed.
Also, her efforts to avoid talking or thinking about the harm she’s doing do not make her look better.
Hurting people on purpose is purposeful, malice not required. Do you just hate language and communication or something?
“a traditional family structure”
You know that’s a lie, right? It’s code for hating gay people. I see you.
“You realize that doing that one extraordinarily evil thing is actually enough, yeah?”
Is it to you? It’s an act of pandering and ignorance, not malicious intent. The intent behind such a thing matters a great deal to me because it suggests a future intent to continue to do so if malicious.
“I only punch innocent people in the face because it supports my image of being a “innocent person face-puncher”. Wait that’s still bad.
Also that’s an image she chose.”
Are you a politician trying to get votes from “face-punchers”? If not then your image doesn’t really affect your career does it? That image that she chose is popular in that area and that’s why she chose it because it gets her into office. It isn’t hypocritical because it has an explicit purpose for being that way even if she doesn’t like it. I don’t imagine Robin could support anything else and still be voted in, it’s hard enough being a woman in politics as shown by Robin being the only woman ever being put into office. Her image is important.
“Funny, thinking shelters should have enough money sounds like she knew it would really hurt anyone. After all, shelters would be needed.
Also, her efforts to avoid talking or thinking about the harm she’s doing do not make her look better.
Hurting people on purpose is purposeful, malice not required. Do you just hate language and communication or something?”
Shelters would always be needed regardless of what she did. The community is extremely religious and as a result makes it so they kids would be thrown out if outed, it’s a separate issue to her bill.
That’s simply Robin being Robin, a personality flaw. You can hate the character for that if you want but it doesn’t make her evil incarnate like you’re suggesting.
Malice IS required because to hurt people on purpose requires it otherwise you’re not either not hurting people or hurting people but NOT on purpose.
“You know that’s a lie, right? It’s code for hating gay people. I see you.”
Attack me all you want but it’s not something I believe but it is a core belief for Robin’s demographic and campaign, that’s why it is important and constantly brought up. Whether or not you see it as a lie doesn’t really matter here.
Actively putting effort into ignoring your victims is not ignorance. It might not be malice. It is definitely evil.
You keep saying I’m accusing her of malice. Stop lying, or I’m definitely not replying to you anymore.
“Are you a politician trying to get votes from ‘face-punchers’?”
Say that I am, since that’s how the metaphor works.
“That image that she chose is popular in that area and that’s why she chose it because it gets her into office.”
So… she’s willing to sacrifice innocents to bolster her prestige, and made a point of doing so.
“That’s simply Robin being Robin, a personality flaw. You can hate the character for that if you want but it doesn’t make her evil incarnate like you’re suggesting.”
The word for this type of personality flaw is “evil,” which falls under the broader category of “flaw.”
“Malice IS required because to hurt people on purpose requires it otherwise you’re not either not hurting people or hurting people but NOT on purpose.”
Well, she’s hurting people and she’s doing it on purpose. Either she’s proven that it doesn’t require malice or she’s malicious. You can’t have both of those.
“Whether or not you see it as a lie doesn’t really matter here.”
Whether the code-phrases of hate groups that don’t even mean anything if taken literally are lies is not up for debate.
Huh. And I thought there was a possibility I was overreaching there. I should have more faith in my gut.
Also you said that she was ignorant of what you now say is a “core belief for Robin’s… campaign.” Oopsie.
Robin could easily campaign on anything else and be elected. This district goes back and forth between the parties REGULARLY. This is not a super conservative ‘gotta toe all party lines’ district. Actually, considering most Americans support things like LGBT+ rights, it’d probably be MORE electable to either keep quiet or be pro equal rights. And yes, this is true in Indiana, as of last year.
This is not the only platform she could get elected on. There’s a million conservative platforms and not all of them involve curtailing civil rights. She could’ve focused on bringing back jobs or something. The civil rights bullshit was unnecessary.
“Actively putting effort into ignoring your victims is not ignorance. It might not be malice. It is definitely evil.”
Nothing suggests that she’s actively putting effort into ignoring it at all. Where did you get that? She may not be looking into it because she had no reason to but that’s not evil. Your idea of what is evil is very odd to me.
“You keep saying I’m accusing her of malice. Stop lying, or I’m definitely not replying to you anymore.”
I’m fine with that, getting a bit hard to reply and we’re going into circles. I’m saying you’re saying she’s malicious because being so is a crucial part of being evil as well as a villain. If you’re not doing it intently or will malice then it isn’t evil. If you disagree with that then we simply go by different definitions and won’t be able to agree.
“Say that I am, since that’s how the metaphor works.”
Then we’ll see if you got elected into office as well as Robin did with her policies because that’s the entire reason Robin chose such policies.
“So… she’s willing to sacrifice innocents to bolster her prestige, and made a point of doing so.”
I don’t believe she’s seeing any kind of sacrifice as I don’t think she knows how much she is hurting others with those policies. She’s ignorant to that and why it’s ok in her mind to do so. I know you don’t think she’s ignorant so I don’t know what else to say for you to see it from my view.
“The word for this type of personality flaw is “evil,” which falls under the broader category of “flaw.””
You love labeling everything as evil don’t you? At this point you’re just stubbornly sticking with it despite my points. It’s not evil if it’s not intentional and it certainly isn’t evil if it can’t helped as it’s part of who she is.
“Well, she’s hurting people and she’s doing it on purpose. Either she’s proven that it doesn’t require malice or she’s malicious. You can’t have both of those.”
Jesus Christ you’re saying the same thing without addressing what I previously said. I don’t think it’s purposeful but you sure as hell do and I’m tired of you not even bearing in mind what I wrote.
“Whether the code-phrases of hate groups that don’t even mean anything if taken literally are lies is not up for debate.
Huh. And I thought there was a possibility I was overreaching there. I should have more faith in my gut.”
It’s not relevant here so yeah, it’s not a matter of debate because it has no place here. It adds nothing to topic at hand.
“Also you said that she was ignorant of what you now say is a “core belief for Robin’s… campaign.” Oopsie.”
She was ignorant to the extent of her actions, not her core beliefs.
I’m done with you not addressing what I say with nothing but little jabs of attacks and twisting of words as opposed to an actual conversation. You shall receive no more replies on this page. You may consider it a victory if it helps your ego but it was never supposed to be a challenge but a discussion to me. Have a nice day.
I just want to point out Robin’s been told now by at least four different people her votes hurt people and she continues to defend them. At this point, she can no longer claim ignorance.
I’m sure all the children who die as a result of her policies are really cheered by the fact she didn’t INTEND for them to die. Intent isn’t magic. You can have the best intentions in the world and still be a viciously hurtful monster.
Uh, “Because she was actively trying to kill people” is literally the best excuse for taking a harmful action against somebody. It’s called “self-defense” and most laws against harming other people specifically call it out as an exception.
A good person considering harming a bad one with a goal of protecting the innocent might get a better reaction than a bad person harming an innocent… er, well, than a bad person hurting people because she enjoys inflicting harm?
You got me. I do, in fact, judge opposites differently. I call this “consistency.”
I think that their motives for doing it are the real reason for the different reaction.
If Mary outed someone, we would have little doubt she was doing it out of malice, to hurt or control that person.
If Leslie is considering it, that’s a very different story. It’s highly unlikely she’d do it just to hurt Robin. She’s already shown she was content to walk away. And since Leslie knows the consequences first-hand, it’s much easier to believe that she’s doing it for the right reasons (or as close as possible, depending on where you stand)
There’s also the simple fact that a good person is more likely to be greatness the benefit of a doubt than bad one. As it should be
There is a very large difference in outing a career politician who has actively and recently fought for hateful legislation that makes it harder for queer kids to survive and outing a private citizen with abusive family members.
One is a questionably moral stance that has a history of unfortunate necessity in the struggle for queer rights that is hotly debated in the LGBT community.
The other is an act of abuse of someone whose closet is what they deem necessary for their survival, putting them at direct risk in the hopes that violence or harm will befall them.
Those are two very different things with two very different moral calculuses that need to be brought into play.
Like, if it turned out Mary cranked it to lesbian porn on the regular, I would not at all be okay with outing her to her homophobic congregation despite the harm she has done.
I will say here that, if Leslie is planning on outing Robin, that’s fucked up. But I can also see this being a sort of….using it to make Robin face who she is sort of thing instead. Like if Robin tries to deny who she is or something like that, show her the pic and be like, “You. In bed. With a lesbian. Tell me again how you are totally straight forever.” As long as the picture is never shared or used as blackmail, it’s still weird/creepy to take a picture of someone without their knowledge, but not quite as bad, I think.
Like if Robin tries to deny who she is or something like that, show her the pic and be like, “You. In bed. With a lesbian. Tell me again how you are totally straight forever.”
Is it possible that nothing actually happened? Robin at least appears to be wearing the clothes from the night before. I’ll bet she’s used to passing out in all kinds of places.
Leslie’s face suggests to me that something happened, even if it wasn’t as far as sex. I mean, it’s possible they got drinky and passed out in bed but her expression is what leads me to believe otherwise.
I can’t understand the excuse that she votes anti-GLBT because it’s party-line, but she doesn’t hurt GLBT people “intentionally”. If I was standing next to the propane tank you blew up, does it make a difference whether you just tossed a cigarette or pushed a button?
Outing regular citizens is bad. Functionally hateful politicians, possibly, are obligatory to out. But Leslie may have taken the picture with no clear idea what she’d do with it later. If you don’t take the picture, your range of possible actions shrinks.
If you want to stop propane explosions in the future, yes it does matter. Methods that will work for stopping cigarette tossers may not work for stopping button pushers, and vice versa.
It was a pretty loose metaphor for motive – either carelessness or active malice. For Robyn the LGBT people who get harmed by her legislation are unfortunate but worthwhile casualties, rather than targets, who she is “forced” to sacrifice in order to maintain a position in which she believes she can have a positive influence. Both are despicable, but the difference comes in when you need to try and stop them, because they have different motives. Convincing Robyn that LGBT people are also people doesn’t help because she already knows that and acted against them anyway, but reinforcing how badly they get affected by her legislation might work a lot better than when trying to convince someone who thinks LGBT people should suffer.
So it’s still pushing the button. It’s just
“If you push this button it will slaughter innocents and make you more popular.”
“This button will make me more popular!? Deal!”
Well, the effects are the same, but how you deal with them may be different.
In your hypothetical it’s the difference between negligent homicide and first degree murder.
In Robin’s case, the big difference is that Robin is far more likely to change when/if she accepts that she’s bi than a more hate-filled politician. Or even the closeted Larry Craig kind, who’s long known and acted on his homosexuality, while continuing to push anti-LGTBQ issues.
Swing district, actually. Robin’s constituency appears to be the town of Bloomington and of its surrounding rural areas. Also, yes, I would imagine a district that includes a college town would probably lean more towards the blue end of the spectrum, although a sufficiently good or poor candidate on one side or the other would unbalance things somewhat.
I bet Trump would spin such selfie to his own agenda if a leftie would sleep with him, so I bet Robin will do the same, “Look I’m a right wing anti-LGBT person and even liberal lesbian slept with me kind of deal so vote for me too if you’re a LGBT person yourself!” kind of deal.
TBH, even if the plan isn’t ‘out her’, Leslie should have taken this photo anyways, because she’s gonna need to call the cops about a breaking and entering later. She has NO IDEA how Robin got here and she wasn’t that drunk last night – B&E looks the most likely. You can argue about the ethics of outing an anti-LGBT+ politician, but you can’t argue that Leslie has the right to report a felony. A B&E charge would probably be taken more seriously and could potentially get her half a year to 2 and half years in jail and some serious fines according to here:http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/burglary-and-home-invasions-indiana.htm
I hate to read to much into what happened off screen. Hopefully we’ll find out more over the next couple of strips.
Robin following her home, breaking in and just going to sleep next to her seems as unlikely as pretty much anything else I can think of. Barring alcohol working on her like Cadbury cereal in SP.
It’s Mike Rogers writing about his work outing closeted anti-gay politicians during the Bush years and why he did it and why he still defends those actions to this day. And what he viewed as the purpose and effect of those actions.
Super relevant to the comic? Read his section on Paul Koering who he decided not to out because Koering showed enough introspection about his closet and the pain it was causing that Rogers saw him on a journey that was already in motion. Paul Koering ended up turning against his caucus on a gay marriage issue and coming out later.
And also his section on Dan Gurley who he did out and which has caused Gurley to devote himself more openly to LGBT causes in North Carolina including the push for gay marriage in 2014.
Outing people isn’t great, and I actually worry that getting someone kicked out of office for being gay or bi will only make it harder for things to change in a better direction – versus her just changing as she spends time with you, and eventually losing the office but being at peace with it and maybe even making some changes during her remaining time with power.
THen again. Robin is basically a stand in for Trump. A worse case scenario that will actively harm people. It might be worth booting her out of office, even at the risk of someone more malicious and competent coming along. (Not an option in real life, because of how the succession is set for presidents, but maybe in congress…)
I’m not sure you have the heart to go through with this. Or with blackmailing her – which might be morally worse, but practically better for accomplishing things. >,> (I say might, because I don’t even know where to stand on this. :/ Just. That I hope you’ll do the right thing, whatever the right thing is.)
Yeah… and frankly if there was a dumb meaningless scandal that took out Trump and Pence and prevented them from doing their will on the electorate, I’d probably cheer for it even if it felt hollow that that’s what took them out when so little else did.
Like, if they were caught sleeping with each other and got outed and that removed their aura of authority, I’d be hard-pressed to say much against that even though I’d bristle at the thought that it was them being queer that did more than them being abusers and molesters.
I don’t think Robin really is a stand-in for Trump, despite the superficial jokes that were made earlier. SP! Robin as politician had a bunch of links to Sarah Palin, but took in the long run a very different path. If she’s a Trump stand-in, then she’s an out and out villain with no sympathy or chance of a heel-face turn.
Which she’s not. We’ve already seen where the sympathy could easily come from, in her confusion about her sexuality. That’s not a Trump trait, not something you’d throw into a simple Trump stand in.
Which brings us back to your first point: Outing people’s a valid tactic, but not one to be taken at all lightly. In this case, as a purely practical matter, given what little we know of her, helping her change is likely the more promising option.
And if it doesn’t work or Leslie can’t stand to keep trying, if she won’t admit her bisexuality or she does admit it and keeps up the same politics, well, there’s time to out her later.
He mentioned in his blog that he started the Robin-in-classroom aspect of this storyline specifically back when Trump as president seemed like a real possibility.
Well, she’s not JUST a Trump Stand in. She’s also Robin. But I’m pretty sure this storyline was impacted by Trump, and the fear we’ve all felt. The fear Leslie is feeling….
Also, it’s interesting how much of the debate gets into the central problem with trying to trying to have one overriding principle no matter what. Non-violence is great… but ignoring violence against yourself and refusing to get violent even if your violence would save the life of someone who is powerless to save themselves gets a lot muddier morally.
Context ends up mattering a lot and it’s totally okay to have different stances on where to draw the lines and there are things I can never support or see myself doing no matter the moral circumstances. But it’s harder than we give ourselves credit for in the day-to-day.
Far as I’m concerned, the only moral option would be to out Robin; minority survival is always a war to the knife, and the personal life of someone who targets you and yours is a perfectly moral target, simply on grounds of MAD, if nothing else; liberals have forgotten this fact lately – given the comments that I’m seeing here, I ain’t surprised that liberals donated to rebuild a burned GOP office. They never did seem to grasp that they were in a cold civil war; it’s a significant part of why I do not believe they can effectively protect me and mine.
Welp, if political warfare abides the unwilling publicity of a one´s private life, then all is good. Conservatives & liberals, LBGT´s & Heteronormies, there you go. Have at it. Make my day. Let me see democracy crumble.
I feel disappointed in her for taking that pic. I would have thought she was above that kind of thing (the implication being that she could use such a photo to blackmail or otherwise pressure the councilwoman).
I like that Leslie isn´t a Mary Sue. LBGT´s don´t need to be dreamy, personable or dignified persons (neccesarily). They aren´t perfect. They do the Scumbag ™ too!
If the people of the Dumbiverse are anything like the ones in our world, this picture would do nothing to hurt Robin in the polls. Trump pledge alliegence to ISIS and his supporters will still claim Trump is strong on national defense.
And today we learn that Leslie and Robin’s relationship has an unhealthy start in every universe. Here’s to it evolving into something better in this one too.
It’s always on the marginalized to extend the olive branch with our broken arm right after the dominant group has beaten us to the ground and kicked us around.
And it’s noteworthy that these “perpetuating a cycle of hatred folks” are never around when the initial violences are only occurring and only seem to come out when the oppressed start picking themselves off the ground and surveying and remarking on the damage done to them.
Like, if you’re only calling out the incredibly light responses to horrific violence by the powerless instead of the deep abuses of the powerful, that’s not as solid a moral position as you might imagine.
Loading ...
BF: “So did they ever show who they’re looking at?”
Me: …
BF: …?
Me: “THEY’RE TAKING SELFIES”
[/real story]
“Hillary’s Millennial supporters turn their backs on her! How she lost her key demographic.” -FreedomEagle1776 News on Facebook
Pro tip: Practice aiming the rear camera at yourself without looking at the screen. Front cameras are always lower resolution, and don’t cope with low light as well.
I was watching So You Think You Can Dance a year ago, and was wondering why when the dancer was walking by the crowd all the screaming fans were turning away from him.
It, um, took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize why.
I’m gonna feel stupid in a moment, but…
Why?
To take a photo where both the dancer and them (the fans taking photos) would be visible in the shoot, I guess.
Apparently, the new thing is to document for oneself and friends, “See, I was there – I took this pic.”
That is… hardly “new.”
It’s new on a cosmic scale! Pretty much everything we ever care about is.
#StevenUniverseMarathon
Oh Leslie, this is a dangerous game you’re playing…
At least make her some breakfast, jeez…
Oh, I totally called this last week.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/no-3/
Well, there it is. 😉
ANOTHER DeSanto sex scandal.
Watch her approval ratings hinge on the rumors of a sex tape.
Worked in The Candidate!
Campaign! I meant The Campaign!
It would be deeply ironic if Robin’s numbers skyrocket because the ‘good’ people of Bloomington thing the idea of their representative having had lesbian sex with a ‘hot blonde chick’ is a positive thing.
Yes, I am that cynical about human behaviour when dealing with large groups.
Most of the people on this comment board are fairly progressive, LGBTQ-friendly types. As such, they all need to keep one important thing in mind:
America is FAR more conservative than our experiences will tell us it is.
Progressives tend to surround themselves with progressive friends, live in progressive-friendly neighborhoods, and filter their news towards progressive topics. This means there are LARGE SWATHS of Americana (and Canadiana? Australiana? Other ‘-ana’s? Are those the right terms?) we are completely unfamiliar with. We walk blindly into elections, confident that our side will win, because everyone we know is gung-ho for it, and we’re completely poleaxed when we lose, because who would have voted against us?
The solution? We need to tear our filters down. We need to listen to the hate rhetoric the other side is spewing, even though it disgusts us. We need to understand just how strong our opponents are, if only to know how hard we need to fight them.
(Wow, that turned out long. Probably not even the best place for it. But then, what is?)
But I don’t find Breitbart all that informative or even entertaining for that matter.
Empathic people who care about others and “filter their news” towards, actual news should listen to the people who None of the Above more? Uh, maybe people who don’t listen or learn need to do some.
Even at the most cynical and adversarial level… one should know one’s enemies.
We already do. Almost by definition.
And if one side isn’t willing to tear down its echo chamber and rip out its filters and stop acting like there are multiple Americas… then they can’t really ask the other side to do it.
One “side’s” “echo chamber” is called “reality”, though.
They’re. Not. Sports teams.
Disclaimer: I’m not American, and therefore not strictly a ‘Democrat’. That said, I’m very left-leaning in my personal views.
We on the left DO have our own echo chamber. Everyone has their reasons for jumping into one, but if you think the right-wing doesn’t also think their echo chamber is “reality”, then frankly, you’re missing the concept. There was a video of some British guy going absolutely ballistic making the rounds after Trump got elected making some very good points about this; above all, he pointed out that the left won the culture war. No, homophobia didn’t end last year with the supreme court decision in June, just like racism is still a thing; that didn’t end in the ’60s either. But we liberals are all too comfortable (myself included) with calling nearly half of America “a basket of deplorables”.
There’s evidence of this echo chamber effect on the left. Ask most Democrats if they remember the “Delete your account” tweet, they’ll smile as they relive the assorted variations of “DAAAAAAMN, SON!” we all screamed like Clinton had just dropped the mic at a rap battle. Ask if they remember Trump’s response, they almost certainly never saw it, and probably didn’t/don’t care. But he had one: “Just like the 30,000 emails you deleted?” Sure, the national security threat was blown out of perspective, but she’s admitted that it happened, and that it was a mistake.
Again, still would’ve voted Clinton… but damn, son.
I’m not saying all opinions are created equal, I’m not saying our echo chamber is just as harmful as the one on the right, but we do ourselves no favours by hiding in it. Step out of it, SNAP out of it, and engage in the debate, because we didn’t win the culture war by simply knowing we were on the right side of history. It came from boycotting buses and the Stonewall riots and people actually communicating with the other side however they could. And sharing every #BlackLivesMatter and #ImWithHer with all your liberal friends ISN’T communicating with the other side.
You’re absolutely right that these aren’t sports teams we’re dealing with, and this is NOT A GAME. This isn’t even a culture war anymore (though it could be if we undo the progress of the last decade). This is now a crash course in advanced civics, and we have four years to pick our grades up or just keep having this conversation. America can’t get away with having an uneducated public anymore. NO nation can get away with it anymore, because the blueprint has been laid out, and to use one more tired cliché, if we don’t learn from history, we will repeat it. But this time, it won’t be centuries or decades later, it’ll be across space instead. Across borders. The demagogues and narcissists will take over, and we’ll be back to tyrants starting wars to soothe their inflated egos.
And yes, I say this as a non-American. I’m watching this from the outside. But the second you think “oh, that can’t happen here”, you’re making the same mistake. All non-Americans reading this, check your political landscape and look around. My fellow Canadians in particular, don’t be complacent because we just elected Trudeau, we’re not them; we are not the liberal haven we’d like to think. I live in a town where “Fuck Trudeau” bumper stickers are common and on my way home from work, I can see “WHITE POWER” literally etched into the sidewalk. I took pictures before the snow covered it. Google “Kevin O’Leary”, and then tell me Trump can’t happen here.
Also – Kellie Leitch.
It’s one thing to say a group is deplorable – that can be (and is) true, just looking at what they’ve backed. It’s another not to engage them where you see them. Sometimes you can’t – lack of spoons, lack of time, whatever. But if you can, it can be a good thing.
No, we didn’t “win” the culture war. We’re still in the middle of it. Hell, we didn’t even “win” the racial or gender equivalents. Those are still going on too. We just lost a major battle in all of them, probably more than one.
We’ve won some battles, but the other side has retrenched and is coming back strong.
And we didn’t really win any of those battles by sitting down politely with the racists and the sexists and the homophobes and listening to all the reasons why they hated and explaining why they should stop. The battles were won with boycotts and riots and organization. By people standing up and saying “We are here and we have rights and we are not going away.” And then someone else stepping up when the first one got smashed down.
On the individual level, with friends and family you can sometimes make progress through communication. Especially with someone coming out as queer, since they knew you and liked you before then – not so much with race and gender. Even then though it’s at great risk. Lots of people have lost friends and family over it. Many suffered abuse or worse.
Perhaps “win” is a little strong… but that doesn’t change the fact that the Trump supporters are, in many people’s minds, a pack of racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted degenerates (and let’s sprinkle in some jokes about cousins in Alabama for good measure). And what’s more, this is the accepted party line from the left now. “Basket of deplorables”. As in ‘if you voted Republican, we’re allowed to say this about you’. No, racism is not over, homophobia isn’t over, misogyny is NOT OVER. Anyone who says they are is not paying attention. But short of the drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, the racists at least have to hide that or we tear them apart. And I’m glad we recognize these things for what they are now, and I’m glad bigotry has consequences. But we need to remember this:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/outrage/
We the commenters unleashed all manner of vitriol on Roz for this. Yes, Joyce was already coming around, I read the threads. The point is, insults are a lousy debate tool. No, we didn’t make the progress of the last fifty years with polite conversation and calm, gentle education, and I never said we did. It came from communication, or perhaps more accurately, expression. When words failed, the civil rights movement expressed its anger through actions. They got louder, and they articulated their positions in the language of fire and rage. Birmingham. Stonewall. Malcolm X.
Things are different now. You’re exactly right that we are now LOSING battles, but we are still ahead of where we were in the ’60s. Our side has real power now, even without the political power of the Obama administration. We rarely need to resort to riots anymore, and we sure as hell don’t need to resort to hurling insults. What we need is to continue engaging, in the media (not social media, in our echo chambers, going outside) and on an individual level. NOW is the time for conversation and rational debate. Like BBCC said above, it’s not always possible, it’s still not even always safe. But if we take what opportunities we have, we can finish this. Peacefully.
Three hours ago, I had a friend (trans) tell me about the time he tried to kill himself. I would have been almost the last person he spoke to. I had done everything I could. And this feeling is familiar now. Every time I hear the old lines (‘love the sinner, hate the sin’, ‘pray for them to change’, ‘it’s a choice, they can live differently’), I have to step away and breathe before I tear into them and their worldview. I’ve learned that you can’t smash through the bubble from the outside; you have to be let in first and disrupt the echoes there. Any time I’ve ever seen someone come around on things like this, it has been from inside the bubble. So engage, personally, and teach them how to break out.
Right up until the returns started coming in, the American “left” was telling itself that Hillary Clinton had election in the bag…
If you think only one side has an echo chamber… that probably makes my point for me.
The left does not have a monopoly on truth, and the right does not have a monopoly on propaganda/lies/”fake news”. Anyone presenting the news to you has an agenda of some sort–it is important to keep this in mind when considering the “official story,” no matter who it comes from. There is no genuinely neutral, objective read on any news story of consequence.
For instance, consider that 50% of Clinton voters polled believe that Russians tampered with the actual vote count (beyond simple pre-election propaganda/leaks), despite there being no evidence of this whatsoever, probably in large part because generally reputable news agencies keep talking about Russia “hacking” the election. There have been countless examples from this election alone of well-meaning liberals sharing articles and memes built on misleading quotes, misused statistics, or outright fabrications.
Donald Trump is gleeful and blatant in his disregard for facts, in a way rarely seen in American politics. But do not make the mistake of thinking that this means that his political opponents necessarily have facts on their side. I have a healthy skepticism about the whole idea that liberals, leftists, and minorities have to go try to forge connections with their political opponents–as you say, politics is real and important, not just an academic ideological pastime. But do not think for a second that liberals live in “reality” while conservatives live in a fantasy world.
We don’t have a monopoly on truth. We do however, have positions that are truth-based. That’s kind of important.
As a trans person, I am perfectly aware that there are tons of people who want me to disappear without a sound. That’s why I place myself in environments like the ones you describe. So I can remain myself, and safe.
Honestly, the minorities are not surprised when this stuff goes down. We expect it. We know who’s out there. We deal with them IRL constantly. That outpouring of disbelief and rage is because we believe that the world is better than the baseline.
The answer isn’t to try to “understand” the extremist normal. It’s to defend what we have with every scrap of fire we can summon, and to make it normal, in little ways and little places, so that others, closeted, out there in hostile territory, will someday find us and realize that they are not alone. Like I had to. Like most of my friends did.
This isn’t about diplomacy. It’s about passing the torch. It’s survival. I will forgive their trespass when they forget that they hate my existence.
Somehow we talk about the broader “right”, and it always snaps right back to “those people who hate _____”… as if everyone to the “right” of line X on any issue is also a bigot/racist/sexist/genderist/whatever. Or maybe as if that’s the only issue in the world.
If you happen to be one of the people they hate so much that they want you to die, that “issue” may as well be the only one that matters.
Same goes for if there’s someone you care about that you’re trying to protect from them.
I have plenty of conservative friends. I’m not referring to them. I am rather displeased with them right now, because I believe their wilful ignorance of part of their community is creating something dangerous for me, but they are not the core issue. The core issue is that there are people who don’t want me to exist. Those people are who I have to consider when I’m building my life.
I’m really tired of the “left’s responsible for this too! take your lumps!” I’m not responsible for the democratic party’s foul. I’m going to take those lumps anyway. So’s the rest of my community. That’s why we’ve been so damn mad.
……You seem to be forgetting that the polls all (or majority wise) predicted a Clinton win too. This wasn’t just people being poleaxed because disagreement. The win surprised everyone – pollsters, election experts, and most people, including Trump supporters too.
Listening to news from either side (as long as it’s actual news and not faux news) is one thing. That said, people will make friends with people who respect them. Bigots fundamentally do not respect marginalized folks and reducing it to partisan issues or ‘political opinions’ is a dismissal of said marginalized people’s humanity.
People also aren’t going to live somewhere they are not safe if they can help it, so for marginalized people, it makes most sense to live around people who don’t want to remove their civil rights.
Keeping yourself safe and your friendships, y’know, friendships are not immoral echo chamber actions. They’re the way friendships and (ideal) living situations work.
Ohhh, Leslie is going to regret this.
There’s also the possibility that they have a heart to heart and Leslie deletes it (like Sal did with that app)… or that she will try to delete it and end up sending it to everyone on her phone.
In hindsight putting the delete option right next to the immediately send to all contacts without asking for confirmation option seems like a deliberate design law.
*flaw rather
no no, I think Design law is the correct usage, those guys knew what they were doing.
I’d think that you made a typo when you used ‘law’ instead of ‘flaw,’ but then I realized just how appropriate that phrasing was.
Phrasing! its fun for the whole family (sold right next to apples to apples!)
REVENGE!
No closet for professional homophobes do itttttttttttt
Having one set of rules for some of the population and one set for another based on what they believe is shitty no matter who is perpetuating it.
Closets keep people safe. You’re not exposing her just to ridicule, you’re exposing her to potential physical harm, death threats, and possible rape. Every single bit of which falls on the heads of those who outed a person forcefully and cheered it on.
Except exposing Robing also exposes her to losing the election, which reduces the exposure of millions to her homophobic agenda.
Still a shitty thing to do, but we might be in the gray area where two shits make a piss.
…. YESIKNOWTHATSATERRIBLEMETAPHOR.
Doing something morally reprehensible “for the greater good”…yeah that sounds familiar. Let’s resist the urge to ALL sink to that level, shall we?
Not all of us are deontologists, man.
” …the greater goood…”
SHUT IT
Prosper, as T’au shall.
OHO! Is that a Hot Fuzz-reference I’m spotting??!
I mean *coughcough* “The greater good…”
IKR? Great reference
Could also be a Warhammer40k ref. The Tao use The Greater Good as their thing, as well.
I lack the background of that (meaning I never heard about Warhammer 40k in my life) – I was just reminded of Hot Fuzz, but thanks for the info! I never new there were other “the greater good”-mumblers out there!
It might sound familiar because that’s exactly what Robin is doing for a living. Maybe just the threat of becoming someone else’s sacrifice for the greater good herself is enough to get her to realize it’s not how one should behave. Particularly when that threat is implicit in just a picture of her existing.
Which is all Leslie has done to her so far.
Except that the homophobia is that of Robin’s party and her voters. Do you think the party will put a homophile in her place?
No, but unless she’s carrying 70% or more of the vote, then those homophobic voters are likely to stay home for the next election–which means you get a moderate Democrat (it’s too much to hope for a liberal in a largely rural Indiana district), instead.
Actually, this district goes back and forth between the parties regularly. It wouldn’t be impossible to get a liberal – maybe more unlikely, but this is hardly the ‘stereotypical redneck’ area Robin thinks it is. She probably thinks so because she considers that to be her voting base.
What Freemage said. Also, on the morale front, it takes a bit of the wind out of their sales for a spell.
Please don’t ever say “homophile” again.
Nope, sorry, “outing” people is a shitty thing to do. Even if they’re shitheads and your motives are noble, you’re still doing something shitty.
I would worry she’d get primaried by someone running even further to her right.
The politics of outing are extremely complex and context-specific.
Like, yes, outing tends to usually be awful. Largely because for the majority of individuals who are in a sexuality or gender closet, they are that way for a very important reason (either because they are not fully aware of their identity or view it as unsafe to come out). And that second part tends to ring hard.
We’ve all encountered the trans and gay folks who’ve been disowned, kicked out of their homes, ended up homeless, thrown out of jobs, been beaten or raped, or straight up murdered for the “crime” of coming out. And having another person out you means you don’t even get to prepare yourself for the impact of that.
But that’s for most people. For professional homophobes who are gay, the closet they hide behind is not for the protection of their safety, but rather to protect their reputation as a professional bigot, and their actions end up contributing directly to the environment that makes it so fraught for so many to come out.
And many times they use their closet like a weapon, often seeking out for sex the most marginalized members of the queer community, professional sex workers or homeless youth who can be intimidated into silence in order to get themselves off. Taking advantage of the very desperation they create in order to access cheap and readily accessible underground sex.
And while there is no clear consensus in the queer community about outing these figures, it has been the case that leaps in certain queer rights, most notably marriage rights have been tied to the outing of anti-gay figures as the hypocrisy did not play well to the mushy middle.
And the people who outed them tended to be individuals on the raggedy edge who took great personal risk to themselves outing a client, especially one with so much social power and an army of angry murderous homophobes at their beck and call to get revenge through.
Outing this group is less clear-cut and there is value in exposing the hypocrisy involved.
That all said, Robin is not seeking out homeless sex workers to get her rocks off. She’s just happened to fall for a hot college teacher. That feels different in principle if maybe not in practice.
Regardless of anything, it is worth noting that Leslie is not just anyone. She’s lived on the streets as a queer teenager and may have had to do what she needed to to survive. And during that time she certainly saw others make much tougher choices and some starve to death, owing to painful coming out or being outed situations.
Whatever her decision is here, it is not being made lightly.
Outing them literally doesn’t help though. There is no brutal analysis that can avert this fact. It’s not really ‘gray’ without that. It’s just revenge.
Except it can.
When Larry Craig and Ted Haggard were outed, it actually had real measurable effects on homophobic legislation and swung the public perception on the gay marriage debate and robbed a lot of power from the homophobic position. Similarly, outing leaders of ex-gay organizations as still having queer sex on the down-low did a lot to discredit those organizations’ central argument that they were genuinely changing orientations thus saving a lot of kids from those hellish places.
It’s not just revenge. Revenge would be a lot easier to morally process.
I’m from Idaho and Larry Craig still vehemently denies that he is gay. So do his wife and kids. The local paper actually sent a reporter to Washington DC to troll all the local gay hangouts to try and dig something up. They came up with bupkis. So technically his status is still “straight.” He just has a wide stance.
So he is bi-sexual with a heavy lean toward hetrosexual, good to know.
Ted Haggard maintains he prayed himself straight too, but neither of those individuals have loomed so large in their movements since they were outed. It defanged them to a large extent even if their core base still believed that they were straight men unfairly maligned by evil homosexual demons.
George Alan Rekers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Alan_Rekers ) was similarly defanged after being outed having queer sex on the downlow. That one was especially important as it stripped a lot of the strength of the faux-academic case of the homophobes regarding the “danger” homosexuals poised in adopting children thus fast-forwarding the right to adopt in a lot of states.
It’s weird. If someone had seduced Robin on purpose in order to get incriminating photos, I’d have found the whole thing entertaining and I wouldn’t have much problem with it. If that someone had even gone in thinking they’d get to know Robin and decide whether to destroy her when the time came, I’d also have been fine with that.
But Robin reached out to Leslie, and Leslie reached out to her. This betrayal of trust feels bad to me because it betrayed nobler intentions, strayed from the path Leslie was trying to walk. It feels like Leslie is betraying herself.
Also, it feels like a betrayal of Roz’s trust. My understanding is that Roz put Leslie in touch with Robin partly for selfish reasons, partly so Leslie could have her shot at somehow catching Robin’s eye. Roz did not sign up to destroy her sister this way. She might be happy that Robin gets kicked out of office, but I suspect her trust in Leslie would be broken as well.
That’s not to say this issue is cut and dried either way. Lincoln (2012) is a glorious movie about the greatest president of the United States abolishing slavery for all time by bribing people with jobs and actively deceiving Congress on the imminence of peace with the South. Not everything the good guys do is good, and not everything the bad guys do is bad.
There isn’t a clear betrayal of trust until the photo is used. Leslie is, in this strip, merely taking a prudent CYA action. If she’s the thoughtful and considerate person she attempts to be for her class, and Robin has a real change of heart and mends her ways, that is as far as this will go, and years later, this will be just a photo album pic of their first morning together. I mean, maybe next week or two, story timeline. 😉
But this is Dumbing of Age, so of course that’s not what will happen.
Leslie’s taking the picture in anger. She’s used Robin coming over and letting down her guard to create a weapon to take down Robin. That to me is already a breaching of trust, even if it’s a prudent course of action.
Robin is a threat to Leslie and to queer homeless kids like the one that she used to be. How much of Leslie’s trust is she entitled to?
Leslie personally knows people who are suffering as a direct result of Robin’s actions. Sacrificing Robin’s trust in order to help them is not an immoral act. Being precious about it while ignoring the please of Robin’s victims is.
To Jewelfox: That’s one way to view it, sure. I think it might be a net benefit *outcome* to take Robin down through deceit. But to justify current terrible action with speculative future benefit is a dangerous habit that can easily be taken too far.
Also, I’m more worried about Leslie than Robin in this situation. If I had the impression Leslie took the picture with an even-head, she may have been done so with an understanding of the consequences and made peace with her decision personally. This seems like a spur of the moment decision, done in anger, that she may come to regret.
if they believe that queer people or people of colour should die because they’re “inferior” then you bet I’m going to single them out and use different rules for such bigots. You choose your beliefs, convictions and the political ideology you follow, so I have NO sympathy for the people that catch shit for being bigots
I dunno, I kinda feel like the rules are different for politicians. Having your life under intense scrutiny is kinda part of the job. And if you’re furthering anti-LBGT policies while secretly being closeted, the irony of that is just begging to come out.
No, it’s not. And I find this line of thinking dangerous, along the lines of “tolerating intolerance.”
First off, there’s just the basic ethic that hypocrisy is wrong. We often out people to show their hypocrisy. And what is hypocrisy? Secretly doing the thing you claim is wrong. It is inherently an issue of being in the closet about something.
Second, why should you put the wellbeing of this one person who is hurting all of the LGBT community above the community itself? Why must you preserve this one person?
Morality is inherently context sensitive. In this context, I’d actually argue it’s immoral not to out them. There’s a reason such outings have long been part of the cause.
Let me tell you–if I found out that Pence was secretly homosexual, I sure as hell would out him. And I’d feel proud of having done so. He can’t very well be anti-LGBT if he has to admit he’s LGBT himself.
Excellent. Four stars.
“He can’t very well be anti-LGBT if he has to admit he’s LGBT himself.”
Ha ha no, he absolutely could. You vastly underestimate the kind of pretzel-shaped logic the human mind can pull off. Pence could be caught balls deep in another man on live tv, and he would just double down on his anti-gay bullshit.
Perhaps, but it’s usually been pretty devastating to the career of the anti-gay politician (or preacher). Sometimes they can pull off a comeback with the old “I’ve repented and God has forgiven my sin” routine, but even that rarely works more than once.
Oh he absolutely would claim to be magically straight and might try to double-down, but it would hamper him and his profile and he’d be less willing to go all in knowing that the media would continuously mock him for his hypocrisy.
That might matter less now under fascism, but with the anti-queer surge about to happen, it might matter a lot again soon.
It’s not what she believes, it’s what she does. Which is literally what a “set of rules” is.
Normally it’s against my rule to punch somebody really hard in the face. But if Robin was standing in front of me holding a weapon she was capable of using to murder a bunch of queer kids, and she had every intention of doing so, and I could stop her by punching her really hard in the face?
That would be very much within my rules.
And hey, look, that situation is exactly like Leslie’s. Robin does have a weapon she can use to hurt and kill people, especially queer kids. She does intend to use it. Leslie can stop her by taking an action that does Robin great harm, one that Leslie ordinarily wouldn’t do because it will cause great harm.
Actions that cause harm aren’t inherently evil. They very usually are, but when the target is an evil person intending to do great harm to the innocent… harming them is often the most moral choice. Obviously so.
An LGBT person’s rights shouldn’t hinge on whether or not you aprove of their actions, buddy.
Exactly.
Any person, really. Gender and sexuality are kinda irrelevant in the face of everyone being human, and deserving treatment as such.
Some actions do affect their perpetrators’ legal rights, but they’re still people.
This is specifically a narrative based around lesbians, closeting, and homophobia, bringing “it’s about being human!!” into the discussion isn’t helping.
That’s a valid stance, but I’m of the opinion that it’s uncomfortably close to the kind of categorism that gets so many queer people victimized.
My above post got away from me a bit; the intent behind it was agreement.
Have you ever heard of “prison”?
Yep, I can see it now developing as it goes: After having the trust she carefreely gave to a lesbian woman betrayed, facing ridicule, humiliation and the end of her career and an easy life as she knew it, Robin is somehow going to have an epiphany kind of revelation about herself and the world, stop lying to herself, stop taking advantage of the political system and become a near-ascetic lesbian charity worker, travelling the world barefeet teaching and helping others.
Oh hahah, no, wait! That’s not how human nature works. She’ll dig in, invest thousands of dollars in PR and a campaign of discredit to Leslie, a no-name woman that can be “proved” to have doctored the picture, then proceed to double down on her policies since now she has personal reasons to hate queer folk. She’ll probably also marry some high profile dude asap and live a miserable life trying to be straight to keep the appearances. That would be our Leslie bringing lots of positive change to the world by the transformative powers of petty revenge!
Well, if Willis has kept orientation consistent with Robin as he did with the other characters, she’s bi. That’s not to say she wouldn’t be pretending to be straight, but as a bi woman she wouldn’t necessarily be miserable in a marriage to a cis man because he is a cis man. She might end up miserable if they’re a poor match – and if she rushes into things that seems quite plausible.
Except that sometimes outing DOES result in the closeted homophobe changing like you’ve described. Some outed politicians spend the rest of their careers working to undo the damage they’ve done. Outing politicians just isn’t the same as outing a private citizen.
I am going to have to ask you for some notable examples here because it sounds heavily hypothetical. I agree that outing politicians is a whole different shebang than outing a civilian, though: Not only do they possess the means to ignore, silence, discredit, buy out, gaslight, threaten (or worse), they also tend to be much more prone to value their reputation above anything else in the world. The world would be a very very different place if politicians in general were the self-redeeming types.
California State Senator Roy Ashburn: http://www.advocate.com/politics/politicians/2015/05/29/16-antigay-leaders-exposed-gay-or-bi?pg=6#article-content
Worth also noting that yeah, she’d probably do that, a lot of the other outed queer politicians sort of quietly left politics in general while maintaining their straightness and trying to double-down with different gender partners to try and hold that illusion. But she would likely lose her seat, she would likely lose her power and she’d be one less voice for anti-queer legislation.
They gaslight, sure, about it, but politicians are not super-human and even the ones in Republican-safe districts found it more convenient to simply not put in for re-election.
That’s what I intended to note. She would likely rush into marrying a big-name guy to “restore” her heterosexuality, and that would most likely lead to a very poor match and a miserable marriage. I meant to say she wouldn’t be miserable in a marriage to a cis man simply because he is a cis man – that is, his gender would not be the thing to make her miserable.
Remember kids: Revenge porn is horrible sexual abuse but that’s okay when the victims are THE ENEMY.
They are both completely clothed, and there is no sex going on here. This isn’t porn, and Robin isn’t a private citizen — she’s a politician who has made LGBT oppression a key part of her platform. Outing her is both newsworthy and laudatory. Were she just a conservative politician who happened to be gay, then outing her would be malicious, but she put this issue on the table by making it a key part of her work.
Alright, you make a case for her having somehow diminished rights to privacy and decency for being a politician. Can we now make a case for the fact that she is a human being, possibly queer folk?
It all depends on what you actually prefer. Would you rather Robin go back on her anti-queer policies and even become a herald for positive policies, or would you rather have this bigot’s life upended, her career destroyed in delicious, justly poetic comeuppance, yessss #deathtothebigot *foams at mouth*?
Because what we have here is a confused woman in a vulnerable moment, probably for the first time being friendly with a queer person, questioning a sexuality that she has desperately kept repressed. What do you think will push her towards continuing this exploration? Continuous contact with a loyal, but stern (and attractive(?!)) friend who can teach her to see things from the point of view of LGBT people and encourage to explore her sexuality? Or a person who betrayed her trust to manipulate her opinions and/or cause her harm, so corroborating any misgivings she could have about LGBTs?
What would /you/ do in her shoes? Probably you are supplying your own narrative and say “oh for sure being betrayed and humiliated would make me change my mind as opposed to make me embittered and revengeful!” However, see here. We both are on opposite sides of an argument. The position you support would suggest that in order to change your mind (disregarding the fact of who’s wrong or right) I have to yell at you that you are being hateful, petty and shortsighted, and perhaps dig your personal information on the Internet and expose you on Facebook or something. I won’t do this, of course, but if I did… would your response be sitting down quietly and considering carefully whether I may had been right after all, or seeking to get back at me in any way you could?
Thank you; I’m glad that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Doing someone a bad turn only makes enemies.
I would rather an enemy of LGBTQ individuals’ ability to oppress us be neutralized than rely on her demonstrably unreliable better nature. Why are we obliged to preserve the closet she uses as a shield while she campaigns against the rest of us on the off chance she could one day learn to be less of an awful human being? Why aren’t we allowed to defend ourselves?
Because this approach led directly to Trump/Pence 2016.
And? You have to draw a line somewhere. Even the pacifists tend to.
Outing Homophobic candidates is already a tried-and-true tradition. It exposes not just their own hypocrisy, it can put a hard stop to campaigns of hatred. In this case, the needs of the many outnumber the needs of the few; when the community is in the gun sights – sometimes literally – of a political and social crusade that’s being led by anyone, they are fair game.
Now, in this case, in this comic, I would say pull the brakes, because it’s at worst drunken sex and at best no-sex being made to look like sex. That can hurt the community in its own myriad ways. “The Liberals say a drunk woman can’t say yes. I was drunk when that happened. I wasn’t fully there. I was used.” Wham, now you have the hypocrite accusing you of hypocrisy, everything can fall apart, especially as it adds onto very negative stereotypes of the community, from gay people targetting straight people to ‘convert’ them to very solid questions about consent that won’t go on to help anyone as those questions will – WILL – be warped by a faction which also tends to not value women highly at all; a sort of ‘two birds, one stone’ situation, and so on.
But if you have a Homophobic guy going cruisin on Tinder, that’s fair. If you have el sexo in college and then the guy goes on to enter politics with homophobic campaigns, well, it could lead to rumours, meh. If they scoot out of the office to the local underground club, taking a pic of them there getting a lapdance from a twink is more than fair. So on and so on.
No. It didn’t.
Queer folk defended themselves from Pat McCrory in North Carolina, working with coalitions to bring him down, putting their pain on national display with regards to his hateful HB2.
Pat McCrory lost a state he actively tried to steal (and I do mean steal: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article122593759.html , one he successfully stole for Donald Trump in the presidential election). And what brought him down were queer folks speaking their truth in defense of themselves.
Shitty white cis straight people are trying right now to spin the Trump/Pence victory as a “rebuttal” to “identity politics”, but it is bullshit by white supremacists who hope that the election of terrifying bigots will convince scared marginalized groups to stop speaking out about issues that matter to them.
“Identity politics” has nothing to do with “marginalized people speaking out about issues that matter to them”.
It’s a toxic methodology of entrenching divisions between sections of the people of a country for cynical political gain.
The election of Trump isn’t a rebuttal of identity politics, it’s the ultimate victory of identity politics, and a setback for the dream of an American nation undivided by color or creed or gender or origin.
You have definitely seen a different internet than me, because I’ve only ever seen “identity politics” as a dog-whistle for “this marginalized group member spoke out about an issue central to their oppression and we want to dismiss that as narrow and meaningless and not worthy of fighting for”.
If I fight for trans rights or gay rights or ace rights or I try to take pride in those identities despite a system that has historically punished me for it, that’s been dismissed as “identity politics” in my experience.
I think you may be saying the same thing. “Identity politics” is a dog-whistle for dismissing social struggles, but if you apply the term broadly, Trump won on identity politics – white identity politics.
You are not obliged to anything. However, you are encouraged to show love and compassion to other human beings regardless of their position, especially when they are opening themselves to you. Robin has already demonstrated that she’s not an evil and hateful bigot with an agenda, she’s merely bafflingly ignorant and self-serving. Am I saying that this excuses her? No way. But I am saying that her lack of agenda (other than the pursuit of an easy life) and her willingness to get close to the object of her policies and listen to what she has to say makes her ripe for a change of mind.
You dismiss this as an “off-chance” possibility for improvement, but you are no one to deny someone a chance for redemption especially in the kind of delicate turning points in life that Robin is just going through. Especially for someone on a seat of power whose redemption has the chance to bring positive change to dozens of thousands of people. Not to mention that as I explained, the possibility of being outed actually doing something to stop Robin’s policies (instead of giving her more ammunition) is also “off-chance”.
——–
Real talk here. I have to say that I’m quite disappointed by a big number of the commenters on this webcomic. For folks who have experienced discrimination, diminishment, and shame and who more than anything want to be given the free right to love whomever they choose, they are quick to discriminate, diminish and shame those who they disagree with and are incapable of showing common decency, let alone love to anybody who’s not in their circle. If only you saw how heartbreakingly similar you are to them, the only difference being who is in power and the default right now, perhaps you would be able to stop this neverending cycle of hatred.
Yes, I know there are truly, truly awful people there that are likely unredeemable. People steeped in hatred (and/or fear) for others that reveal in causing them pain or want to eradicate them. But if you think they constitute the thick of the the anti-LGBT (or indifferent) community you are wrong. Most of them are people like you and me, only ignorant or insensible perhaps because they didn’t have the privilege of a progressive education or simply because they themselves have not experienced the hardship of being discriminated against and have no idea how bad it is. Not saying that this excuses them, merely that they may be educated and their minds changed. In fact, that’s what /happens all the time/ otherwise we wouldn’t have today a more progressive society than we had yesterday (even if it obviously needs more work).
However, when you, angry, disillusioned and hurt lash at these people, you are not educating them. You are merely giving them emotional negative reinforcements to their ignorant opinions. To maybe catch in a righteous attack one horrible bigot, you are showering with hatred people that don’t even understand why they are being yelled at, but by golly they now have reasons to do things to get yelled at. To silence a bigot you may be making a hapless ignorant into a bigger bigot.
“But”, you’ll answer, “sometimes violence is not only warranted, but in fact necessary! And sometimes it does work!” For sure. Just be aware that if you truly want to change a whole society with violence you’ll have to go all the way in, weapons and insurgence and stuff. Do note that, historically, whenever an insurgent force takes down an unfair system by violence, they themselves are quick to become an even worse unfair system, which shouldn’t be surprising at all. On the other hand, all the positive, lasting, cumulative change in the world have come from the minds and hands of individuals or communities that using love, sacrifice and peaceful reason actually managed to change the collective minds of the rest of humanity. Doesn’t sound badass or even fair, and may take one or two generations, but it does work and it makes us all better human beings.
Oh no you’re disappointed in me however will I go on.
A message is aimed at her to encourage her to stop being hateful. Oh no!! But wait, she uses Sarcasm to deflect it! It’s super effective! Back to hatin’ hatin ‘ hatin’, but it’s ok because they hated her first and who cares that they will hate her more after she hates them back? All that matters is how good it feels to hate hate hate.
Remember, you must love and forgive the people beating on you. If you do that long enough, surely they’ll come to understand.
Pylgrim, honey, if hating hatred is so bad… you hate the hatred of hatred! You’re a super-ultra-mega hypocrite!
Love those who hate those who hate them!
One or two generations is too little, too late, for too many who need not had perished or suffered.
Dialogue with people occurs all the time. But against selfish politicans who pine on thousands or millions, against politicans full of hate, all the dialogue and pretty language will change nothing. They have to be beaten, either by their own falling and tripping, by the grinding and straining of the system, by time, etc.
And guess what? The world is far better now than it was 20 years ago for the community. The USA is apparently more liberal than it has ever been. Yet the moment we lapse into VSP territory or a false sense of security, it’s taken away. This fight is not over, and it has always included far more than pretty words and trying to talk to the opposition that doesn’t care that we might be smeared across pavement for protesting and fighting for the same rights they have.
But my point is that Robin is not a “politician full of hate”! Just a self-centred airhead with a conservative upbringing that lucked into a position of power. This is precisely my problem with the use of blanket terms and condoning of default attitudes. They fail to take in account the human beings. By dehumanising everybody who holds a position against what you believe as “bigot full of hate” you are doing exactly the same kind of thing that the worst of them do to you. In this particular case for example, Robin, more than an odious enemy that deserves to be “beaten and grinded” (jeez) is an enormous opportunity to convert a cog in a corrupt system into a herald of change.
Also I agree that the USA is more liberal than it was 20 years ago. But, how did it happen? By violently insulting, blackmailing and silencing the opposition, or by an increase in channels of communication showing the real people behind the previously poorly understood label of “homosexual”? Maybe by celebrities with a positive reputation coming out or speaking in favour of queer people. With public, peaceful, colourful celebrations, etc, etc.
Yes, Trump’s victory may represent a setback. Yes, this means that you must keep fighting for representation and your rights in the same way that people have been doing it for the last 20 years. No, it doesn’t mean that you must destroy this enemy and every single of his supporters in any way you can.
@Pylgrim
I think this might sound crazy to both sides, but I think we need both.
I agree that meaningful, lasting change is very likely best accomplished through teaching, and changing minds on a massive scale.
But not everyone can do that, and those who can, can’t do it all the time.
Also it is a very slow process. I think it would be a mistake to *neglect* the present at the expense of the future, and I strongly suspect focusing *solely* on the teaching would result in this neglect.
I think if we want to save every life we possibly can, we need to focus not only on the long term, but also the short term. That can include things like lobbying, to try to get better laws in place earlier than the teaching alone would trickle through to the legislative floors. It can include things like asking legislators who already agree with us to use things like filibusters to help slow down some of the ways in which we might be attacked, while we wait for our other efforts to turn the floor numbers in our favor.
But it can also include much more grey things. I don’t currently think outing of politicians should be blanket-permitted, but I don’t think it should be blanket-prohibited either.
“Ideally,” the person having the information would make a very careful and considered case-by-case call. If the politician can be convinced, then obviously that will be more effective long-term.
But at some point the information-haver has to make a judgement call. Is this going to work? Will it take too long, and leave too many other lives at risk? And how big that risk is to weigh against depends heavily on the specific platform of the politician and how influential they are at accomplishing the things they’re working on.
Think about the way the majority of civil rights were won in the 60s. Does history praise Malcolm X for his radical, sometimes violent, Black Panther movement? Or does history praise Martin Luther King Jr. and his message of peace and love, regardless of race? I’ll admit, there are still steps that need to be taken to completely end the hate of that time, but great strides have been made, and most agree that peaceful, civil disobedience was responsible for the legal changes that made racism so much more difficult.
Who history praises doesn’t always line up with who gets things done. Would the civil rights movement have been as successful without Malcolm X or without the Black Panthers? (not actually connected to each other, by the way. Malcolm X was more associated with the Nation of Islam.)
Holy LORD Pylgrim, there are ways to state your position without coming off as a sanctimonious and condescending victim blamer, but you have not found one.
Knuf Wons-
Martin Luther King Jr was not about forgiving your enemies no matter what and famously despised white moderates who breached brotherhood and forgiveness while black folks were dying. He was a pacifist, yes, but he’s not the holiday Christmas card he’s been made out to be in the history books.
He was also despised as “violent” by the white press, who tried to smear him and his organization as being responsible for “violent looting” despite a history of non-violent protests (sound familiar to modern civil rights organizations?).
That all changed after he won and there was no longer benefit in smearing him as an evil communist, and so in trying to quickly rewrite themselves as backing him, the white folks also rewrote his legacy to be this weird mealy-mouthed identity as a kumbiya activist who only wanted white people and black people to get along regardless of how oppressed black people were.
This was not true, what he wanted was gross violations of black people’s civil rights to end and he’d gladly reach out to white groups that wanted the same and viewed everyone as part of the same brotherhood of man, but that does not mean he did not notice the heel prints on his face or the bullet that threatened to take his life every day until it did.
Also, history depends largely on who wrote it. If you look into history books written by the black community vs written by white folks, you’ll find their portrayals of the black panthers and Malcolm X are very very very different.
Pylgrim-
Trump’s victory is not just a setback. It is something I’m increasingly seeing as something I will not be able to survive, though I have no intentions of giving the bastards the pleasure of seeing me take my own life.
His biggest fans want folks like me dead, are seeing this as their moment to eliminate us once and for all so they never again have to think complicated thoughts about gender.
I don’t know what the movement will look like in 20 years, but right now, it’s a desperate fight for mere survival. And there’s a lot to be gained from organizations like ACT-UP and how they survived a time that was similarly eliminationist as well as the actions of the French Resistance now that the literal nazis are back in power.
“By dehumanising everybody who holds a position against what you believe as ‘bigot full of hate’ you are doing exactly the same kind of thing that the worst of them do to you.”
If I hurt somebody because that person, specifically, is a bad person who was doing bad things and my actual goal was to prevent innocent people from being harmed, that is quite different from that person trying to hurt innocents en masse in the first place. The opposite, in fact.
Even if the nature of the hurt itself is the same.
Also in the case of outing, it’s their own attempts to do harm coming back to them.
I don’t know how likely I am to survive this “setback” incidentally. Nor how likely you are.
MLK was despised and hated by much of white America, not until he “won”, but until he was safely dead and could be turned into a nice symbol of how we fixed all our racial problems. Then he could be loved.
@Everybody. Thanks a lot for the discussion. I have learned a few things myself. I only want to leave one last clarification in the thread: I am actually not against the punishment (lawful or otherwise) of really terrible people. If I could travel back in time you’d bet I’d put a bullet on Hitler’s brain rather than trying to friendly ask him to stop being so bad and negotiating for years while millions die. The only thing I’m advocating here is to stop a more generalised hatred and distrust. Not all anti-LGBT people are unreasonable, perversely hateful imbeciles and certainly don’t deserve to be treated as such (and I argue, it is more likely to make them perversely hateful than changing their minds)
Some of them are just ignorant, some were just raised like that and hold half-baked beliefs without foundation, some are confused, some have been lied to by fearmongering organisations and individuals, etc. etc. As I always say, this does NOT excuse them, but it means that they are capable of changing their minds and that like you and I, are more likely to respond favourably to reason, positive reinforcement and love than to violence, abuse, and assumptive accusations. Avoid blanket generalisation and deal with each person according to their actual deeds, not according wit what you assume of them from their labels or affiliations.
Bullies rely on their victims taking the High Road so that there will be no consequences for their cruelty. If you actually want them to stop, there have to be real negative consequences for their actions, in the form of harms or removal of rights that would not be justified if inflicted on some random innocent person.
Agitation that doesn’t actually agitate anything is worthless and useless feel-good preening.
Involuntary outings exactly like this are one of the main reasons why the LGBTQ rights movement has gained steam in the US over the last decade, doing more to discredit anti-LGBTQ activits, legislators, and organizations with the political middle in the US than almost anything else. I’d argue the visibility of that hypocrisy has been almost as politically important as the visibility of queer people in main stream media like Ellen Degeneras or Ian McKellen.
It is because of the involuntary outing of multiple high-profile anti-LGBT activists and legislators that whenever a public figure starts to be *too* dedicated to the cause of denying the rights of LGBTQ people, the political middle in the US begins to suspect they are secretly queer themselves and starts to tune out and distance themselves from that assumed hypocrisy.
People are entitled to their individual rights… unless they are using those rights to infringe on the rights of others. You should have a right to privacy on the internet… unless you’re using that anonymity to harass and threaten innocent people, in which case someone would be entirely justified in doxxing you. You should have a right to carry weapons… unless you’re using those weapons to attack innocent people, in which case someone would be entirely justified in taking them from you. You should have a right to keep your sexual orientation closeted… unless you’re using that closet as a platform to advance the marginalization, abuse, and even outright killing of an entire community of innocent people… in which case someone is absolutely justified in outing you, an act that not only discredits you, removing your ability to harm and infringe on the rights of others, but also brands your entire movement your hypocrisy in the public eye, impacting the ability of whoever takes your place to do so.
Leslie has tried to ‘convert’ Robin. She will most likely continue to do so, but the very fact she’s already going to snap proof of a compromising position and has premeditated this with the stances Robin has already shows that maybe she’s giving up on trying to ‘convert’ Robin. And this is in webcomic time and logic. A chat or two later, Robin might very well discard her ways, get with Leslie, give her voters a lesson, and live a happy life. It barely happens, however, in real life, even Ted Haggard took years to come around after being ‘exposed’.
How we got to this point is a little bit of A and B. Mature, realistic and solid representation went a long way, sure, the culture changed. But also exposing hypocrites such as Bruce Barclay or Roy Ashburn and making it unacceptable which happened to Milk is also more than needed. No soft power lives without the backing of hard power. This goes to your last paragraph – unless we want to see a constant see-saw of revoking, giving, revoking, and giving rights. It is not enough to be given those rights, if they’re taken the next year. It has to become not just culturally but legally cemented. That won’t come about by trying to hold the high ground without sealing and counter-sallying the tunnels under the tower the opposition makes, even if that means we have to get dirty.
And I repeat what I said before: We already try to ‘convert’. We try dialogue. We try public discourse. I’m not saying it’s worthless or without merit. Winning the hearts and minds works. However, what happens when it doesn’t work and those people who can affect your life and members of the community so much up to death and improvishment are still in power? You fight them and you topple them. Brownback isn’t going to sudddenly have a metamorphisis. Nor will Pence or Ryan. How about Milo? They’ve been part of civilized debate and discourse for decades, won’t change, and still hurt us. It obviously won’t work.
And the self-centered is just as dangerous as the outright malicious, because they’re more than willing to throw everyone else under the bus because they’re the ones doing the throwing. They won’t be chucked under there or even hit the ground- unless they trip. For their own selves, they destroy countless others; their livelihoods, their futures, even their lives. And they’re so high up that even tripping them doesn’t bring them down to the mud where everyone else is. Why, then, for *those* people, the hardline bigots and those so self-centered and safe, should we go at them with kiddy gloves? They can take hits. They surely dish them out.
You are disappointed in me. That is fair. As I’ve noted, this issue is fraught and hotly debated within the community and I respect those who have this as a strong line they are unwilling to ever cross.
And it’s clear a lot of people are equating outing with a more troubling general online trend at the moment of using callout culture to harass folks, justifying violences against them like doxxing, online harassment, emotional abuse, misgendering, etc… by the reasoning of them being a “bad person” and that’s very resonable, I also despise that toxicity hiding behind a shell of supposed righteousness and how it’s used to defend abusers who just like to hurt people and are trying to find a socially-acceptable excuse to bag on people without much in the way of power in order to feel strong.
Is the ideal to reach out? To show love and support and acceptance?
Yeah, and we do that. Marginalized folks are good at showing forgiveness and love even to our enemies, even when they kill us en masse. And different groups of us have shown our grace in the face of truly horrifying levels of oppression and threat (see anti-lynching activists or suffragettes for historical examples, Black Lives Matter and muslim rights organizations for modern examples).
But…
Blanket statements for that ideal and against violence run into a central problem, one that is really hard. And it comes to the problem of survival.
We tell our children never to be violent towards bullies, to be the better person, but what the marginalized learn from that is that no one will ever come to their defense and even their ability to call out the violence against them will be dismissed as “rude” and “uncivil”, while their bullies learn that there are no consequences in harassing another person to feel stronger.
And so the bullies become empowered, feel comfortable voting for the king bully, relish in the power of being able to cause someone pain. Robin may not have her heart in bigotry, but she is willingly serving as the mouthpiece for those who do, seeing them as her core constituency, the people she relies upon for her position and the people she is in place to give voice to.
People who demand from her the right to continue to beat down groups of people already made second-class citizens by accidents of who they love and want to get down and dirty with.
And it ignores the reality that ignorance can be weaponized, can be willful. My family had access to a wide internet of resources on trans issues. I carefully sought to teach them, sent them books by trans individuals. They rejected them all, still demanded more education every time they continued to hurt me. They used my willingness to see the good in them to string me along in an abusive relationship.
And it hurt, a lot. It took abandoning that vain quest to see how much letting these people abuse me hurt me and before that happened, it had already cost me a relationship and a lot of mental health I’ll never get back.
Universal statements that we should “love our enemies” and carefully teach them out of ignorance implies that all our enemies care about our pain. Are willing to do more than listen politely for a few seconds before going right back to not giving a fuck if we live or die.
And universal statements against violence… well… when I was in Denmark, there were these two neo-nazis I was on a bus with. And well, they took a lot of exception to me wearing a skirt. And they wanted to kill me for it. If I had been alone in an alley, if I had been in America. I imagine they would have while others watched passively on.
But in Denmark, the whole atmosphere of the bus changed when they threatened me. Folks were getting out of their chairs willing to savage these neo-nazis on behalf of some American stranger they knew shit-all about. And that threat of violence likely saved my life. The neo-nazis retreated at the next stop and I never saw them again.
I’m only here because people were willing to do violence to hateful men to protect me and communicated that clearly.
Good stuff, I fully agree with you and you do well pointing the flaws in my blanket statement about blanket generalisations. I do believe that truly terrible people must be dealt with and not extended an undeserved corner of the love blanket. As in everything in life, there is a balance.
Guys, there were so many innocent people in that Death Star, why’d you have to blow it up?
:c :c :c
@Pat You misunderstand me (or maybe misrepresent me?) There’s nothing wrong with hating hatred. Do hate bigotry. Also hate the hatred that allows victims to become abusers. What I am against is hating people, especially in a blanket generalising kind of way. It is bad regardless of who is doing it.
But perhaps you just needed to find a way to call me hypocritical and ad-hominem me right out of the argument?
“Hope for the best; plan for the worst.”
I’d hope that, getting to know a queer person directly, and getting to explore that side of herself in private, might lead to some revelations as to the harm the policies she’s been supporting have been doing, and her therefore changing her stance and using her position to try and mitigate the harm done, and actively support LGBTQ* people.
–But I’d still take the picture, just in case.
I’d take the picture because I’d want evidence of a felony. She most likely broke into that apartment.
I don’t know. She doesn’t seem all that surprised to find her there.
I think she seems REALLY surprised, so I think we’ll have to chalk this up to different reading.
Hooooo boy I’m conflicted about this
Is it just me, or does Panel-7 Leslie also look conflicted?
… or does she just over-correct for duck-face?
Looks like focus on the photo composition and duckface overcorrection to me, though I’m sure a small part of her is still conflicting with the parts that are in motion.
I’m hoping she’s just seizing the opportunity to get the blackmail material while she has it, and will get around to agonizing about if/how to use it later
Also that she finds out just WTF Robin is doing here first
I find that to be entirely in keeping with what I know of her.
Sleeping, snoring, and possibly drooling.
Duh.
Blackmail material, or something for her personal collection?
Probably both.
This is definitely a good idea, and there are only positive outcomes to be had.
Clearly there is no potential downside to this brilliant notion
It most definitely will not involve tabloid journalists or paparazzi invading Leslie’s classroom.
Just like every other idea had by a character in this webcomic.
Yep, after all, Robin is fully clothed and fast asleep after a night of drinking. Therefore the sexual conduct and inclination being implied are both actual and consensual.
That is a good point
Like on one hand Robin is a dick, on the other I don’t approve of LGBT people having things like misgendering or forceful outing done to them just because they’re dicks
bad move Les :///
We don’t know what she plans to do with the image yet, or what she’llactually do.
It doesn’t take much narrative savvy to know what she’s planning there…. it’s pretty heavily implied.
Eh, I disagree. She could be taking it just to prove it to herself, or to Robin, without actually making it public. Or something like that
People are complicated; narrative savvy can get bent. Besides, even in the implied likelihood that she elects to use the image as leverage over the Congresswoman, there are multiple ways to do so that vary in degree of upfuckedness.
“Upfuckedness”. I like you
Why, thank you.
Well it’s definitely for leverage but we don’t know how exactly she’ll use it. She could just expose Robin right away so she loses her Family Values voters, or she might use it as blackmail, but only demand that Robin actually listen to her, with no intention of ever actually using it, or anything in between.
Oh, I think she’s definitely considering it.
And it’s worth noting why. Noting the “sweet lesbian facts” Leslie dropped on Robin. That she let slip that she watched other queer youth with her literally starve to death because of policies like Robin’s.
Like, you can disagree with that choice, but this is not something she’s doing casually whether she decides to immediately delete it or not.
This. Those points stand just fine on their own, but it’s also worth considering that Leslie hasn’t done much on impulse in DoA. She’s regretted a lot of her actions regarding Robin, but they were premeditated; she’s not going to rush into this either.
She’s not going to rush into any follow-up, but I’d say that this was very much done on impulse. In fact, showing up for the midnight rally seemed fairly impulsive as well. Les doesn’t do big things on impulse; the rally spiralled unpredictably and this picture will only have consequences if she makes a big decision later. But little impulsive things are, in my opinion, part of her charm and a big factor in her wry humour in the classroom.
Now, I’m a straight, cis- male, and I acknowledge that my opinion on this situation carries less weight than others simply because I have never and will never be in this situation. But as for what she does with the picture… Well, Cerberus noted earlier that this is kind of a grey area. I don’t think it’s appropriate to out anyone, regardless of political influence or leanings, but I understand the counterarguments to that position. I think we’ll see Les fight with these arguments in her head for a while as well. Just my two cents.
(Aside: I live in Canada; we got rid of the penny nearly four years ago, and our smallest coin is now the five-cent nickel. Feels weird to say ‘my two cents’ now, but it’s kinda permanently in my vocabulary now.)
Naw, naw; Canada still has pennies; we just don’t have the actual coins anymore.
See, if I buy a coffee at Tim’s and it’s $1.83, then yes, I will be paying $1.85 at the till if I pay in cash. But if I pay by debit? Then I’m paying $1.83, which is a loonie, three quarters, a nickel, and (I love this bit), three cents. Three pennies.
Three imaginary pennies. 😀 <3
Canada: We have plastic, holographic astronaut bills, and imaginary coins. 😀
Excellent point… So you can have my two cents, but not in cash. Canada is beautifully odd sometimes.
You’ll also be paying 1.85 if it comes to 1.87, for the benefit of the yanks. It rounds just like any other number. (This should go without saying, but I’ve seen people argue against eliminating the penny on the basis that it will always be rounded up.)
Yeah. If right now she’s actually remembering the names and faces of the friends who are dead now because of people like Robin? I mean, I was thinking in terms of Leslie doing a pragmatic cost/benefit of what the future looks like, but this moment could instead be all about Leslie’s dead.
This is for you, name-of-street-girlfriend-who’s-never-been-mentioned-before.
Every time a new hateful bill is passed, I think of those I’ve lost or nearly lost because of the bigotries those bills represent.
That shit hangs on you for a long time. And there’s no way that she hasn’t been being constantly haunted by some old ghosts starting right about Panel 4 of this comic right when Robin says “nothing bad would have probably happened”:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/guidelines/
42% is just. Any time I end up falling out of contact I hope that folks are okay. I try not to let it happen but….
I’ve mentored a lot of kids by this point. I have only very loose eyes on most of them. Some I’ve lost contact with completely. I know I’ve lost a few I’ve kept loose eyes on and I have no delusions that I’ve lost more than a few of those I’ve lost track of completely.
I try not to let it get me down and still show hope. That’s been getting a little harder of late thanks to recent events.
Downside of doing emotional support work, I suppose.
Yeah. I try to keep in touch, and constantly check up on the various queer and trans hatchlings I’ve mothered over the years. There are some who’ve just straight up vanished, and it fucking tears my heart out, because I know the odds are that at least a couple of them are dead now. I grieve for them, and sometimes, when I see the data ghost of someone I *know* we lost, it wrenches something inside of me so hard that I’m sobbing for hours – but I don’t stop. Somebody has to be there to care for our youth, to help them, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be society or cis folks. It’s all on us, so all we can do is keep doing the best we can.
For whatever it’s worth, Cerberus, I’m so damned glad those kids have you.
Mika, you as well for those you’ve helped hatched.
And hugs of commiseration. It’s not easy mentoring the baby queers, especially since not all survive to soar.
@ Cerberus and Mika – I’m sorry this is such a rough time. If either of you need to talk, you can message me on Patreon. I’ve not got half the experience I’m sure you do, but I have an ear and lots of e-hugs.
I think that – if nothing else – we can all agree that making that decision lightly would be horrible.
Leslie of all people knows the ramifications of what she’s considering, as well as those of simply letting Robin continue as is. I highly doubt this will end up being an easy decision for her.
What Leslie is thinking of doing with the picture may be irrelevant. In this day and age, if it’s on your phone, it can escape into the wild in a heartbeat.
And think about this from DYW’s perspective. Which is more likely to result in wacky hijinks: Leslie deliberately releasing the picture, or someone else accidentally getting ahold of it and then Leslie and/or Robin scrambling to deal with blackmail and/or public reaction?
Like…… oh man this lady is doing bad things to gay people better make sure the homophobic society she’s in knows she likes to mack on the ladies
But what if outing her torpedoes the next homophobic legislation she would have authored? Is it better to defend the right of millions of gay women at the expense of one queer women who they need defended from?
… no, I’m seriously asking, this has always been a gray area for me.
It probably always will be a dark grey area. The only circumstances where I can picture everyone agreeing on a quandary like that are pretty horrific.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Outing one congresscritter to save thousands of queer kids from torture or starvation is not a bad bargain unless you happen to be the congresscritter in question.
The needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few, or of the one.
Yes, the protection of an immoral aggressor is a lesser priority than the protection of their victims so if you have to tear them down to protect the people they’re attacking then so be it.
She’s rich and powerful.
Yes, she’ll lose the support of her party and her current base, but that is not the same circumstances or consequences of outing as a youth on the raggedy edge.
No matter what, she will be wealthy thanks to her congressperson salary. She will likely have a walk-on in most lobbying firms because access is still access. She will still have the support of her family (at least her younger family who do not seem to share her politics).
She will land fine from outing, same as other powerful homophobic men who’ve been outed having queer sex on the down-low.
The politics of this are fraught but it is definitely not as simple as “she did bad things to X group, so hurt her by doing bad things to her” and she’s not going to have the same interactions with a homophobic society that say an 18 year old Leslie did.
I’ve got to say, your analyses are a little more unnerving when that cheerfully smiling box of Roz next to your name is attached to a breakdown of how much damage being outed could hypothetically do to Robin.
It’s pretty appropriate. Remember how this started?
Yes. That’s exactly what makes the avatar chilling.
Sometimes the avatar is eerily appropriate.
She isn’t JUST being a dick, though, she’s using her closet as a platform to advance the oppression of an entire community of innocent people. An individual’s rights end where their use to infringe the rights of innocent bystanders begins.
You’re centring Robin’s experience inappropriately, and acting as though using her political power to kill people and destroy their lives is a morally neutral act. It’s not.
Robin and Leslie’s feelings here matter less than the people whom Leslie is mad on behalf of.
Stay good, Leslie.
Also, maybe figure out what the hell she’s doing there before doing anything irrevocable.
Taking the picture isn’t irrevocable.
Turning the picture over to the press is.
So is letting the opportunity pass.
Yeah, she hasn’t done anything irrevocable yet. I don’t think I have the right to say what she should or shouldn’t do. I just hope that, whatever she does, she does it after thoughtful consideration with all the facts in evidence, not on the spur of the moment out of ire when she appears not to have any idea how or why Robin even ended up in her bed.
And, like I said back when Dorothy was considering what to do about Amazi-Girl’s identity… it isn’t “not outing her”, it’s just “not outing her right now”.
What she’s actually doing there is largely irrelevant unless it’s “professing her complete and total change of heart vis a vis her policies about LGBTQ people and promising to change her platform accordingly.”
That, or at least something close enough to that to make the carrot a more promising tool for further development than the stick, is not out of the question, and may be one of the more likely of the many unlikely scenarios that got us from where we left these ladies last night to Leslie waking up with a Congresswoman in her bed and apparently no idea how she got there.
Though my current favorite hypothesis is, “This is actually Walkyverse Leslie waking up next to her wife, having dreamt the latter part of Shortpacked! and all of DoA to date.” This has the advantage of also explaining the Soggies.
I thought Mary was the only character capable of using blackmail
I think it was proven quite conclusively that she’s actually rather incompetent at it.
Blackmail’s such an ugly word.
We prefer ‘extortion’.
The X makes it sound cool.
No, it’s not extortion. It’s irresistable persuasion.
Is Mary really capable of using blackmail? She achieved literally none of her goals from it, even minor ones, and the only significant consequence was Ruth falling into a depression for tangentially related reasons, as well as Mary herself getting punched in the face and ostracized. Everything was terrible for literally everyone in that storyline except Carla; it was a shitshow
Whether she’s capable or not, she tried to blackmail and her intent was harmful.
She’s a college student, she is here to learn. (Can you major in blackmail at IU?)
Give me a “B!”
Give me an “I!”
Give me a…”P”?
Sorry, guys, I can’t really tell which direction you’re going with this.
B! I! P! E! D! A! L! No, wait, that makes no contextual sense.
She is going out Robin as a bipedal homeothermic masticator known to have perambulated children on public streets.
Unforgivable.
Furthermore, Robin has taken part in hortatory activities, her sister has taken part in thespian activities, and she is rumored to have attempted to interest a 13-year-old girl in philately!
You’ve been reading old Huey P. Long campaign speeches, haven’t you?
Do you dare mention the numismatics?
A pic of someone sleeping?
Meh.
Fully clothed and sleeping after refusing any sort of liaison with an attractive member of her gender.
That, or they passed out there, or more. But none of that can be inferred yet.
Sleep is for the weak!
Leslie, you’re playing with fire. To the dark side anger leads.
Where’s Mike when you need him? He’s the resident shoulder devil of this comic.
Oh god no. He’s the last person who should be anywhere near this
That’s probably the best guarantee that he’ll wind up involved somehow.
Nah, anger is the only reason we’ve managed to claw what rights we have from a bigoted society that would have been perfectly happy shoving us to the margins indefinitely.
Robin’s drooling less than I expected.
Maybe that’s a reflection of sleep quality?
She used up all her saliva earlier.
(heyooo)
Ha.
you think she’s taking a selfie but that’s actually the first episode of season 2 of steven universe on that phone
Eesh not cool, Leslie. I see the justiceporn of it all, but outing someone like that is brutal no matter what your motivations. She trusted you enough to fall asleep there 🙁
If anything this is just going to show her that she can’t open up anymore.
Well, it depends a lot on how she’s here. If she broke in during the middle of the night rather than being invited up as some theorized yesterday, then Robin has already breached a major boundary first.
Now that’s just wildly implausible.
This is Robin. She’s never breached [b]a[/b] major boundary.
She always breaches major boundaries in job lots.
CURSE YOU BB-CODE/HTML! Curse you!
HTML tags work. Just not BB tags.
Well, you know what they say, bet you can’t break just one.
Well that’s not ominous foreshadowing or anything!
uh…. this doesn’t seem… ethical.
Orange and blue. Orange and blue.
Will Leslie have the guts to post that? She surely knows the dangers of outing someone.
Even if she’s unwilling to post it, she can use it to bluff.
Which is still pretty disgusting. Levying fear over an LGBT person’s identity being forcibly outted is something I expect monsters to do. Not people who are into rights and respect.
Plenty of people rationalize monstrous behavior with the old omelette and egg line.
We’ll see what Leslie does.
She’s a congresswoman voting against LGBT rights, and has expressed the idea that she doesn’t think anything really bad happens because of those bills. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of fear there to leverage.
There does, Robin knows she can’t be seen as gay because she is the traditional families candidate. This is evidence to that horror show of a scenario for her. I think Robin just underestimates how much power and damage her bills do because she’s never seen it affect anyone herself and she doesn’t really know any gay people to enlighten her.
So what you’re saying is that she knows she’s a liar.
I don’t know if she knows, Robin clearly felt attraction to Leslie at the bar.
If that was Robin’s first experience with attraction to someone of her own gender then no she isn’t. I think she has felt attracted to woman before thought based upon her dialogue regarding appearances and presenting yourself differently.
Change topics!
If being outed is a “horror show,” then she damn well knows she’s hurting people since she wrote the script for the show.
Also even if she has felt it before denial is a powerful thing, especially when the truth hurts everything you’ve worked towards. Robin isn’t an inhumane machine and is having difficulty accepting that she is bi because it changes absolutely everything so it’s easier to deny it at least until the issue is forced which I suspect Leslie will do though not with the photo as that compromises herself.
@Pat 4:42
I wasn’t changing topics, I was responding to your point regarding whether she was a liar. Context matters.
That point had nothing to do with the topic you were talking about though. Indeed, context does matter.
@Pat Post at 4:12pm
Can’t reply to it for some reason so I’ll do it here…
As I said before it is a horror show to Robin NOT because being gay means subjecting yourself to being hurt but because it would be a shot to the head for her political career. Robin is in a unique position where being so would go hypocrisy and sway the voters to the other side. That’s why the photo could be used as blackmail and why it’s important that Leslie took it even if she will never use it.
It’s not about the policies affecting her, it’s about giving the weapons.
Also I don’t really want to change topics when this entire page and perhaps arc is revolving around Robin and Leslie. If you want another topic then perhaps speak to someone else because I find this arc very enjoyable and like to discuss it.
I was mocking your blatant attempt to alter the topic.
Which would be why I, y’know, kept on the same topic.
What? Would Robin be in danger if she were outed?
My goodness, how could that be?
Letting Robin get hit by her own attacks hardly makes Leslie the greater evil.
Less guts, more bile.
Well that’s a disgusting thing to do.
No, using your political power as a platform to oppress marginalized people for the sake of your own gain is a disgusting thing to do. This is karma.
Doing one wrong action in opposition to someone else’s wrong action isn’t karma, it’s just lowering yourself to their level.
Besides the only reason she has political power was because of those ideals she campaigned originally with, if you want to be mad at someone then be mad at the people who voted it in. A politician that uses that as a basis is a result of the people not the other way round…for the most part.
The high road was invented by people driving the low road to make sure there was more room for them to do whatever the fuck they like down there without consequence.
A politician is not the will of the people incarnate they are a human being who is fully responsible for their own actions. They CHOSE to exploit and encourage the prejudices of the lowest common denominator for their own gain and they absolutely deserve the ire of the people they endanger to do so.
People are still on the hook for whatever politician they elect, we don’t get a bye simply because they have there own will. We knew this before voting for them.
Taking a photo? Nah. Now what exactly she’s going to do with it…
These Millennials– with their “selfies” and their “hook-ups” and their “killing of the cereal industry</a…."
Oh cool, the link wound up working anyway
These commentators don’t serially link any more because they’re too lazy to clean up their tags.
=P
Honestly, I can proofread for tags all I want but I’m still going to mess up a few posts.
Welp, that is a thing Leslie Bean has now done. Maybe we’ll be lucky and she’ll just blackmail Robin (it’s the least unethical thing she could do with this pic besides have personal doubts and immediately delete it).
Nah, she could also keep it to herself as a souveneir.
I forgot to add I expect that she’ll likely not post it online or otherwise intentionally use it, but that having taken it she’ll fail to delete it and it’ll end up getting around anyway.
She could have it to show Robin in case she “forgot” who she really is.
Robin remembered Leslie’s name from weeks before…she won’t forget for a while.
I just realized the potential meaning of Leslie’s bedsheets and sleeping clothes being purple.
Or, you know, maybe she just likes the color purple.
… or needs to do a better job of separating her laundry.
How did I not see it??
Leslie is obviously a Prince fan.
I’m still wondering how Robin ended up in Leslie’s bed. Last we saw of them, Leslie was leaving Robin at the bar. Unless Leslie remembers inviting Robin back to her place, maybe wait until she knows how Robin got there before doing anything with that picture.
I have so many questions about that. Like, the context of how we got from last comic set to this comic set paints this moment in a lot of different lights.
I’m convinced that she must have broke in. How and why are the questions that vex me. Also, how drunk was she?
Did she keep drinking and considering what Leslie said, freaking out more and more, not wanting to confront the truth but not knowing where else to go? Or did she keep drinking until “go snuggle up with the cute professor” seemed like a really good plan, but she passed out at the last second?
Or did she decide to find Leslie to talk to her more, but drank so much to work up the courage that she completely forgot what the hell she wad doing?
Is she even going to know where she is when she wakes up?
And most importantly, how many episodes of Steven Universe did they get through?
And which episodes? “Watch episodes of” doesn’t sound like how you’d describe planning on going through them in order from the beginning.
As I said above, sure, outing LGBT people who are in a position of power and then HURT other LGBT people is fine, but yes, *how* did she get there is a big concern. The question of Consent is major here if they did anything. The question of making utter lies if nothing happened to blackmail is also major here. Unless Robin got in with her to do the do, and they remember this, then nothing should be done, because faciliting lies at best or throwing around dubious consent at worst will do far more damage than good.
*plays Ambrosia’s “How Much I Feel” on the hacked Muzak*
Welp, so much for their 2nd date.
OH snap
No way.
You did NOT beat me to that pun.
No, seriously, you must have seen ME make that post, then used temporal reversal to plagiarize it and post it yourself, thus pre-empting my usage of the pun.
Curse you and your malevolent time-traveling ways.
The early bird gets to cause the global reality failure paradox.
I’ll be honest: if I could do that, I’d have plagiarized a heck of a lot more with it.
Jut one example: take the Curse of the Black Pearl script back to 1967, convince Disney to film it as a tie-in to the ride opening that year, and somehow get them to cast Keith Richards as Jack. 😀
Outing is terrible, and you should never, EVER, do it.
Unless, of course, the person you’re outing is a public figure who has actively supported measures that will directly harm LGBTQA people. Then you expose that motherfucker’s hypocrisy to the world.
I applaud Leslie’s pragmatism. I sincerely doubt she’ll ever share that photo, or even tell anyone, even Robin, that she has it. But now she has it. She has options. She can try to talk to Robin, like she did last night, try to get her to see reason and come around on some of her policies. And if that fails, she can destroy her.
>I sincerely doubt she’ll ever share that photo, or
>even tell anyone, even Robin, that she has it.
This is why I’m not that worried
With any luck cloud sync was disabled on that phone.
Leak it Leslie. The GOP can be given no sanctuary, no mercy, no goodwill. Crush or be crushed.
No! Crushing is exactly how we got here!
It’s a rare occasion if the two of us are on the same page, I mean I have no problem crushes those who uphold injustice but how far are we going to go until we draw the line and say “This is not right.”
I was actually referring to the crushes Robin and Leslie had on each other, but I agree with that as well.
If Leslie does this, it should be done in spite of mercy, not without it.
The GOP is an organization. Like any other organization, it is made up of a combination of extremists and moderates, people toeing the party line to advance their own agenda and people who blindly believe in what their peers believe, and vile creatures of spite and kindhearted people who want what they think is best for the people of the world.
Robin has proven difficult to teach, but Leslie might have made some progress already. Crush her and there’s no telling who might well up to fill the gap. They could be as misguided and short-sighted as her about pushing discriminatory legislation to get re-elected, or they could be a heartfelt bigot who makes ot their personal mission to scourge the queer community from the district if they can.
Or maybe a person with more reasonable ideas about letting people be who they want to be might crop up – but which one sounds more likely to you?
Considering how few GOP members have stepped up to condemn the literal nazis crawling out the woodwork in support of Emperor Trump, I’m not sure there are any “moderate” GOP members left… at least not on the national stage.
Hence my skepticism about the odds of a reasonable person coming into power if Robin falls out of favor.
There are advantages to forcing turnover, though. Unless the replacement is assured to be worse, then simply forcing them to adopt a new person means they lose some committee seats, and so forth.
Yeah, even the ones like Graham and Romney who I’d started to respect for opposing him based on principals are falling in line and wringing their hands about the prospect of controlling all three branches of government, ignoring the horrible cost of it, even by their standards
And they have a nice blue scapegoat to deflect bláme onto. Oh, look! It’s even holding out an olive branch!
The Trump wing of the GOP thrives off the visceral, emotional reactions they get from their base. Feelings are powerful political tools. They take minimal effort to put in place, but they’re exceptionally difficult to change by presenting new information and critical thinking. Maybe they want a nice, easy to digest, binary world view and don’t want to think about shades of grey or consider people who aren’t like them. (I’m absolutely not saying all Republicans are like this, but considering the outcome of the primary there must be a subset that is.)
That’s why the “moral high ground”, “compromise” approach hasn’t been working with this vocal minority of the GOP; Dems are trying to override their self-centered emotions with logic. They feel something is true, therefore to them it is true. We’ve been seeing this since the rise of the “Tea Party” in 2010. (Remember them?) They like their comfy, warm worldview and see no reason to change it just because some people who aren’t them will benefit. What’s in it for them?
Oh, so it’s okay to out people as long as they’re people you disagree with?
It is okay to out people who are using their closet as a weapon to cause other queer individuals harm while using that harm to still get their rocks off in secret.
Or at least its complicated and debatable as to the ethics of outing this group of people.
Like, I have no clue why we insist as a culture on reducing “actively harmful legislation that makes it harder for one group of people to survive” to “disagreement”, but it’s kinda… awful.
And the reason it is awful is because it erases that the “disagreement” is on the humanity and right to live of a group of people and makes it easier to normalize being against the humanity or right to live of certain groups or individuals based on identities they have no power to change.
Someone being a conservative and facing ire and consequences for supporting hateful laws is a lot different from being gay or being black or being a woman, something immutable.
Look, I’m not saying Robin should be immune to criticism or anger. She’s done some legit terrible things as part of not only being part of a political voting block supporting anti-lgbt legislation, but as someone who is vocal about supporting those stances in the first place, even though it’s been increasingly clear she doesn’t truly believe what she’s parroting.
The fact that she’s bisexual herself is just another layer to this mess, and while there’s pathos to it, it also makes her a big ol’ flaming hypocrite, and I don’t think Leslie would be out of line to point this out to Robin firmly and angrily and privately. That doesn’t mean I think it’s okay to OUT Robin. Like, fuck, at least when politicians are trumpeting family values but visiting a bunch of prostitutes on the side, exposing that is exposing a crime. It’s not a crime to be bi, no matter how much some people wish it was!
There are lines you shouldn’t cross. Don’t out people, not even to make a really good point. Don’t misgender people even if they’re being horrible bigots. Stuff like that. I can’t believe this is even a serious debate in the lgbt community at this point.
I mean, I agree 100% about misgendering no matter what, but the politics surrounding outing professional homophobes has been hotly debated for years and I do not think the community has ever had a clear consensus of opinion on the matter.
Honestly, there’s strong arguments for either side and having grown up during the time of Larry Craig and Ted Haggard, I’ve seen how much outing powerful bigots did to puncture the mystique those powerful figures surrounded themselves with, in much the same way as discovering Strom Thurmond or Thomas Jefferson slept with their slaves or servants on the side.
Hypocrisy cuts through the “moral” arguments of bigots like nothing else. Not for the screaming base, but definitely for the mushy middle that likes to think of themselves as “above the fray”.
It’s not an easy choice to make one way or another, on either moral or practical grounds.
That’s true, but the problem is that destroying the political career of a single person, satisfying as it may be, doesn’t fix the underlying problem. Homophobia/transphobia is strongly ingrained in the politics of far too many people for that to be the case. This is not a case of “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one,” it’s a choice between the status quo (with Robin maybe reconsidering her stance in the face of new information) and Robin and Leslie’s lives both being destroyed and oh by the way, that awful legislation passed anyway.
Except it can help fix the underlying problem.
People often cling to bigotries or flock to bigotries out of social normalcy. If bigotry is seen as the social norm, as the “moral” thing, as the thing that is supported by your friends and family members, it becomes easier to fall in with it.
Analyses of hate group members show that a lot of what got them sucked into hate group membership was the social factor, having people who were their friends for other reasons sell them on extreme bigoted hatred. And it’s easier to hold on to bigoted beliefs against reality if it seems like all your family and friends share the hateful beliefs or at least you can convince yourself that they all secretly share them.
Being laughed at as a hate movement, having your bigotry exposed as hypocrisy and dangerously uncool has real effects in pulling people out of said bigotry as can having real relationships with members of the group you are predisposed to be bigoted against (it’s easier to hate black people as a theoretical entity than to hate your friend Carl who got your back when you struggled with cancer).
There’s a great example with Superman and the KKK. Basically they published a comic of Superman fighting the KKK using smuggled information about actual rituals and titles the KKK used. And the KKK lost membership because of it because bigots went home and watched their kids play Superman versus well… them, using all their titles and themselves as the bad guys.
It doesn’t work on everyone, but it works on some.
And we’ve seen outing a bigot have real effects on homophobic legislation, stopping some terrible bills, weakening others, especially when the outings are happening close to each other temporally.
And this particular district is a toss-up district where votes actually matter. If Robin were to hit a scandal that depressed the turnout of her base, that could mean one less Republican in place for what is shaping to be at least 2 years of pure terror for LGBT folks.
Her outing Robin would definitely ruin Leslie’s life, possibly inconvenience Robin’s life, and could have real meaningful impact on a close election.
And that’s some fodder for the intense moral and practical calculus Leslie is performing right now.
I’m torn on all of this. In this case, I think it’s probably a bad idea. Robin isn’t Craig or Haggard. She’s a bi anti-LGTBQ politician, but she doesn’t seem to be a hypocrite in the same sense. She hasn’t been preaching against the evils of homosexuality while picking up strange women in airport bathrooms. Judging from SP & from what we’ve seen here, she’s very much in denial about her bisexuality.
That suggests to me that there’s far more chance of her changing if she’s put in a position where she’s forced to accept it herself – for example falling for Leslie, especially this universe’s take no shit version of Leslie.
Both morally & practically I think the argument for outing Robin is much less than for outing a Craig or a Haggard.
It’s very possible this could be the beginning of a Paul Koering situation:
http://rawstory.com/exclusives/byrne/backstory_paul_koering_comes_out_414.htm
That’s certainly where Leslie tried to leave it.
If Leslie rethought that and invited her home, then that’s one thing and this smacks of desperation and regret over her weakness. If Robin wasn’t invited or coerced her way to Leslie’s home…
Well, that’s another matter entirely and unlikely to be the same situation and more a type of obsession and bad boundaries from a politician who wants a down-low girlfriend and isn’t going to accept no.
But yeah, very much torn myself as I am on outing as a political tactic in general.
Except that it WAS a crime to be bi, not all that long ago, and Robin (and people like her) are pushing for it to be moved back into that category, in incremental steps. Remember, we’re down to an even split the SCOTUS, with the orangutan getting to pick the next body. Damaging the cohesion of the GOP’s Congressional block could very literally save lives.
Fine. It’s still a line I am not comfortable with being crossed and I don’t think it’s wrong for me to be uncomfortable with rhetoric like ‘crush or be crushed’ even though I agree that it’s pretty damn bad that one of America’s two major political parties has gotten to the point where it’s considered acceptable to appoint literal, unapologetic neo-nazis to Cabinet positions.
Truce?
That is absolutely a fair personal line to have.
Honestly, if I was in Leslie’s place, I’d have no idea what I’d do.
As I said, it’s hotly debated within our community. *Appropriate gesture of support offered*
Obama gets to pick the next Justice. The fact that he can’t kinda says to me that one’s already gone.
Also, please don’t act like I’m reducing the bigotry and oppression I FACE to ‘disagreement’. I said ‘disagreement’ because this applies to a TON of shit. Like, there’s a lot of people who think it’s okay to misgender other trans people or threaten to out other lgbt people because they disagree with them! Oh no, someone likes fiction they don’t like, GUESS I’D BETTER TRY AND DOX THEM.
And you know, fighting for our rights and for our SURVIVAL is important, but outing Robin wouldn’t actually stop the big hate machine. At best, Robin would get ground up, left in the dust, and some other photogenic pundit would take her place, because she’s just a cog in a big machine right now. At worst, all that would still happen, but Leslie would also get targeted, and she’d lose her job, or one of them could get physically attacked or worse.
Oh, yeah, no, we are 100% in agreement on doxxers. Fuck those fuckers.
Like, what the frick. You realize that’s what bigots believe about the people they’re bigoted against, right? Someone could just as easily say they HAD to turn all those lgbt people away from the homeless shelter they run, because it’s ‘crush or be crushed’. After all, those lgbt people are merciless! And they could even BELIEVE it. And yet, their actions wouldn’t be right either way.
Right now, the GOP is poised on day one to pass legislation to make it illegal for individuals like me to hold employment, to hold housing, or to receive medical care. It is called the First Amendment Defense Act.
At the same time, they are seeking to eliminate what little healthcare those like me receive, which will massively increase suicide rates and death rates of trans individuals who are relying on HRT for survival.
And they have been passing various bills directly aimed at large scale harassment of the community, making it almost impossible to survive in public spaces, introducing legislation that lays literal bounties on trans individuals seeking to pee (interestingly enough, when you end up homeless because your landlord can kick you out just for being trans, the only legal places available to pee are public spaces), and even trying to pass legislation in Texas that would require schools to out their trans and queer students to their parents even when those parents are violent or abusive.
LGBT people have no similar power over the homophobes. Nor are we seeking that power in any way.
We are merely attempting to survive a hostile force that actually enjoys driving us to suicide because they view us as literal monsters and because they couldn’t possibly even be bothered to pretend to respect us.
And that’s all before noting all the nazis cackling about sending us (yes, us, directly, by name sometimes) to death camps (no literally, my trans fiancee has coworkers “joking” at them all the time about how they are going to divide up all their video games when they’re thrown in the camps).
So yeah, someone adopting defensive posture of “no quarter” is not even remotely the same thing. And never will be.
Power matters.
Thanks for assuming I’m not also LGBT. Protip: I am, and so are almost literally all of my friends. You think I’m not scared? I’m terrified.
I’m terrified too. *hugs*
*offered* Not assumed. Sorry.
*hugs*
Sorry I snapped. Obviously I understand it’s in the best interests of the bigoted establishment to narrow down ‘acceptable’ options to protest their bigotry. Even with peaceful protest, you need to rock the boat to get attention and results. I just feel like outing people is crossing the line even when they’re, well, in the position Robin is here.
I don’t think it’ll come to that in comic, mind, because Robin’s ability to keep even PRETENDING she agrees with where that leads is crumbling fast, but…
I think basically what bothers me is the implication some people give that outing is ever a GOOD thing to do. It’s not, any more than killing someone is, even though the scale is different. However, sometimes circumstances line up such that a person is forced to kill someone else in self-defense or immediate defense of others, so maybe you could argue the same could happen with outing. But it’s still never going to be a GOOD act.
That’s absolutely a fair line to have and it’s good to know where your lines are and what boundaries you refuse to cross for either self-survival or in protest.
Four stars.
I think that everyone deserves privacy and respect up until the point that they consistently try to wrest human rights away from minority groups. When a rabidly anti-gay politician (not Robin, but real world members of the House and Senate) get caught sucking dick in the bathroom, the right thing to do is to publish it.
In this case, I think speaking with Robin before releasing the photo is the right thing to do. I hope that she doesn’t publish the photo immediately. If Robin repents of past wrong doings, that would more than satisfy my need for justice.
Topic for next class, the “Frank Rule.”
It took me a few seconds to put together what was going on there.
Dammit, Leslie, you’re better than this.
Yeah, like I know what having dirt on her probably means but…my moral code can’t condone this
shit, leslie didnt just pick a bouquet of whoopsie-daisies she fucking opened a floristry specialising in whoopsie-daisy arrangements
You’d think Robin’s clothes still being on might undermine the message, somehow.
….HOW?
Again, people have sex in their shirts all the time (and we don’t know she has her pants on).
It’s about visual impact. When the inevitable attempts to explain it away come out, they’ll have more traction than if the photo included ta-tas.
That is true – I can see Kyle trying to frame it as ‘two lady friends taking a hungover selfie, hahaha, isn’t that so funny, Robin never do that again, drunk reps are bad reps’.
Pardon me, Leslie, but does the name “Vince Foster” mean anything to you?
ok the slipshine preview looks like a weird pink frog
A lot of comments saying that you shouldn’t out someone bc their not nice, and I truly get their point. As a lesbian, I abhor the idea of outting someone bc you don’t like them, but you have to realize, Robin could kill ppl with that legislation. Did y’all hear when Leslie said she was homeless and could have starved? This is the sort of thing where there is always a grey area, but I stand on the side that protects as many LGBT from homelessness and starvation as possible
If we were certain that Robin would kill people with her legislation would it be justified to kill her first?
I hope Leslie isn’t planning to out Robin. Even understanding why she might do that, it seriously crosses a line for me.
*look up comments*
Uh, about potentially “leaking” that picture. You know, that’d probably be one of the worse things she can do, since.
-Robin camp’s fan won’t believe it. I mean, look at the recent US and British votes, do you honestly trust people care about facts ?
-They will also try to harass and smear Leslie any way they can, including trying to get her fired and attacked. Again, lot of recent RL examples to fetch from.
So, no, she won’t distribute that picture, if only as a matter of self preservation.
Nothing to gain, everything to lose.
Exactly. We now live in a political climate where partisanship outweighs blatant hypocrisy. It’ll be discredited/ignored, because Robin has the right letter next to her name. Just like all of a certain other someone’s indiscretions were rendered meaningless.
Also, preventing Robin’s re-election won’t have the desired effect of stopping anti-LGBTQ legislation in its tracks. She’s not the only one advocating for such things, and she’s clearly not even a true believer. Probably the best move here would be to try to get Robin to change her stance on the issue. Maybe self-interest, plus “I have a lesbian friend who I like” will be enough to tip the scales.
Oh my, is this an appropiate “Damn you Willis” moment?
No. Still too many unknowns. And this is just the set-up.
Time to find out if Leslie believes the ends justify the means! I don’t think she’d release that photo unless she understood that Robin was too far gone to stop killing her own. The problem arrives when you consider what a scandal like that could do to destroy the life that Leslie’s fought so hard to live, and just who is going to replace Robin once she’s inevitably forced out of Congress. Cutting off the head of an evil hydra still leaves you with an evil hydra, after all.
Sometimes you cut off one of the heads, and 2 or 3 grow in it’s place, too…
That’s why you cut off all the heads and cauterize the stumps.
Does…does she not remember what happened with Joe and Roz?
The Joe and Roz thing was different. That was an actual video of them having sex. And it Roz posted it online. And half of the problem was that it reflected badly on Robin’s finely crafted “family values” political persona.
This picture doesn’t contain any nudity. Yes, Leslie could still ruin Robin’s career with it, but all we know is that she took it. We don’t know if Leslie is going to release it to the public.
I’d really like to know how Robin got there. That’s a potentially awkward story. Whether Leslie posts that or not, that’s at least “not cool.” I get that Leslie is angry, but: a) I doubt Robin would want someone to have a picture like that anyway, that’s a bit uncomfortable for a “first-night drunken sleepover” between acquaintances, and b) it’s at least unethical to try and force someone’s sexuality out into public via outing or blackmail. Even if Robin’s politics are bad, she’s still a person.
And, as tempting as it would be to wreck Robin’s career if it would help, there’s no guarantee it WOULD help. It would certainly have serious backlash on Leslie, Robin’s campaign will try to discredit the photo (“Leslie posed her” “she was passed out drunk”, etc.), and other politicians could use that as fuel for worse things.
There is absolutely no benefit for this.
I’m not being cute here. From a realpolitik standpoint, at /best/ all you’ve done is ruin one politician’s life. In all probability, they’ll /still/ do heterosexist, cissexist bullshit tot ry to make amends with their base. Whether or not this fails, as it often does, it doesn’t matter. That electorate is still there, and still heterosexist and cissexist.
And as your reward for doing nothing, you’ll weaken the idea that decent people don’t out people (and most people think of themselves as decent people). Great. Glad you accomplished less than nothing.
Even if outing her would help, which I agree, it probably won’t- it’d be nice to think a politician being found in a hypocritical situation would do something, but that often isn’t the case- there’s still the fact that outing is ethically dicey at best. Yes, Leslie might politically help, and I understand and sympathize with that goal. But it’s still a personally compromising ethical decision. If Robin finds out about this, it could kill any trust she has in Leslie. It could push Robin into more extreme policies. It could really jeopardize Leslie’s career and relationships with her students. Leslie is kind of getting leverage from Robin’s drunken decisions(not assault or anything, of course, but a “You got drunk and trusted me, and I got an incriminating picture out of it”), which is uncomfortable. I don’t think Leslie is a TERRIBLE MALICIOUS PERSON for wanting the photo, or even potentially doing something with it to stop bad policy. But it still isn’t a harmless act. Even with the best intentions, there will still be damage, not just to Robin’s bad political platforms, but to Robin and Leslie (and others) as people.
” It could push Robin into more extreme policies.”
er, most definitely not this. Robin supports anti-LGBT legislation because her electorate does, not because it aligns with her personal views. It doesn’t. She doesn’t want LGBT people to come to harm, even if it’s a ‘lalalala cant hear youuuu’ kind of ‘benevolence’. I doubt she will suddenly want to just to spite personally Leslie, particularly given how VERY BI she herself is.
Robin is bi, and might not have seen the blatant effects of her policies, but she’s also not above doing what she needs to stay in office, such as support anti-LGBT policies and avoid confronting the consequences, and insistently deny that she is bisexual. Maybe this was a wake up call for her, but people do drastic things when they feel backed into a corner (the way Leslie is doing), so if Leslie were to out her or try to blackmail her? I don’t think Robin is completely above overcompensating or letting her managers overcompensate to save her political reputation for her supporters, even if she personally doesn’t agree with the policies, especially if Leslie forces her into that position after Robin trusted her.
oOoOoh do we smell blackmail in the making?!
Well no, we don’t smell it, but I think we’re seeing it >.>.>
Oh gross, I hate my avie >:(
You can always set one manually via Gravatar, but iirc you’ll need a WordPress account.
The “random” gravatar is algorithmically determined from a hash of the email address you provide. Even just changing the capitalization will give you another spin on the roulette wheel.
Though it could be worse… you could get Mary.
true. true.
yessss, get them receipts girl!!!!
…and upload!
Oh, this is going to be messy. It’s going to get very messy, very quickly. Because no day in the life of DoA characters is truly complete until some very messy drama happens.
Leslie what the hell ?
Well…if you’re gonna’ do something beyond the point of no return, you might as well double down on the possible bad decisions.
Awwww shiiiiiiiiiitttt
It’s nice to see that the dumbing of age doesn’t end with adulthood.
Maybe she just wants Robin to drop out.
I’m still curious about her rival’s politics. All we really know about him so far is that he’s got her outclassed at twitter insults.
Leslie, she looks too much like one of your students for this to not backfire on you! Also, it’s wrong to do anyways. Gah!
Pretty sure Robin is well known enough to not be confused for her younger sister whom’s five minutes of fame were used on hurting her sister and as a result is associated with Robin, plus Leslie knew of Robin before Roz considering this is Roz’s first year here and Leslie voted against Robin in the previous election.
Panel One: Ohhh, Leslie. She looks very surprised and very freaked out here. Very much ‘what the hell are you doing here’. I don’t blame her for checking if she’s dreaming. This is definitely a shock for her. And it adds to my questions about what the fuck Robin is doing here. Did Leslie let her in, thinking she was dreaming and now realizing she’s not? In the course of doing so, did they screw?
And also, Robin is a heavy sleeper. I wake up fairly quickly if touched. But nah, Robin’s sleeping like a rock here.
Panel Two: And here is Leslie’s freak out. Robin is here, in her bed. After last night, that has to be a shock. And potentially could mean that something very emotionally unhealthy happened last night. Plus there are consequences and running for Congress and oh jesus christ what happened, there’s so many factors and Leslie is terrified with them running through her brain.
Panel Three: And then the reality of the situation hits her. Robin is not just a congresswoman – she’s the congresswoman who can very well get people killed. Or homeless. Or lose civil rights. And embolden homophobes. And Leslie knows the consequences of those things all too well. She’s seen folks starve to death. Do you know what happens when a person starves to death? It’s horrific. And that is on Robin for supporting the legislation that helps things like that happen.
Panel Four: Leslie is definitely out of it here. She is in shock and her options hit her. It’s not something she seems to like, but it’s an option out there.
Panel Five: She seems…kind of sad and kind of nervous as well as angry here. She is not happy with Robin, but she knows how dangerous outing can be. On the other hand, Robin is not a teenager dependant on their family to stay alive. She is not someone who’s been thrown out into the world and needs to find food, a house, documents, a job, etc. on short notice. She is independently wealthy and would likely remain so for some time even if she lost election. She can fall back on whatever her degree is in. She could be a veteran and have a pension. She could just keep comfortable on her money while she finds a job. Robin would have access to lobbyists and her supportive family, like Roz, who could point her towards LGBT+ resources. She’s probably got legal contacts that could put any attackers in a cell. It’d be bad – but it’d be better odds than the kids Leslie knew had.
Panel Six: And now Leslie is ANGRY. Robin made a career partially out of screwing LGBT+ folks over. She refuses to listen. And now she’s somehow ended up in bed with her, what the fuck?
Panel Seven: Aaaaaaand the clicker. I take back what I said about this storyline being less dramatic. Fuuuuuck.
I don’t know how I feel about this. And frankly, how I feel about this is irrelevant. I’m a straight cis girl. I don’t get to decide how the LGBT+ community goes about it’s business and politics with each other. I will admit most of my education has been from anti-outing folks, but I understand what people like Cerb are saying and there have been positive affects from exposing hypocritical bigots.
I wonder what her plan is and what is going on with this. It makes me nervous though.
Robin definitely sleeps like me. Partners have been shocked the sort of things I’ve happily slept through.
And yes, the starvation thing is critical. The things a body does when it starves to death. It’s nightmare inducing. Leslie witnessed that stuff first or second-hand. That’s some major demons to deal with.
And yes on your panel 6 analysis. That’s important that Leslie has shown grace at every step, but now? She’s screwed folks like her over, shown disrespect to those she’s hurt and those Leslie has lost, refused to listen or absorb her thoughtful kind advice, and possibly has just broken into her home to demand more of her emotional care at fuck-o-clock in the morning.
Yeah, I think Leslie’s done playing around and being kind.
I am a medium sleeper. I’ll probably sleep through talking but touch me and I will bolt out of bed and probably slap you (general you, not you Cerberus) because what the fuck do not surprise me when I’m sleeping/waking up.
YUP. We’re looking at your body breaking muscles and tissue to keep the vitals going, vitamin deficiency causing diarrhea, rashes, edema, and heart failure, atrophy, dehydration, painful movements, fungal infections in your THROAT, cells will cannibalize molecules to get amino acids, hallucinations, and I’m sure it gets worse. This is not a pleasant way to go.
And what action this end of niceties will cause is going to be a thing to watch.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: That face, she’s not just surprised as her eyebrows show, but that deep frown and glare… whatever this moment is, it is not a happy one. So if this was the morning after sexy times, they are sexy times she deeply regrets and feels sickened by.
Panel 2: And assuming this isn’t a pleasant wake-up, this panel becomes deeply relatable. I don’t know how many times I’ve woken up in the last month or so wishing everything had been a dream, that this isn’t actually our reality.
And if this is negative, then this moment must feel so bitter and sour. She’s probably had fantasies about this moment, waking next to the congresswoman… or rather waking up next to the fantasy she could be made to represent in her sexual hopes. But this is wrong and unwanted. A dream poisoned by the reality of what a bigot she is and how hard she closed that door or tried to close that door the night before regardless of whether or not her will failed.
Panel 3: I love the hands cringing, the voice shaking. It communicates her almost raw terror at this moment. And that focus at the beginning. That matters.
She’s not just a bigot, she’s a bigot with power who tried to use that power to harm queer youth and in a few short months in comic, will be/have been using that power to hurt them much more directly and in a much more intensely lasting manner.
And that feeds into the second half. There’s a lot of debate about the ethics of outing as you can see if you scroll up, but there’s a practicality to this information. Robin is in a hotly contested race and her opponent has her on the ropes. A scandal this close to election could push the tide, shorten the buffer between the worst laws possible and something survivable and make it so a few defectors could save a lot of lives.
Leslie I doubt that Photo’s gonna carry much weight. I mean…barely anyone knows who you are. I doubt they’d immediately figure out you’re a lesbian. As long as we’re staging photos you might want to get a bit more scanty or at least a bit more touchy feely. Because right now it looks like you’re just taking a selfie of you and your friend after getting hung over. You don’t even look happy to be there. For all your viewers know you let her sleep in your bed and wanted to take a selfie with her when her guard was down.
I just say that to say, unless she’s usin’ the picture for personal reasons (y’know, wink wink nudge nudge say no more) I don’t think it’ll be very useful.
you underestimate the power of political propaganda and just how easily angered the extremist right wing nutcases are. Leslie sends this photo to Robin’s political opponents with a message saying “btw I’m lesbian” and said opponents will make that shit go viral with all sorts of scandalous theories. In a closely contested election where Robin’s main appeal is “I’m straight and hate the gays” a propaganda storm with an image like this would DESTROY her. It doesn’t take much to provoke the right wing bigots to hate somebody, and the political propaganda machines are very good at provoking people using very little material
True but it’s also easy for them to go into denial. (I’m also going to go on record by saying it’s also easy to anger extremely left wing people too)
Yes yes, both sides are bad blah blah blah.
What Yotomoe said was that either far side of the political spectrum is easy to anger, which is straight-up fact, if only because it’s very easy to anger people who are open about things that make them angry. People who don’t have obvious angry-buttons are harder to anger.
They get angry for somewhat different reasons of course.
In a closely contested election where Robin’s main appeal is “I’m straight and hate the gays”
Do we know that this the case? Is she running on the message of “I’ll protect you from teh gays”, or is she running on some other message, and just going along with the other Republicans? In the former case, I’d think she would have been more glib with her rationalizations. Or more defiantly refuse to make any.
We know that Robin’s constituency has a lot of bigots. Roz threatening to make out with other girls to get out of being dragged to that rally gives a strong hint as to their feelings about gay people
Not to mention she’s still clothed.
Perhaps normally, but this is at a time where their campaigns are running. To release it now wouldn’t only just cause a scandal but also give a weapon to her enemies.
Oh yay.
Cadbury Creme Cereal – the Earth-3 story.
Panel 4: And the weight of that hits her like a tank engine. As I noted above, there’s no way she hasn’t been haunted and shamed by the names and faces of those who did not survive the streets she lived on for her time. Who starved to death around her, who froze during the winter, who took their life in an alleyway or overdosed on drugs trying to cope with the pain and loss.
That that hasn’t been weighing on her every time she tries to paint an apolitical fantasy of a life with Robin.
Panels 5 and 6: And we see the rage and hurt of that rise up beautifully. By Panel 6, she feels their deaths on her conscience and feels the rage of being a hurt and scared 18 year old on the streets with no hope because of the type of bigots that form Robin’s base of support.
And that’s not a small thing. Robin is not just a bigoted politician, she is running specifically on “family values”, a platform based entirely on the open hatred of LGBT folks, women, and religious minorities. That’s hitting hard.
And hitting harder if Robin actually did sneak in as some suspected yesterday or got her impaired. Because a major boundary has been crossed after she already stated the full weight of her disapproval and why a romantic relationship between them couldn’t work and would feel like a betrayal.
Panel 7: I said above this is not a choice she is making casually and she’s got a lot of time to rethink between this moment and a moment of sending it to a media source.
And we see that on her face. That frown, that thousand-yard stare. This isn’t joyous revenge or cold calculation or moral certainty. This is doubt even in the act of whether this is even the right thing.
And even if she does decide that this is necessary for the greater good, it is a sacrifice of her self. She would risk the faculty position she has been fighting for so long for. She would definitely lose her privacy and open herself to the full hateful obsession of her fanbase who would see her as a demonic interloper spreading lies about their leader who “says it like it is”.
And that may end up costing her her life. I mean, in this universe, Robin is extremely Trump-like and we know what Trump’s fans are like and what they did or threatened to do against everyone who tried to warn the world about our new Hitler-in-chief.
And just like in reality, it’s hard to know if this is the right call to make or a line too far.
And Leslie’s going to have to battle a lot of personal demons to make that final call one way or another.
My read on DoA!Robin is that she’s more passively anti-LGBT than actively. She’s not doing anything to make anything better, she’s not supporting any LGBT causes, she’s positioned herself as a “Family Values” candidate, she’ll almost certainly vote party line…
…but that doesn’t mean she’s actively seeking to do LGBT people harm. She’s not a leader, she’s a “Yes Man”, she does what the party says because that’s what keeps her in office, and maybe she does one or two things on her own initiative… but we’ve literally seen zero specific causes she champions. Take her down and she’ll be replaced by another party-line dullard that rolls off the assembly line.
…so, the question is… what would blackmailing or exposing Robin actually accomplish? Maybe 2 years of the district being swung Blue if it comes out at the right point? Maybe?
Well, we know she’s taken an active role in anti-LGBT legislation, though not out of any real conviction, more out of pandering to what she perceives as her base as a “family values” candidate.
She’s actually an interesting form of bigoted politician, because it doesn’t even have the dignity of being personal animus that drives it. It’s just LGBT folks are the convenient scapegoat for the much more important task of getting her re-elected.
And, afterwards, an even more hard-right ‘real conservative’ chosen to replace her who will not be passively anti-LGBT but actively and angrily so; drop DeSanto, get Pense.
OTOH, she’s apparently in a fairly close race, one assumes with a Democrat. A scandal at the right moment could swing that.
FWIW, I got the impression that Robin’s problem is that she’s something of an empty suit. She uses the rhetoric of the right but, ultimately, lacks any significant substance let alone plausible amounts of sincerity. She is just someone reading off an autocue and comes across as someone reading an autocue. The whole ‘genuineness’ thing comes into play here.
My guess is that Robin’s numbers aren’t good amongst ‘likely voters’ for that reason. As was evidently the case with Trump, the election may be decided not on who wins the argument or even who can inspire people to turn up to vote for them. Rather it will be decided by which party will have more voters abstain because as much as they hate the opponent, they cannot put a tick by their party’s candidate no matter how hard they try.
Perhaps. It’s hard to say. We’ve seen under the disguise and don’t have a good idea how it plays to the masses.
If it is as you say and her support isn’t deep, a scandal at the right moment would be even more effective.
IIRC it was mentioned in a strip earlier that Jake Manley was making serious inroads into Robin’s support, so there’s at least some textual evidence to support the idea that Robin’s own support isn’t deep.
You’re missing the point. Failure to motivate the base is what led to Trump. Basically, it means that, in two years time, Bloomington is a Red Landslide with a Trumpist.
So you’re on the “keep her in power because even though she’s trying to pass laws that might kill you, she’s not all that good at it” side?
And don’t try to change her either, since that also leads to her getting booted out of office. Robin’s the best you can get so LGBTQ folks should support her for fear of someone worse?
Bullshit.
Fucking everything is “why Trump won”. Climate change, BLM, identity politics (ie “trying to make bigots feel bad about it”), goddamn emails, her charitable foundation which actually gave to charity, and now “failure to motivate her base”?
Complete fucking bullshit. She won the popular vote by a landslide. Gerrymandering and shit media coverage focused on ratings instead of truth are why she lost. Strategic mistakes were made, but there was no single, fatal flaw to blame.
No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that the current path has only led to both sides getting further and further apart. Madness is defined as continually doing something that doesn’t work and an ever more segmented and violently divided nation is something that doesn’t work.
I’m not smart enough to know what the better option is but it is increasingly clear that both sides becoming entrenched and militant is most assuredly not it.
Oh cut the “both sides” crap. You know perfectly well it’s not true. Yeah, they’re “both” getting farther apart because one is moving.
You’re supposed to stand up to that. And the Democrats actually aren’t.
You say “identity politics” is about trying to make bigots feel bad about their bigotry, but that’s not how “identity politics” is being perceived. What is being perceived for “identity politics” is that it’s about saying that X identity is good, and Y identity is bad. “Nonwhite is good, and white is bad”. “Trans is good and cis is bad”. “Female is good, and male is bad”.
Dividing people into the good oppressed and the bad oppressors, based on the characteristics of their birth, rather than actual acts of oppression they commit. That in any conflict/dispute between two people, one doesn’t have to judge the facts, one can just take a look at the people’s races/genders/sexualities and side with the one who’s in the appropriate “oppressed” category. Is a white person disagreeing with a black person on an issue of race? Then obviously the white person is wrong, and the black person is right. Is a woman disagreeing with a man on an issue of genders? Then obviously the woman is right and the man is wrong. You don’t have to know what their opinions actually are, you don’t have to use arguments, you already know who to support based on who the people are!
That may be how it’s perceived on the right, but that’s not actually what anyone is working for. That’s a perspective pushed by right wing media, think tanks and talk radio jocks, that’s soaked over into the mainstream. It’s bullshit. It’s the same kind of smear campaign that’s always been used against any marginalized group trying to claim their rights.
Meanwhile, the people who actually believe “white is good and nonwhite is bad” are cheering on the winner of the presidential election as one of them.
@Elitist oars
That’s certainly how the right likes to spin it, but that doesn’t match what the left is actually saying and doing. It is utter horseshit.
There is probably more that could have been done to counter that spin, but there’s only so much that can be done before you fall into the trap of constantly being on the defensive and letting the other side control the narrative.
In any case, the blame for that perception belongs entirely to right-wing media. There the ones painting Black Lives Matters protesters as violent thugs, peaceful Muslims as terrorist sleeper agents, the LGBT community as whiny, mentally ill perverts, and people who are actually mentally ill as entitled, ungrateful drags on society.
None of those interpretations are valid points of view. They’re not based on fact, nor being made in good faith. It’s nothing but gas-lighting and rationalizations.
On the flip side, the same pretty much applies to her changing her attitude and supporting LGBTQ rights – she’ll lose her base and be replaced by a more extreme Republican. Depending on the timing, you might get a couple years with her on the right side or a Democrat slipping in. You might also just have her lose the primary.
None of that means that opposing anti-LGBTQ politicians isn’t a good thing.
Actually, there really isn’t much reason to think she’d get booted for not hating LGBTQ+ folks – this district goes back and forth all the time. It’s hardly the paragon of Republicanism Robin thinks it is. If she put effort in, she could definitely swing this election, and if Robin puts effort into ANYTHING, it’s getting elected.
She’d get booted for not hating LGBTQ+ folks because she’s a Republican. She’d probably lose a primary to a more extreme one and she’d likely lose the general when her base is demoralized by her taking sides with the sinners and the Democratics will keep voting for the Democrat who probably already is at least decent on LGBTQ rights.
Just because the district goes back and forth doesn’t mean she can suddenly switch which group of voters will back her.
If she was well entrenched incumbent with years of constituent service and a record of bringing pork back home, she might be able to survive switching parties. It’s rare though.
That is true. It’d be easier to be ‘the Republican who doesn’t hate LGBT+ folks’ if she was just starting her campaign now, rather than trying to change in the middle. Not ‘easy’, I’m sure, but ‘easier’.
Well, it’s active, it’s seeking, and its goal is to do us harm, so… yes she clearly is?
Not cool, Leslie.
Okay, speculative-debate question.
Suppose that Leslie’s going to have second, third, fourth, and twenty-eighth thoughts before outing Robin.
And suppose she’ll ask Roz for advice, because Roz is about the only person she CAN ask for advice without outing Robin. (Okay, probably not, but conservation of characters.) Which… might not be cool given the teacher-student relationship, but that’s not the point.
What I want to hear people weigh in on is, what advice would Roz give?
I think Roz’s plan has always been to out her sister.
And I think it’s not even a debate for her because she is that desperate to escape the prison of Robin’s eternal “family values” campaign.
Not so sure about that. She could also be planning to be more crafty, and use it in a blackmail fashion. She is manipulative and sneaky.
That said, the one thing I would not expect is for her to get all upset and argue that outing people is wrong. I may not think well of her integrity, but she clearly knows you have to fight for your rights. You don’t have the luxury of creating a set of steadfast rules you never violate regardless of the circumstances.
Granted, part of that is just that she’s not the type to get caught up in moral quandaries. I on the other hand am convinced that outing a hypocritical homophobic politician is the right thing to do.
It never even occurred to me otherwise until I read some comments on this site, and nothing here has been remotely convincing. There is no “except if they’re gay” to the duty to out a hypocritical politician. They are our representatives.
(I might now quibble on outing just an average Joe.)
I have to agree, you have to balance what’s good for an individual against what’s good for society, and every outed politician has to potential to erode some social conservatives’ belief in their positions.
That I’m not so sure about. It’s possible, but she’d never even hinted it to Leslie, which would make it a betrayal of her as well.
IIRC, she’s said that the hope was that Robin would listen to Leslie in a way that she wouldn’t listen to Roz. I’ve assumed that the real plan was that Robin actually hooking up with Leslie would be admitting her bisexuality to herself and that would lead to her changing.
Scariest thing here is that Leslie apparently has no idea how Robin got there. I hope that she at least checks out Robin’s side of the story before doing something with that photo. Because I think she really needs to find out what is even going on first. This is no way lines up with where we had left them. Did Robin get so drunk that the barman, who might know Leslie if she’s a regular there, phoned her and asked her to take her somewhere? But then surely Leslie would remember this? Unless she went home and drank further herself, getting to the state where the best course of action that her brain could come up with was… take Robin home, dump her in her bed, get in same bed, sleep?
I feel like comics like this are really good for making me feel extremely old for having been on the ground during the Bush years and the fights for queer rights that occurred during them.
It’s weird seeing how quickly people seem to forget how viciously queer people had to fight for even basic human rights (or really how any marginalized group had to fight for that matter). Like, people are so quick to pretend it was some peaceful, kumbaya drum circle deal and not a protracted and unpleasant battle where we had to fight tooth and nail for every concession of our humanity.
Yeah, and times we had to get nasty simply to survive.
Like, Pride’s origins are a black trans woman living on the streets throwing a brick at a police officer arresting her and others. We’ve had to scrap to survive. Our origins are rooted in that.
History is written by cishet white dudes and they really wanna make us forget how to effectively resist their hegemony.
As evidenced by the stark differences in portrayal by those marginalized and those marginalizing.
Oh no.
Leslie…
…… okay, I’ve finally come to a decision about the morality of outing people at the intersection of queer, homophobic, and powerful.
And that decision is: Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma.
If you’re not familiar with this game (and I’d guess a lot of people here are; it’s one of the most popularized parts of game theory), the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a scenario wherein two parties are given a chance to turn on each other and profit in doing so. They are both better off if both cooperate rather than if both defect, but there is no scenario in which any individual is better off for having cooperated than for having defected. We can imagine models in which the players value additional immaterial elements like loyalty or somesuch to such a degree that it throws off the basic assumptions of the game, but if so then the game isn’t really the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The only rational solution for the players is for them to both defect, and thus the collective outcome is the worst possible.
Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma is just the Prisoner’s Dilemma played over, and over, and over, and over… but the result is actually the opposite. Unlike in the normal Prisoner’s Dilemma, where the only rational solution is to defect, in the Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma, the rational solution is to repeatedly cooperate. It’s possible to arrive at a sort of cooperative truce, because there exists the possibility of long-term mutual benefit that is absent in the normal Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The problem is, what do you do when the other player defects? When they’d rather screw you over for their own benefit?
What you DON’T do, at least not for more than a few rounds, is just sit there choosing to cooperate while your (suddenly) opponent keeps screwing you over. Being a perpetual pushover does NOT move the game into a pattern of stable, mutually-profitable equilibrium. That’s a strategy for nothing except being shit on. This is something that I think liberals in this country by and large fail to see.
The only thing that works is to punch back. To make them suffer in return. To instill in them, bone-deep, the realization that if they hurt you, they will be hurt in turn.
And yes, when they get whipped out of the pattern of selfish betrayal and back into mutually-beneficial behavior, accept them back into the fold and (perhaps with some glowers and mistrust) and get back to mutual coexistence as best possible. That’s not revenge. That’s the only path to ending the abuse.
But don’t delude yourself into thinking that they will get back to a place of coexistence unless you force them back there. People like that are legitimate targets, because drawing and holding a hard line against certain behavior is the only deterrent to be had.
Maybe give Robin a few days or a few hard conversations to change her ways, just in case. But if that doesn’t work?
Out her, Leslie. Out her hard.
(So opines a straight cis white man, so who knows how much I’m qualified to speak on this.)
I agree with you, and as for your last sentence, I hope nobody has ever told you that you couldn’t speak because of who you are. That’s the opposite of what progress should be about. The only qualification you need is knowledge, and you clearly have that in spades. 🙂
Everyone has the right to their opinion, but not everyone’s opinion holds the same weight. For instance, I’m cis, so I don’t experience transphobia. Since I don’t experience transphobia, I should probably shut my talk hole regarding how people should feel and respond to it (barring things like mass murder, etc. that are obviously wrong). Sure, I can learn more about it from people who do experience it and use their experiences and the facts they give me to try to educate people or call them out as necessary, and I can try to help, but since I’m not the one the transphobia is aimed at, the discussion reaaaaaaallllllllllyyyyyy doesn’t need to be about my feelings or opinions about the situation. The people that transphobia gets aimed at deserve the centre spot on that talk.
That’s definitely true to an extent, but I feel like people discount the value of an outside perspective. As a gay guy, I can’t tell you what my problems look like from the outside. I can’t tell you how straight people are going to react to a gay character or perceive gay stereotypes. Part of a solid, thorough understanding of a subject includes not just personal experience, but also more distant perspectives. Sometimes I may not be able to remain objective, see the forest through the trees. There’s value in that.
Well, sure, but then you get into the discussion about whether it’s more important to please outside members of the group or be authentic to the actual group and whose reactions you value more to the portrayal (ex. I’d be pissed if people played epilepsy inaccurately to be more appealing to non-epileptics rather than accuracy and listened to people saying it was funny over epileptics saying this is really lousy writing of epilepsy).
People outside a group have their place, but it’s definitely not in the centre of the rights discussions.
“I know all about this topic, but I’d better find out what people who know literally nothing think first.”
First hand experience isn’t the only kind of knowledge. Sometimes it’s helpful to seek the perspective of someone who knows about a situation but isn’t personally entangled in it. Do you discount the opinion of psychologists because they don’t have the same neurodivergencies as the people they help. Should sociologists and anthropologists just quit because they aren’t part of the groups they describe?
There is a trend in discourse right now of shutting people out of conversations, creating echo chambers and academic in-groups. That feels very dangerous to me.
Well then, this is a thing that’s now happening. *folds hands and watches intently*
We’ll see just how ruthless and tough Leslie can be by what she does with that picture. Me, I’m guessing that she’ll threaten to use it, agonise privately over whether it’s fair or right to do so and then secretly delete it.
Meanwhile, we still don’t know what Robin is doing there other than the fact that Leslie clearly doesn’t know what she’s doing there either.
Shit. Huh. On the one hand, I’m not ok with outing anyone ever but I can also understand Leslie’s desire here. Although I’m hoping she just takes the picture to send to Robin whenever Robin starts spouting off anti lgbt stuff. Not to out her but remind Robin about what she’s saying.
That would be an interesting use for the picture!
This seems the most Leslie use of the photo.
That’s still blackmail tho. The very definition of it, in fact.
Well, if it’s just to remind Robin that she’s part of that whole LGBTQ thing, then it’s not blackmail.
Blackmail requires demands and threats. Not just a picture.
It could be taken as such, since it could be read as an implicit threat to release the photo if she didn’t stop spouting off, but it also could just be a nudge at her conscience.
Maybe you should look it up.
That is what you call “thinking on your feet”. Or your back, as they case may be.
Oh, eew. A selfie. I hate selfies. They’re so icky.
If it makes you feel better it’s blackmail material rather than a selfie.
Oh, get over it. People have been taking self portraits since cameras were invented. If you don’t like them, don’t take any, problem solved.
Renaissance museum portrait collections are basically old ass selfies, just on canvas, not photographed.
shit
is goin’
down
outing someone you slept with is a pretty shitty thing to do, regardless of the context. It makes it seem that you manipulated things on purpose.
I mean, they’re both fully clothed (pajama’d?) So I dunno if she “slept” with her in the sexual sense. Honestly missing the context of what happened between the bar and now dont help matters
So wait… is Leslie going to pull Sombra on Robin?
Reminds me of Billie blackmailing Ruth way back in the day:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/naughty/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/04-time-keeps-on-slippin/finished/
My own thoughts, from a position of admitted privilege:
Go ahead and fight the monsters; somebody has to. But like the man says, be real careful you don’t become one in the process. (You are, supposedly, the more enlightened and aware person in the transaction, so it’s on you to watch out for that.) If you can defeat the enemy without using the enemy’s worst moves, you should probably at least try first. And if at any point hurting and punishing the bad becomes more important than helping and protecting the good, you’ve lost the fight.
I’m thinking that this entire arc will be a Leslie self-discovery arc wherein she learns that, yes, she can be a monster and she has to decide whether she likes the face she sees in the mirror as a result.
I really hope it’s not because that sounds insultingly stupid.
I trust Willis here. Leslie is not the one in need of self discovery.
People assume the selfie is for revenge, or perhaps encouraging Robin to change. What about insurance, in case Robin–someone with a history of doing things that harm LGBT people–tries to harm her?
I’d say you’re over-thinking it.
Robin doesn’t strike me as that sort of personality – She doesn’t seem capable of that level of conscious and contemplative malice. Malice through total absence of thought, yes; dliberate malice, no.
Her staff probably are capable of it but would drop her like a red hot coal in the event they do not believe they could make any potential problem go away in a way that didn’t make the headlines.
In any case, what could they say that would surprise anyone? That Leslie is openly homosexual? Everyone already knows that. That she was married once, that it imploded and that she was disowned by her family? Again; no secret. The only card is the use of force and Leslie is too public a figure for that to be plausible a solution, no matter how deniable it is.
Well, lemme try again, because that was FAR more dismissive than I wanted it to be. That would be interesting, but I don’t think it’s supported by the facts as they are on the ground. Leslie isn’t and has never been afraid of Robin, because despite being a lesbian she’s in a decent enough position that she’s insulated from a lot of the effects of Robin’s callous policy-making. And Leslie’s expression here has much more of a ‘taking advantage of an opportunity’ feel to it.
But then, I’ll also admit that I’m just done with Robin as a character and have been for some time, and what bothers me is that this latest act is sort of making me done with Leslie by extension.
Good move, but too nasty for my likes
I can’t blame Leslie for taking that picture as “insurance”, because you never know. I don’t think she has inmediate plans to use it, but better to have it.
baller move leslie. baller move
Oh… um…
Leslie, why? You had a chance to use this to your advantage in convincing her to change, but instead you’re going to hold it over her? How could you?
Because she’s already shown she is at best wholly uninterested in changing if not actively opposed to it and her continued activities as an anti-LGBTQ politician pose an existential threat to queer people (especially queer youths) which outing or blackmailing her could very possibly end. How could she? Because she values the actual safety of queer children over abstract morals.
Except if Robin doesn’t work the “traditional family” value angle someone else will, it got her voted in so it’s proven to work. If Leslie took down Robin it will shake the foundations a little but that’s it really. I think it’s better to enlighten Robin than just throw her out otherwise nothing really changes.
I doubt the photo will be used by Leslie though, above all else Leslie values her principles and standards and very rarely compromises them especially since the only time she has (by letting Robin into the class) she regretted it. To use this photo to blackmail or just outright screw over Robin would compromise her integrity as well lower herself to the “enemies” level because you’d be using someone elses sexuality as a weapon.
Besides we don’t even know why Robin is there, it could change the entire context of this.
As most others here have been saying, this is a SMART move, but I wouldn’t say it’s a GOOD (in a moral sense) one. I trust Leslie enough to think that she wouldn’t leverage it as blackmail unless she had to protect herself from fallout, but I really hope that Leslie never has cause to use it, because this sort of act is really not much different from creeps uploading revenge porn of their partners.
Yyyyyeeessss, Leslie. Let the hate flow through you. Give in to the Dark Side.
“The greater good” is a fine bit of sophistry to make, but we can talk real and immediate threats here. North Carolina’s current wave of anti-democratic people-hating policies is going to kill people. President Trump is going to kill people – his own constituents, for hurting no one. I believe one gay man was beaten to death in the street already by November 10. It’s safe to assume Robin over the next two years is similarly going to pursue legislation that will get people killed.
If she can’t be reasoned with, torpedoing her campaign is the only way to potentially keep those people alive for the next two years. The personal convenience to Robin of maintaining her hypocrisy is worth less than several peoples’s lives.
So much for ethical calculus. But, Leslie knows this and we have no reason to believe she can’t try to sit Robin down and teach her. The picture may be to help Robin remember, or in worst case help keep her honest. At least that was my thought, as a boy so innocent the idea of “revenge” didn’t cross my mind before I read the comments above.
NO! BAD LESLIE!
I can see where this is going – she’ll either post it (thus violating personal rights for photos) or she’ll threaten her to post it online, trying to make Robin see her errors.
But Leslie that’s no way to do that! It’s something I’d expect from a teenager, not from a grown-up woman, regardless of how threatening Robin’s agenda might be.
It’s so… political 🙁
(On a side note, I understand that this is still a very likely scenario, and of course, if the world’s unfair to you, be unfair back is a rather logical choice – though unethical imo)
That would be being fair back. Fairness is not unfair.
… that’s a rather interesting statement. Because “being fair back” sounds more like “retaliation for what other people did to me”. So per se I’d say it’s still “unfair” because Leslie doesn’t do it to the people who did something to her but to Robin, who -yes- here has the role of those people – but is also an individual who did not have anything to do with Leslie’s past. And it’s still unethical. So where’s the line drawn? Can I start bullying some children because they are bullying another child and I was bullied in my past? Where would you draw the line?
…Wow. No, Leslie! TBH I’m a bit nervous to read the comments today because I know a lot of people hate Robin for her politics, but forcible outing is wrong no matter who the victim is or what the rationale. I really respect Leslie, and I hope my interpretation of the reason for her selfie are incorrect. ☹️
Sometimes you have to do unpleasant things when you’re fighting against an enemy who has no regard for your humanity.
I can understand that. Doesn’t mean though that it’s in the description of my personal ethics, which is basically based on “Don’t do unto others what you wouldn’t want them do to you”. Doesn’t always apply, but it’s a good basic concept. In the case above, I’d be more about showing Robin face-to-face what her politics could cause. I think Robin’s doing what she does because she can perfectly well ignore the probable results of her agenda, since she doesn’t know anyone who’d be affected by it personally. It’d probably affect her in some way to bring her to a homeless shelter or showing her the hate – but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should FORCE her to encounter it on her own behalf – it IS a life-changing thing. A stupid comparison but imo a possible reference: Compare it to knowing a friend of yours drives after consuming alcohol, and you let him go and wish him “that something happens” or that he’ll be “stopped by the police” just because he’s a danger to others and himself and your first moral talk didn’t ring with him.
I think we’d agree that trying to talk more to him would be a better option, and only in the worst case scenario you could call the police and tell them about it. But that should be your last option, not your first.
But I’m also overly-sensitive, empathetic and naïve, and if I weren’t blessed with the family and friends I have, I’d probably be dead already because of my emotional sensitivity, so…
You sure as Hell should hope that your friend is stopped by police, btw. That’s hoping for the prevention of harm.
You know that you don’t have to have empathy only for the villains, right? You can include the victims, too.
Well, it seems I did not express well what I meant. And the example I provided is not that related, so I probably did not describe it the way I meant it. :/
My example above is addressing the fact that it’s not good to send someone on their way to drive home drunk, just because the first “You’re too drunk to drive” is done off with a “Ah, what do you know, I only had —- glasses of wine/beer/whiskey/whatever”, as mentioned here:
“…, and you let him go and wish him “that something happens” or that he’ll be “stopped by the police” just because he’s a danger to others and himself and your first moral talk didn’t ring with him..
I’m criticising the fact that the hypothetical “you” ‘gave up’ with their talk and just wishes their friend to err, even though they could have talked to them a bit more or stopped them from driving by taking away their keys, or offering them to drive them home (when not drunk themselves). I’m thus pointing out the fact that Leslie only had one-on-one talk with Robin once and she saw that Robin was deceiving herself somewhat. And then she wakes up with her next to herself and the first thing she makes is thinking about whether this is real, and then how she can take the situation towards her advantage. It irks me.
But of course I’d want my friend to be stopped when driving drunk – that is, if I ever befriend someone that’s irresponsible like that (which I usually don’t). Reminds me of this one time in the waiting room of an oculist as someone asked whether they should drive later (after getting pupil-widening drops into their eyes) and a man just answered “Yes, you can, I do that all the time.” I actually butted in telling them that they need to be careful, because the drops given after the examination don’t always work that well, depending on the person. But I’m drifting off here, sorry.
Yes, I emphasize with the victims – more than with most villains. I thought by stating that I am overly sensitive and emphatic this was made clear. I emphasize with all kinds of people, and I never even got the idea that someone would think I would only emphasize with villains, just because I stated my opinion on something going on in this comic strip where the victim and villain-roles seem to be interchanged by Leslie doing something which she obviously knows is not that good of an idea (I spot guilt feelings in the face she makes).
Woops, need to add something:
– Where I wanted to go with the oculist-thing: I could’ve kept my mouth shut and just hope they’d do the right thing. But I didn’t; I told them about the possible dangers (being easily blinded etc.). Still doesn’t fit that well in accordance to my other example (besides driving when actually you shouldn’t), but I thought I’d add this so that it at least makes a little sense.
– Aaaaand, there’s a typo in the last paragraph. Of course I wanted to write “empathetic” not “emphatic”. Sorry about that.
GAH, I should not write long comments right before going to sleep (I’m not American, this was written at about 2am)
– I also did not mean I “emphasize” with victims but of course “empathise” (such a stupid slip of my mind I cannot ignore and feel the need to correct)
This is one of those slippery slope mentalities that is often used to justify truly horrible things.
That’s demonizing Robin a little, it’s not like she has no humanity and is purposefully hurting the LGBTQ community. She only does it to pander to the voters and likely doesn’t even realize how much her policies hurt others, she seemed to have believed that the church shouldn’t refuse others and that shelters have enough money so I’m guessing she hasn’t thought about it that much or how severe her policies hurt them as she wrote off the effect her bill would have had.
Not that she hasn’t done awful things and I wouldn’t vote for her but I’m saying that she isn’t a villain but someone that simply says what people want to hear but could be very easily changed.
She purposely hurts the LGBTQ community to pander to voters.
That she doesn’t care who gets hurt and has another motivation doesn’t change it from being purposeful. Look, you can even put them together in a sentence. No exclusivity there.
Villains reform sometimes. That doesn’t make them not villains.
And hey, if everything is perfectly fine for queer people, than outing her doesn’t harm her anyway–right? You can’t have it both ways here.
We don’t know to what extent Robin believes herself to be hurting them at all, we have never been shown how much Robin thinks she has and it matters whether or not Robin knows herself that she has been doing extreme damage. When brought up by Leslie in the bar Robin thought that the situation was better than it was, churches didn’t refuse and shelters had money which shows how ignorant Robin is of the reality for the community. We don’t know that doesn’t care because she’s heartless (which I doubt because she’s fine with gay people herself) or because she thinks she’s doing no damage which would change whether or not she would care when enlightened or woken up to the reality of the situation.
Calling her a villain is silly because I fully doubt she purposefully ever hurts anyone and just underestimates to what extent her actions have, which while horrible does change what she is and what she will do. It wouldn’t be a reform because it wouldn’t change who she is or what she believes just whether or not she will continue. I don’t see how anyone can think she’s done it to be malicious when every interaction with her is just pandering and maintaining her own image except when it came to interacting with Leslie.
It would be damaging to her career because of the angle she went for not for her as a person, to think that the context of when and where she is being outed doesn’t matter would be foolish. Robin’s in a unique position where being revealed as being gay or bi means more than just her own sexuality as she’s a representative.
That Robin doesn’t think about the people she’s hurting doesn’t change that she’s hurting them on purpose.
Calling her a villain is using words to accurately describe things. We know she purposely hurts people. It’s about the only thing we know about her.
She’s willing to get a lot of people killed to bolster her prestige, as long as she doesn’t have to look at it. Maybe that’s not malice; maybe it doesn’t matter.
It changes the context of her actions and as a result what we learn about her.
If she doesn’t think she’s really hurting them then why should she be vilified as a malicious heartless monster when really she made a mistake, a big one but still a mistake.
We also know she doesn’t believe her own politics, we know she slept in on her previous election indicating she doesn’t take it that seriously, we know that she didn’t think that her bill would seriously hurt anyone but we also DON’T know that she HAS hurt anyone. The only thing she has done to hurt others failed, everything else others like Leslie faced wasn’t because of Robin but because of the people before her and the church.
She doesn’t think she’s getting anyone killed so she’s hardly willing to.
She puts effort into not thinking about it. Of course she knows.
“I would like a new question please!”
I literally said she’s not malicious. You’re dishonest; why?
She’s not “vilified,” she’s a villain. She’s an evil fictional character opposing the protagonists. She could go in the dictionary as an example.
@Pat 4:45
Can’t reply…
She puts effort into not thinking about it. Of course she knows.
“I would like a new question please!”
She’s Robin and has always been like this even when it came to things that weren’t political. Her attention span is a well known flaw.
“I literally said she’s not malicious. You’re dishonest; why?”
You called her a villain, being malicious is an integral part of that. I’m not being dishonest to put it bluntly you just like twisting my words to suit your image of her.
“She’s not “vilified,” she’s a villain. She’s an evil fictional character opposing the protagonists. She could go in the dictionary as an example.”
…You know what you said makes no sense right? You’re vilifying her as a villain right now, you just said it yourself that she was one.
You say she’s evil but I don’t believe so and am not willing to go into why again with you as you’re intent on not listening which is fine.
Actively avoiding thinking about the victims of your actions is not related to attention span.
“You called her a villain, being malicious is an integral part of that.”
Do you just not read what I’m writing? Why are you replying if you’re not reading any of it?
“You’re vilifying her as a villain right now, you just said it yourself that she was one.”
Robin is a villain, Finale doesn’t know what “vilify” means, and Pat is suspecting this isn’t worth the effort. And you know she’s not real, right?
Blackmail/revenge only FEELS good. It really will only accomplish nothing but destroying one person who had a negligible amount of power to begin with. Robin isn’t “the enemy” (what a childish worldview btw), she’s just one cog in a system that was in place long before she was born.
You think you’re being righteous and hardcore, when you’re just trying to justify being an ass to people you don’t like.
If she isn’t “the enemy”, she’s been colluding with them in their attempts to pass laws which, as Leslie noted, would literally cost lives.
It doesn’t matter how damn long the system has worked like this, the system is monstrous. The only reason Robin doesn’t have actual blood on her hands (that we know of) is because that bill was defeated.
She herself might not be a irredeemable monster, but that doesn’t make her less of a threat NOW.
It’s true that the system is monstrous but Robin is just a small part of it and if it wasn’t her then it would be someone else.
She’s pandering a horrible message and ideology because it worked the first time so the problem that the LGBTQ community faces isn’t necessarily because of Robin but because it’s what the “people” wanted. If such policies weren’t popular in the first place then people wouldn’t use it in their campaigns, even people like Robin that don’t actually believe in it.
Anyone in Robin’s position will always be a threat but at least the person in her position IS Robin whom is someone that can be swayed if given the proper context.
The fact that her replacement MIGHT be worse is not a good reason to do nothing. Accepting the Devil You Know out of fear if the alternative is part of how the devils keep getting in.
And yes, Robin can almost certainly be made into an ally, if only because she lacks the attention span for dedicated evil, that doesn’t mean she’s not still an enemy. She continues to be only a potential convert, until that potential is realized.
I certainly hope Leslie won’t jump straight to outing Robin without looking at other options first, but I completely get why she would consider it
Well there is a good chance that the replacement would be worse, Robin only supports the traditional family value angle because it’s popular and easy but she doesn’t really believe in it. Whomever else replaces her could very easily actually believe in it and be far more active with such policies as opposed to Robin who only did it to keep the voters happy.
It’s really not a matter of attention span rather than Robin herself not believing in the cause, in the time she was in Congress she could have done so much more damage if she really wanted to push through the anti-LGBTQ agenda. Robin does have a terrible attention span but not when it came to things that matter to her.
I am 100% certain Leslie won’t. The Walkyverse! and Dumbiverses characters may be different people but their overall personalities as well as their insecurities as a result of them have stayed relatively the same. Leslie, at least in the Walkyverse, was always good at being able to see past what people represent and what they actually are ass we see with Jesus and to a greater extent eventually her own parents.
“The Walkyverse! and Dumbiverses characters may be different people but their overall personalities as well as their insecurities as a result of them have stayed relatively the same.”
Uh… what about Robin?
@Pat 4:19pm Post
Again can’t reply directly to your post, sorry.
What about Robin? She’s still shown to be naive, overly-energetic, foolish but willing. She listened to what Leslie had to say and wasn’t even close to being repulsed by her being a lesbian and never judged her for it something that goes against her own policies. I don’t see any evidence of her core personality changing at all.
She went from being a superhero putting herself at risk to defend other people to being willing to sacrifice the well-being (at least) of others for her own prestige. That’s quite a change. Yes, she still has some traits in common, but she didn’t stay the same.
Or Mike. Or Amber. There are differences.
But Robin seemed kinda… obvious, as she’s the topic and all.
@Pat 4:49pm
This comment system is inconvenient.
“She went from being a superhero putting herself at risk to defend other people to being willing to sacrifice the well-being (at least) of others for her own prestige. That’s quite a change. Yes, she still has some traits in common, but she didn’t stay the same.”
Robin being a superhero was never important to the core of her personality. She considered it a job as we know by Shortpacked 642. Her personality was spontaneous, energetic, slang-filled, self-absorbed with issues regarding her sexuality for a long time. In that respect she’s practically the same, just without super-speed. She’s more active in congress but that might simply be because it’s near the election and she’s more active as a result just like with her first re-election in shortpacked.
You’d prefer the comments to get infinitely small?
Yes, those things are similarities. The things I mentioned are different. This is exciting.
@Finale
A replacement candidate would almost certainly be worse, but there’s no guarantee they’d win.
With less than a month until the election, that means either Robin stays in the race, loses many of the bigots who won’t vote for any kind of sex weirdo,
OR she drops out of the race, and her last-minute replacement has to struggle just to file the paperwork to get their name on the ballot in time, and has to go up against Robin’s opponent, who now has a significant advantage in terms of name recognition, and has to struggle to get Robin’s demoralized constituents motivated to show up to the polls.
If this ends up being a mid-term election, it goes to Manley almost by default. Either way it pushes the odds heavily in his favor.
Thank all you folks for reading ShortPacked for me…
I can’t help but feel the comments are more okay with Leslie outing Robin because she’s a likable character than if Mary had outted Billie/Ruth.
Also Robin is y’know
A complete knob
That is putting in place death sentences for many people
Not purposefully though, I think Robin is a bit ignorant to the extent that her policies actually affect others and I believe could easily have a change of heart but NOT if the only person who she thought liked her outs her.
It’s easy to write her off because of what she had done but it wasn’t exactly out of malicious intent and can be improved upon. Destroying Robin’s career is by no means a guarantee that thing’s would improve because the voters voted her in, she was successful with those ideals and as such it is reasonable to believe that anyone else that uses those policies that hurt others could very easily just take her place, and that’s assuming Jake Manley himself does support the LGBTQ community because if he doesn’t all Leslie does it destroy a single woman’s career, someone that probably could have actually changed. The fact Robin returned at all shows that she does and can care if given the proper push.
Definitely purposeful. I get that she was a superheroine in another universe, but this version is quite unabashedly evil. Read her actual lines and actions. She hurts people because it’s useful to her prestige, and deals with the guilt by ignoring the victims. She’s bad.
Can she reform? Possibly. But Leslie doesn’t owe her anything–or rather, Robin wouldn’t like what Leslie does owe her. “How dare you hit me back!” is not a good position.
And hey waitasec, if her policies aren’t hurting anybody than why would outing her be a bad thing? Queer people are just fine and not being hurt at all–right?
She’s tried to put through hurtful policies not expecting it to pass and outside of that she hasn’t been shown doing anything “evil”. Her policies don’t even align with her own beliefs and she’s only done it to support her image of being a “traditional family” candidate. I have read her lines and seen her actions several times and she has clearly not understood the extent to what she has done. She didn’t think the bill would really hurt anyone, she thought shelters should have enough money and she thought that churches wouldn’t refuse anyone. I don’t believe Robin has put through anything that would hurt anyone yet and she doesn’t believe her policies WOULD hurt anyone, she’s ignorant and as a result can be very easily educated. I haven’t ever seen her in this be malicious in the least and definitely not purposeful.
Outing her would be a bad thing not because her policies hurt anyone but because it would go against everything she has been campaigning for which is a traditional family structure. The voters would see that she was a fraud and as such would go to her opposition. The fact that her policies could hurt someone is irrelevant to the scandal that would ensue, there was a scandal simply because someone associated with Robin wasn’t following what Robin was campaigning.
“She’s tried to put through hurtful policies not expecting it to pass and outside of that she hasn’t been shown doing anything ‘evil’.”
You realize that doing that one extraordinarily evil thing is actually enough, yeah?
“Her policies don’t even align with her own beliefs and she’s only done it to support her image of being a ‘traditional family’ candidate.”
I only punch innocent people in the face because it supports my image of being a “innocent person face-puncher”. Wait that’s still bad.
Also that’s an image she chose.
“She didn’t think the bill would really hurt anyone, she thought shelters should have enough money…”
Funny, thinking shelters should have enough money sounds like she knew it would really hurt anyone. After all, shelters would be needed.
Also, her efforts to avoid talking or thinking about the harm she’s doing do not make her look better.
Hurting people on purpose is purposeful, malice not required. Do you just hate language and communication or something?
“a traditional family structure”
You know that’s a lie, right? It’s code for hating gay people. I see you.
“You realize that doing that one extraordinarily evil thing is actually enough, yeah?”
Is it to you? It’s an act of pandering and ignorance, not malicious intent. The intent behind such a thing matters a great deal to me because it suggests a future intent to continue to do so if malicious.
“I only punch innocent people in the face because it supports my image of being a “innocent person face-puncher”. Wait that’s still bad.
Also that’s an image she chose.”
Are you a politician trying to get votes from “face-punchers”? If not then your image doesn’t really affect your career does it? That image that she chose is popular in that area and that’s why she chose it because it gets her into office. It isn’t hypocritical because it has an explicit purpose for being that way even if she doesn’t like it. I don’t imagine Robin could support anything else and still be voted in, it’s hard enough being a woman in politics as shown by Robin being the only woman ever being put into office. Her image is important.
“Funny, thinking shelters should have enough money sounds like she knew it would really hurt anyone. After all, shelters would be needed.
Also, her efforts to avoid talking or thinking about the harm she’s doing do not make her look better.
Hurting people on purpose is purposeful, malice not required. Do you just hate language and communication or something?”
Shelters would always be needed regardless of what she did. The community is extremely religious and as a result makes it so they kids would be thrown out if outed, it’s a separate issue to her bill.
That’s simply Robin being Robin, a personality flaw. You can hate the character for that if you want but it doesn’t make her evil incarnate like you’re suggesting.
Malice IS required because to hurt people on purpose requires it otherwise you’re not either not hurting people or hurting people but NOT on purpose.
“You know that’s a lie, right? It’s code for hating gay people. I see you.”
Attack me all you want but it’s not something I believe but it is a core belief for Robin’s demographic and campaign, that’s why it is important and constantly brought up. Whether or not you see it as a lie doesn’t really matter here.
Actively putting effort into ignoring your victims is not ignorance. It might not be malice. It is definitely evil.
You keep saying I’m accusing her of malice. Stop lying, or I’m definitely not replying to you anymore.
“Are you a politician trying to get votes from ‘face-punchers’?”
Say that I am, since that’s how the metaphor works.
“That image that she chose is popular in that area and that’s why she chose it because it gets her into office.”
So… she’s willing to sacrifice innocents to bolster her prestige, and made a point of doing so.
“That’s simply Robin being Robin, a personality flaw. You can hate the character for that if you want but it doesn’t make her evil incarnate like you’re suggesting.”
The word for this type of personality flaw is “evil,” which falls under the broader category of “flaw.”
“Malice IS required because to hurt people on purpose requires it otherwise you’re not either not hurting people or hurting people but NOT on purpose.”
Well, she’s hurting people and she’s doing it on purpose. Either she’s proven that it doesn’t require malice or she’s malicious. You can’t have both of those.
“Whether or not you see it as a lie doesn’t really matter here.”
Whether the code-phrases of hate groups that don’t even mean anything if taken literally are lies is not up for debate.
Huh. And I thought there was a possibility I was overreaching there. I should have more faith in my gut.
Also you said that she was ignorant of what you now say is a “core belief for Robin’s… campaign.” Oopsie.
Robin could easily campaign on anything else and be elected. This district goes back and forth between the parties REGULARLY. This is not a super conservative ‘gotta toe all party lines’ district. Actually, considering most Americans support things like LGBT+ rights, it’d probably be MORE electable to either keep quiet or be pro equal rights. And yes, this is true in Indiana, as of last year.
This is not the only platform she could get elected on. There’s a million conservative platforms and not all of them involve curtailing civil rights. She could’ve focused on bringing back jobs or something. The civil rights bullshit was unnecessary.
“Actively putting effort into ignoring your victims is not ignorance. It might not be malice. It is definitely evil.”
Nothing suggests that she’s actively putting effort into ignoring it at all. Where did you get that? She may not be looking into it because she had no reason to but that’s not evil. Your idea of what is evil is very odd to me.
“You keep saying I’m accusing her of malice. Stop lying, or I’m definitely not replying to you anymore.”
I’m fine with that, getting a bit hard to reply and we’re going into circles. I’m saying you’re saying she’s malicious because being so is a crucial part of being evil as well as a villain. If you’re not doing it intently or will malice then it isn’t evil. If you disagree with that then we simply go by different definitions and won’t be able to agree.
“Say that I am, since that’s how the metaphor works.”
Then we’ll see if you got elected into office as well as Robin did with her policies because that’s the entire reason Robin chose such policies.
“So… she’s willing to sacrifice innocents to bolster her prestige, and made a point of doing so.”
I don’t believe she’s seeing any kind of sacrifice as I don’t think she knows how much she is hurting others with those policies. She’s ignorant to that and why it’s ok in her mind to do so. I know you don’t think she’s ignorant so I don’t know what else to say for you to see it from my view.
“The word for this type of personality flaw is “evil,” which falls under the broader category of “flaw.””
You love labeling everything as evil don’t you? At this point you’re just stubbornly sticking with it despite my points. It’s not evil if it’s not intentional and it certainly isn’t evil if it can’t helped as it’s part of who she is.
“Well, she’s hurting people and she’s doing it on purpose. Either she’s proven that it doesn’t require malice or she’s malicious. You can’t have both of those.”
Jesus Christ you’re saying the same thing without addressing what I previously said. I don’t think it’s purposeful but you sure as hell do and I’m tired of you not even bearing in mind what I wrote.
“Whether the code-phrases of hate groups that don’t even mean anything if taken literally are lies is not up for debate.
Huh. And I thought there was a possibility I was overreaching there. I should have more faith in my gut.”
It’s not relevant here so yeah, it’s not a matter of debate because it has no place here. It adds nothing to topic at hand.
“Also you said that she was ignorant of what you now say is a “core belief for Robin’s… campaign.” Oopsie.”
She was ignorant to the extent of her actions, not her core beliefs.
I’m done with you not addressing what I say with nothing but little jabs of attacks and twisting of words as opposed to an actual conversation. You shall receive no more replies on this page. You may consider it a victory if it helps your ego but it was never supposed to be a challenge but a discussion to me. Have a nice day.
I just want to point out Robin’s been told now by at least four different people her votes hurt people and she continues to defend them. At this point, she can no longer claim ignorance.
I’m sure all the children who die as a result of her policies are really cheered by the fact she didn’t INTEND for them to die. Intent isn’t magic. You can have the best intentions in the world and still be a viciously hurtful monster.
Yeah that’s no excuse
Uh, “Because she was actively trying to kill people” is literally the best excuse for taking a harmful action against somebody. It’s called “self-defense” and most laws against harming other people specifically call it out as an exception.
A good person considering harming a bad one with a goal of protecting the innocent might get a better reaction than a bad person harming an innocent… er, well, than a bad person hurting people because she enjoys inflicting harm?
You got me. I do, in fact, judge opposites differently. I call this “consistency.”
I think that their motives for doing it are the real reason for the different reaction.
If Mary outed someone, we would have little doubt she was doing it out of malice, to hurt or control that person.
If Leslie is considering it, that’s a very different story. It’s highly unlikely she’d do it just to hurt Robin. She’s already shown she was content to walk away. And since Leslie knows the consequences first-hand, it’s much easier to believe that she’s doing it for the right reasons (or as close as possible, depending on where you stand)
There’s also the simple fact that a good person is more likely to be greatness the benefit of a doubt than bad one. As it should be
It’s the difference between shooting someone because you don’t like them and shooting them because they’re about to blow up a puppy orphanage.
There is a very large difference in outing a career politician who has actively and recently fought for hateful legislation that makes it harder for queer kids to survive and outing a private citizen with abusive family members.
One is a questionably moral stance that has a history of unfortunate necessity in the struggle for queer rights that is hotly debated in the LGBT community.
The other is an act of abuse of someone whose closet is what they deem necessary for their survival, putting them at direct risk in the hopes that violence or harm will befall them.
Those are two very different things with two very different moral calculuses that need to be brought into play.
Like, if it turned out Mary cranked it to lesbian porn on the regular, I would not at all be okay with outing her to her homophobic congregation despite the harm she has done.
I will say here that, if Leslie is planning on outing Robin, that’s fucked up. But I can also see this being a sort of….using it to make Robin face who she is sort of thing instead. Like if Robin tries to deny who she is or something like that, show her the pic and be like, “You. In bed. With a lesbian. Tell me again how you are totally straight forever.” As long as the picture is never shared or used as blackmail, it’s still weird/creepy to take a picture of someone without their knowledge, but not quite as bad, I think.
Like if Robin tries to deny who she is or something like that, show her the pic and be like, “You. In bed. With a lesbian. Tell me again how you are totally straight forever.”
Is it possible that nothing actually happened? Robin at least appears to be wearing the clothes from the night before. I’ll bet she’s used to passing out in all kinds of places.
“Passing out in all the wrong places” is definitely the title of my next film!
Leslie’s face suggests to me that something happened, even if it wasn’t as far as sex. I mean, it’s possible they got drinky and passed out in bed but her expression is what leads me to believe otherwise.
Alternate panel 1 / strip title: Boop!
I can’t understand the excuse that she votes anti-GLBT because it’s party-line, but she doesn’t hurt GLBT people “intentionally”. If I was standing next to the propane tank you blew up, does it make a difference whether you just tossed a cigarette or pushed a button?
Outing regular citizens is bad. Functionally hateful politicians, possibly, are obligatory to out. But Leslie may have taken the picture with no clear idea what she’d do with it later. If you don’t take the picture, your range of possible actions shrinks.
If you want to stop propane explosions in the future, yes it does matter. Methods that will work for stopping cigarette tossers may not work for stopping button pushers, and vice versa.
Robin’s a button-pusher, though. She actively put effort into harming innocent people.
I don’t understand the use of this metaphor.
It was a pretty loose metaphor for motive – either carelessness or active malice. For Robyn the LGBT people who get harmed by her legislation are unfortunate but worthwhile casualties, rather than targets, who she is “forced” to sacrifice in order to maintain a position in which she believes she can have a positive influence. Both are despicable, but the difference comes in when you need to try and stop them, because they have different motives. Convincing Robyn that LGBT people are also people doesn’t help because she already knows that and acted against them anyway, but reinforcing how badly they get affected by her legislation might work a lot better than when trying to convince someone who thinks LGBT people should suffer.
So it’s still pushing the button. It’s just
“If you push this button it will slaughter innocents and make you more popular.”
“This button will make me more popular!? Deal!”
I don’t understand the use of this metaphor.
Robin always pushes the button.
“If nobody is supposed to push it, then why is it there?”
Well, the effects are the same, but how you deal with them may be different.
In your hypothetical it’s the difference between negligent homicide and first degree murder.
In Robin’s case, the big difference is that Robin is far more likely to change when/if she accepts that she’s bi than a more hate-filled politician. Or even the closeted Larry Craig kind, who’s long known and acted on his homosexuality, while continuing to push anti-LGTBQ issues.
“In your hypothetical it’s the difference between negligent homicide and first degree murder.”
Exactly. It might make a difference to the police, but it doesn’t matter to the dead person.
NO LESLIE NO
Would you out one person if it prevented a whole street car full of people from being outed? That’s the question.
Nope. The question is: can you, a common citizen, play the blackmail game against an unscrupulous politician and win?
If my understanding of US politics are correct, destroying Robin will only have her replaced by someone worse.
Seems a waste of a potential resource.
Ah but it is an election year I suppose.
And this sounds like a swing state.
Swing district, actually. Robin’s constituency appears to be the town of Bloomington and of its surrounding rural areas. Also, yes, I would imagine a district that includes a college town would probably lean more towards the blue end of the spectrum, although a sufficiently good or poor candidate on one side or the other would unbalance things somewhat.
So will making it harder for college kids to vote. Or to vote locally.
Oh shit.
I bet Trump would spin such selfie to his own agenda if a leftie would sleep with him, so I bet Robin will do the same, “Look I’m a right wing anti-LGBT person and even liberal lesbian slept with me kind of deal so vote for me too if you’re a LGBT person yourself!” kind of deal.
TBH, even if the plan isn’t ‘out her’, Leslie should have taken this photo anyways, because she’s gonna need to call the cops about a breaking and entering later. She has NO IDEA how Robin got here and she wasn’t that drunk last night – B&E looks the most likely. You can argue about the ethics of outing an anti-LGBT+ politician, but you can’t argue that Leslie has the right to report a felony. A B&E charge would probably be taken more seriously and could potentially get her half a year to 2 and half years in jail and some serious fines according to here:http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/burglary-and-home-invasions-indiana.htm
Unless an invitation happened off screen…
I doubt it, due to the expression on her face, but I suppose anything is possible.
I hate to read to much into what happened off screen. Hopefully we’ll find out more over the next couple of strips.
Robin following her home, breaking in and just going to sleep next to her seems as unlikely as pretty much anything else I can think of. Barring alcohol working on her like Cadbury cereal in SP.
Honestly, it’s gonna be weird no matter what. Leslie doesn’t seem to know what happened, so it’s gonna be something skeevy.
*Gasp* Congressman’s DeSanto’s career ruined by a sex scandal!?
“Spiiiiiiiiite.”
Context for the debate and the complexity surrounding it:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/mike-rogers-outed-gay-republicans-108368
It’s Mike Rogers writing about his work outing closeted anti-gay politicians during the Bush years and why he did it and why he still defends those actions to this day. And what he viewed as the purpose and effect of those actions.
Super relevant to the comic? Read his section on Paul Koering who he decided not to out because Koering showed enough introspection about his closet and the pain it was causing that Rogers saw him on a journey that was already in motion. Paul Koering ended up turning against his caucus on a gay marriage issue and coming out later.
And also his section on Dan Gurley who he did out and which has caused Gurley to devote himself more openly to LGBT causes in North Carolina including the push for gay marriage in 2014.
Leslie.
I’m just going to say I don’t know what to think.
Outing people isn’t great, and I actually worry that getting someone kicked out of office for being gay or bi will only make it harder for things to change in a better direction – versus her just changing as she spends time with you, and eventually losing the office but being at peace with it and maybe even making some changes during her remaining time with power.
THen again. Robin is basically a stand in for Trump. A worse case scenario that will actively harm people. It might be worth booting her out of office, even at the risk of someone more malicious and competent coming along. (Not an option in real life, because of how the succession is set for presidents, but maybe in congress…)
I’m not sure you have the heart to go through with this. Or with blackmailing her – which might be morally worse, but practically better for accomplishing things. >,> (I say might, because I don’t even know where to stand on this. :/ Just. That I hope you’ll do the right thing, whatever the right thing is.)
Yeah… and frankly if there was a dumb meaningless scandal that took out Trump and Pence and prevented them from doing their will on the electorate, I’d probably cheer for it even if it felt hollow that that’s what took them out when so little else did.
Like, if they were caught sleeping with each other and got outed and that removed their aura of authority, I’d be hard-pressed to say much against that even though I’d bristle at the thought that it was them being queer that did more than them being abusers and molesters.
I don’t think Robin really is a stand-in for Trump, despite the superficial jokes that were made earlier. SP! Robin as politician had a bunch of links to Sarah Palin, but took in the long run a very different path. If she’s a Trump stand-in, then she’s an out and out villain with no sympathy or chance of a heel-face turn.
Which she’s not. We’ve already seen where the sympathy could easily come from, in her confusion about her sexuality. That’s not a Trump trait, not something you’d throw into a simple Trump stand in.
Which brings us back to your first point: Outing people’s a valid tactic, but not one to be taken at all lightly. In this case, as a purely practical matter, given what little we know of her, helping her change is likely the more promising option.
And if it doesn’t work or Leslie can’t stand to keep trying, if she won’t admit her bisexuality or she does admit it and keeps up the same politics, well, there’s time to out her later.
Also, it would be quite a trick for Willis to have known about Trump’s future political career back in 2011 when he started this plotline.
(If he knew then that Trump was going to be president and didn’t say anything, I am going to up my damning of him by several orders of magnitude.)
He mentioned in his blog that he started the Robin-in-classroom aspect of this storyline specifically back when Trump as president seemed like a real possibility.
Well, she’s not JUST a Trump Stand in. She’s also Robin. But I’m pretty sure this storyline was impacted by Trump, and the fear we’ve all felt. The fear Leslie is feeling….
Other than that, though, yeah. I agree.
Also, it’s interesting how much of the debate gets into the central problem with trying to trying to have one overriding principle no matter what. Non-violence is great… but ignoring violence against yourself and refusing to get violent even if your violence would save the life of someone who is powerless to save themselves gets a lot muddier morally.
Context ends up mattering a lot and it’s totally okay to have different stances on where to draw the lines and there are things I can never support or see myself doing no matter the moral circumstances. But it’s harder than we give ourselves credit for in the day-to-day.
Far as I’m concerned, the only moral option would be to out Robin; minority survival is always a war to the knife, and the personal life of someone who targets you and yours is a perfectly moral target, simply on grounds of MAD, if nothing else; liberals have forgotten this fact lately – given the comments that I’m seeing here, I ain’t surprised that liberals donated to rebuild a burned GOP office. They never did seem to grasp that they were in a cold civil war; it’s a significant part of why I do not believe they can effectively protect me and mine.
Welp, if political warfare abides the unwilling publicity of a one´s private life, then all is good. Conservatives & liberals, LBGT´s & Heteronormies, there you go. Have at it. Make my day. Let me see democracy crumble.
*evil grin*
Luckily we don’t even need to see the morals of liberals collapse in order to lose democracy!
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article122593759.html
We get to hold our principles and be slaughtered for who we are while even the pretense of having a say is ripped from us! Win-win!
I feel disappointed in her for taking that pic. I would have thought she was above that kind of thing (the implication being that she could use such a photo to blackmail or otherwise pressure the councilwoman).
So, scumbag move.
I like that Leslie isn´t a Mary Sue. LBGT´s don´t need to be dreamy, personable or dignified persons (neccesarily). They aren´t perfect. They do the Scumbag ™ too!
Yay for normalization!
If the people of the Dumbiverse are anything like the ones in our world, this picture would do nothing to hurt Robin in the polls. Trump pledge alliegence to ISIS and his supporters will still claim Trump is strong on national defense.
I’m voting for Jake Manley! He’s for the One Right Thing! So it doesn’t matter how many rotten things you say he’s done.
And today we learn that Leslie and Robin’s relationship has an unhealthy start in every universe. Here’s to it evolving into something better in this one too.
love being told that I’m the reason I’m oppressed because by hating the bigots who want to marginalize me I’m “perpetuating a cycle of hatred”
Why aren’t they the ones perpetuating the cycle, one must wonder.
Seriously.
It’s always on the marginalized to extend the olive branch with our broken arm right after the dominant group has beaten us to the ground and kicked us around.
And it’s noteworthy that these “perpetuating a cycle of hatred folks” are never around when the initial violences are only occurring and only seem to come out when the oppressed start picking themselves off the ground and surveying and remarking on the damage done to them.
Like, if you’re only calling out the incredibly light responses to horrific violence by the powerless instead of the deep abuses of the powerful, that’s not as solid a moral position as you might imagine.
Leslie… you’re better than this…
This is going to go one of two ways and both are not good.