Yep. I was freaking out about the possibility of Sal getting Zimmerman’d by someone at that rally or AG escalating into a riot or the crowd getting amped up or JESUS that rally had me on the skin of my teeth.
They probably interacted at the multiple weddings that took place in Shortpacked! but none of that was on screen.
They may have interacted during the first incident with HA2 but I’ll never know because the idea of paying money to read a webcomic is ridiculous. (hides copy of volume 1 of Digger by Ursula Vernon beneath dinner table)
I assumed you meant fix everything that Roz disliked about her social-political stance. Sadly for Roz no mind wipes in this universe. so she can’t just blank slate people she doesn’t like.
As much as I commonly agree with Roz on most of her opinions surrounding her core gripes and issues, I wish this is something she would come to understand, someday.
This, definitely. Sure Leslie had a crush on Robin, but she wouldn’t have gotten any more involved with Robin if Roz hadn’t been trying to get them together.
Disparaging Leslie having an attraction to Robin is something Leslie herself did before * in the aftermath of the both of them mutually engineering this.
Roz has a little bit of Mike’s personality in her makeup. Cause trouble and think ot’s all for the best. That was originally going to be Roz has a bit of Mike in her, but …phrasing.
Because Roz has a bad habit of throwing folks under the bus to get what she wants. Or try and get what she wants, only to screw up and blame the person she used for her own plans failing
Between the Joe sex tape, pushing Robin and Leslie together (then blaming Leslie when that didn’t change robin’s sociopolitical agenda completely) and outright admitting and showing she was willing to manipulate everyone on the floor to get the RA position, Roz has pretty much used people and then thrown em aside for any gain she thinks she can get the whole comic then holding other people to account if she doesn’t get it
so do I think Roz would out becky’s status as not a student and have her kicked off campus if it could further any of her myriad goals? yes, because roz here is shaping up to be the perfect two-faced political bongo.
As far as I remember, she didn’t threw anyone under the bus after the Sex Tape nor when she tried to convince the Beck Dorm girls she would make a great RA.
She hasn’t betrayed Leslie either, at least not until now, but I agree today’s strip is worrying.
she released a sex tape online without asking her partners permission for the exact purpose of causing a scandal in her family. the same reason she outed the fact Leslie and Robin where together.
True, Joe didn’t mind the tape being released, but he also wasn’t consulted or asked. The same can’t be said for Leslie. and it’s not like she did it for any reason other than personal gain – to hopefully ruin her sisters political career so her sis would stop bugging her. nothing more, nothing less
so yeah, what happens if ros can get any advantage if she outs becky? based on how she’s acted so far, she’ll out becky
Joe consented the sex being filmed AND the tape being put online. She told him she was going to do so beforehand.
She didn’t point out that she was the sister of a congresswoman, which she probably should have, but otherwise it was completely upfront and consensual.
It’s actually fitting that this is where Robin and Roz are incredibly similar as characters, given that they surely grew up with the same value-set. I never really thought about it before from that angle, but they’re both unbelievably cut-throat, self-centered, and purely goal-oriented. It’s just that they have fundamentally different desires (power and influence for Robin, freedom and autonomy for Roz) that drive them to use the exact same tactics to further fundamentally opposed causes.
I don’t think this comic gets enough credit for how strong and realistic its’ characters are.
I like your point about Robin and Roz being similar but driven by different desires, but as an old Shortpacked! reader, I don’t really think Robin is driven by power and influence, I think she’s driven by other people’s approval and validation, and also by taking the easiest way out. When the loudest members of her constituency (aside from her sister) and colleagues are all urging her to take a particular political stance, then she’ll do it because it’s easiest and people like her when she does that. But if she comes to understand that people have been hurt and (perhaps more critical to Robin) disappointed by her actions, then she has the potential to change.
On the other hand, doing a 180 on ones’ political stances mid-election in a district that may not be supportive of her new stance is far from the easiest thing for Robin to do, so Robin’s got to be in a quandary right now. While we might not weigh factors the same way that she does, she is at the moment torn between her two most central drives, so it is very difficult for her. However, Robin has been known to act impulsively and deal with the fall-out later.
Or, she may just lock herself inside and eat Cadbury Cream eggs. Avoidance can be an irresistible response to conflict, and Robin’s preferred means of avoidance is easy, fun and delicious. So yeah, my money is 80% on Robin avoiding the whole thing (maybe even dropping out of the election so she doesn’t have to deal), 15% on Robin (possibly impulsively) publicly coming out and repudiating her old political stances, 5% on Robin staying with her same old political stances and denying the whole thing.
I’m pretty sure that somewhere in this story arc, quite possibly years of our real time away, there’s a scene with Robin making out with Leslie on the stage at a campaign event.
Whether that destroys her political career or not is another question.
are you sure we’re reading the same comic? Roz is nowhere near this evil mastermind type figure you’re describing. She’s angry in this comic, and I’ve read it multiple times and I honestly think we’re missing some key info because her anger does not make sense given the info we’ve been shown so far.
Obviously she leans more towards self-serving than self-sacrificing, but I do believe she’s acting in what she believes to be everybody’s best interest.
Well, except for the best interests of anyone else who makes “a sacrifice for the cause” that she’s willing to live with, or at least that’s how it sounds to me when she jumps into this particular private conversation the way she does.
Being self-serving is hard to fault on its own. Volunteering to help others make ‘necessary sacrifices’ for any sort of ‘greater good’ while being able to easily wipe their own hands of any trouble that comes of it…. I’ll basically fault that every time. Especially when there’s a lot of hypotheticals in regards to which means actually achieve the best end result anyways.
Like, to posit forwards, Leslie with her own personal experience in the matter is probably one of the best potential resources for Becky to be able to get her life figured out and get to a better place currently. Roz successfully destroying any positive viewpoint of her that Becky might have could potentially have kept Becky from being willing enough to trust Leslie enough to find out about any resources that Leslie might know of that could help Becky out.
I mean, this is assuming that Leslie is actually going to live up to her self proclaimed standard of being better than most of those other adults and actually does care enough about Becky to not immediately report her for her situation, but I’m pretty sure thats not an actual worry. If it is, well, maybe Roz was in the right for trying to paint her in a poor light.
But, honestly, I’m more willing to bet that Roz didn’t even stop to consider whether Becky feeling able to speak to Leslie about her current issues would be a good thing or not. “Social change isn’t created from small, polite splashes.” after all. Thats why she “prefers the bigger ones”. And I’m not sure she really cares much about who those larger ones catch in their wake for the most part. Maybe she cares enough about Becky to not intentionally do anything that would end up with her being an acceptable loss, but I’m not sure she intended a lot of the bad thats come of her actions so far either.
If I’m reading the situation right, it seems like common knowledge on the dorm floor (probably because Roz was showing it off and told Dorothy that it gave her the trust of the LGBT ladies on the floor) that Roz was involved in some way with Robin’s news related incident with Leslie. ‘Collateral damage’ is either referring to Leslie being outed or her own sister being outed. Or maybe both. Either way, Becky’s not happy with the situation.
Roz pretty much threw Leslie under a bus in order to accomplish her goal. Hard to believe she won’t do the same to anyone else if she figures her goal is “noble” enough.
Unlikely, knowing Leslie, but if she hears about Roz’s involvement in that hitting the news, she surely won’t be thrilled, and will likely make that abundantly clear to Roz.
i don’t really see how that follows? like, she was really happy that Robin got outed earlier? i haven’t seen how she’s blaming Leslie for anything? or what she’s blaming Leslie for?
idk like i guess i can see how you could read that, but like this strip goes: Becky is excited about getting to meet a fellow lesbian despite the recent controversy about her dating a homophobic conservative politician, Becky relates to that attraction while making a joke about her crush on Joyce, Roz not knowing what the joke is about asks how similar it was, Becky tells Roz to back off because she made Leslie collateral damage, and Roz gets defensive and jumpy.
i don’t really know precisely what Roz is feeling b/c that’s not really enough information to figure it out – she could be blaming Leslie for hooking up with Robin and destroying her reputation, or she could just be feeling edgy about it now that she’s seen what some of the consequences are. She was practically gloating about it earlier – she was really happy to see her sister embracing her gay side, and that that hypocrisy got exposed. And also like, as sisters-in-law go, Leslie is probably amazing. way to plan ahead, y’know?
i know that Roz may disagree with Leslie sometimes but she seems to come from a place of respect for her teacher. She hooked her up with her sister, which is not something I think she’d do with just anyone? A sister like Robin is going to hit that sweet spot of annoyance so strong you want to strangle her and a fierce protective streak where they’re genuinely vulnerable. and also public humiliation so everyone can see them the way you see them. and really strong anger where they’re really wrong, wrong, wrong.
………..i still don’t know what you’re blaming roz for here
Right here Roz is blaming Leslie for falling for Robin, who is in a political position of power and hurting people from that.
In a tone and stance that rather vilifies Leslie.
And Becky reads this clearly as Roz not being a reliable ally. I’m with her.
If I was 18 and my Gender Studies professor was head over heels for any of the shitbag congresspeople in our state, I’d frankly be disparaging as well sexuality of said attraction be damned.
@CJ: i guess i can see how you read that, but i feel like her body language is like. in between blaming, shutting herself off, and like. being upset with herself. her tone is pretty difficult to say since this is a visual medium! her timing is terrible, but that’s easy to screw up.
the choice to not trust someone is individual and imperative, and that’s a totally fair call for Becky to make. Leslie and Roz have a slightly different relationship, tho, and I’d think that Leslie’s…disappointment and hurt? would mean an actual lot to Roz.
meanwhile i really do hope that Leslie doesn’t take revenge on Roz for going along with Roz’ date setup because that would be petty and immature. and Leslie is better than that
Even after I raised my eyebrow and asked my professor, just to make sure, that she did understand the other end of the setup plan–my sister–was in fact the same shitbag congressman we were both currently referring to?
Sure I would. I’d think my professor was either out of her mind or had a lot of guts, and was willing to risk quite a bit on a gamble, but if she was up for it and I thought we had a mutual understanding then yeah I would.
@Minder so what you’re saying is you have no problem with hypocrisy when you’re just following orders, even when you’re not really following orders per se.
I wouldn’t just be following orders, because in this scenario it’s assumed that (like Roz) I either proposed the idea myself, or else was an active participant in engineering it.
Roz asked Leslie twice to make sure she still wanted to do this and Leslie said yes. Even after their fight in class. Roz’s mistake was thinking she and Leslie were on the same page about ‘why.’
@Valerie It’s not very nice, sure, but criticizing over intent / belief makes sense fine if you’re doing the same thing as someone you disagree with for different reasons.
Like, this is a really silly example and I hate using metaphors so far-removed they’re too ridiculous to be applicable, but its kind of like…a friend or an acquaintance notices I’m hungry and offers to buy me a meal. I know this friend isn’t doing well financially, but depending on how hungry I am and how much I think the meal is going to cost them personally, I might give different answers.
@Valerie -CONTINUED- (sorry) Because if I know they really, really can’t afford to be buying me food, and they’re offering me a steak dinner, I’m perfectly liable to tell them they’re a moron and still take them up on their offer if I can’t afford to buy my own dinner either.
Minder: A better analogy would be, “Hey, you shouldn’t have burned down that house. Yes, I know I gave you the gasoline, and the matches, and I knew damn well what you were going to do with them, because you’d actually said, ‘I’m’a gonna burn down that house’, but I didn’t actually light the fire, you did, so I get to be morally superior to you, now.”
And this is why I hate analogies, because what I’d guess Roz is actually disparaging Leslie–for if she’s actually keeping Leslie in mind at all here–is Leslie turning out to have had a very different and illusory crush on Robin with different parameters than Roz assumed hatching this plan.
I can’t really dislike Roz, because she is many of us 5-10 years ago, all passion, no nuance, but goddamn if the girl doesn’t need to take a chill pill and sit down once in a while.
Roz’s role in dangling Robin in front of Leslie was her sister coming down to damage control her sex tape and have the dean bring her back into line. After that, Roz brought her back to the classroom, which Leslie agreed to and signed off on in advance, after Roz asked again for confirmation she wanted to do it.
Not liking Roz’s attitude is fine, but everything Roz was in on, Leslie was as well. Roz was not in on the encounter where Leslie met Robin and she was not at the bar where the picture was taken – Leslie agreed to those on her own.
I mean, that’s part of the point. Roz is as complicit in this as Leslie is, she was instrumental in bringing this plan together, and yet she’s acting as if she’s washed her hands and Leslie is as much of an oppressor as Robin is. Which is not a good look.
Roz’s plan had little to do with Robin being outed. The only part that connects to it is that Robin was in the classroom for it, which was part of Roz’s plan to hopefully have those two converse and have Robin stop being a homophobic fuck. She was outed at a bar, far away, while she was about to mack on Leslie (as far as the picture shows). Roz was not connected to that, and certainly not to the same degree as Leslie – Leslie agreed to go to the bar on her own volition, without any input from Roz. Roz is barely connected to the thing that got Robin outed, other than she gave a time and place for them to meet up. The rest of Roz’s plan never happened. Had it, you’d be right, she’d be as much a part of this as Robin and Leslie, but Roz’s plan relied on ‘good listener, heart in the right place big sister Robin’ listening to Leslie and realizing she was an asshole, realizing she was bi, and coming out voluntarily, which would not be this situation.
But the fact is Roz is very much still partially responsible for pushing Robin at Leslie, and turning around and acting like Leslie is reprehensible for taking the bait is a shitty thing to do. That is literally all I’m saying here. Roz, a straight girl, taking potshots at a lesbian woman for daring to be attracted to someone is really gross.
Especially when this comes perilously close to implying Leslie’s complicit in her own oppression, and the oppression of other LGBT+ people.
Okay, that makes more sense and on that I can agree. I thought you were referring to what happened at the bar. Roz did indeed arrange for them to meet up again.
Roz knew what she was doing when she agreed to get his sister to come as a guest speaker. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/gag/
She’s also on record as saying that she wanted her sister to come out of her closet willingingly, but was okay with Robin being dragged out by the media.
Oh yeah, she definitely wanted those two to hook up, in addition to Leslie changing her sister’s mind on LGBT+ and coming out. Her role in this was arranging the class visit and making sure Leslie would look hot, but everything post class visit was on Robin and Leslie.
I don’t think it’s Roz’s fault at all. I do, however, find her judgementalness towards Leslie quite distasteful. Maybe she’s just trying to state that being attracted to prejudiced individuals with power is bad in general, but it feels like she’s proclaiming Leslie a traitor to the LGBT community for her attraction to Robin.
It’s okay to read it that way, but I know the comments section and I know there’s going to be a bunch of ‘Roz set Leslie up for this’ type comments, hence my lemon drops.
See, now I want to blame Mary for taking the picture, but she was surprised to see it. Also, I’m pretty sure she isn’t in Leslie’s class, and wouldn’t go to a bar on her own. On to the next candidate.
if she did go to a bar i think we can be sure that she would cover herself in a full layer of bubblewrap and sanitizer so that none of the booze could seep into her by osmosis
It’s a bottle of 151 I got as a birthday gift from an uncle who forgot that I don’t drink anything stronger than a hard cider or a dunkel, and even those only occasionally. So…I kinda need to find something to do with this bottle of liquid fire before I get too curious and try making a Molotov… On top of all my other issues I may have a touch of pyromania…
Get some IRL friends who are versed in alcohol, have a movie party. Rogue One just came out for sale, or you could make it a Bad Movie Night (though still avoid the SW Christmas Special).
Ah, fire, ancient friend of humankind.
I’ve just got some Gold that was on sale and I mistook for quality rum. It’s okay, but I’m seldom in the mood for liquor, so it’s been slow going.
Not really in a spot to comment on second half of the comment, so just going to focus on the cute Joy and Becky moment there and how they are able to affectionately joke about that part of their lives.
Becky’s loud and impulsive, but I think she has enough self-control to not openly admit she’s squatting in the dorms to a staff member. Ruth doesn’t even know.
Which is a damn shame.
Still, Leslie knows about “Joyce’s friend”. If she’s not too distracted, she may put two and two together and try to offer help.
That’s a big “if” though. And neither Joyce or Becky are likely to be too trusting. She really does need that sandwich board. 🙂
Honestly even though we all know what Roz’s intentions were if she’s telling the truth about not being the one to have leaked the picture what happened to Leslie wasn’t actually her fault.
I’m talking about when Leslie and Roz where scheming to have Leslie seduce Robin and the picture at the bar that was taken when Leslie agreed to have a drink with Robin. I’m not saying what is happening to Leslie is okay just that what it looks like from Roz’s pov is probably that Leslie continued with their previous plan. Everything that happened afterwards with Robin’s creepy behavior is obviously not okay and not what I was talking about.
Even ignoring Robin’s behavior or even their plan, Roz is being extremely overzealous and judgemental as hell if she thinks she has a good reason to be mad at Leslie for not doing enough to stand up homophobes
The way she phrases it still kind of comes off like she’s trying to ruin Becky’s impression of Leslie at least.
Though to me it seems like Becky is calling Roz out about the fact that she’s been blatantly pushing for a position of power within the dorms where she would be able to throw her under the bus as well.
Which might partially just be bias on my end cause I don’t really feel like Roz really has anyone’s interests at heart or worries about potential consequences due to being too busy being an in-your-face firebrand who often seems to talk down at and about others to push her own selfrighteousness.
Like how even when Joyce was trying to be more accepting of homosexuality and was obviously feeling bad over how she’d acted previously, Roz’s initial reaction was basically to rend into her over only just now starting to feel bad for her whole religion. She’s often seemed more interested in tearing down people she sees as potential enemies than actually helping out anyone else for selfless reasons.
I mean yeah, there’s been points where even with Joyce she’s shown some sympathy, but that doesn’t stop her from being aggressively distruptive towards Joyce and the rest of the class a few days later.
Like, just as a person, I kind of feel the way she acts toward other people is kind of horrible in general, at least what we see of her on panel. Even when she’s acting magnanimous it seems more about flaunting her popularity or dedication to her social causes than just doing what she can to help.
roz just really kind of struggles with seeing things as black and white, and also she loves attention. so like the way she goes about her causes is gonna be attention-seeking, a bit, but the struggle for her is to control what attention she gets. which – releasing her own sex tape was kind of very much about control of her own image, i think. her publicity is so tangled up with Robin’s that if she wants to do anything visible for the causes she believes in she has to distance herself.
and the black-and-white thinking really feeds into that and creates a kind of grandstanding. because there has to be something she can beat, right, she has to be able to win the battle and slay the dragon. and she seems to be very into a “no excuses” social justice praxis. WHICH. on a level, there are no excuses, but also people are fucked up and messy. she’s focusing more on winning than on making connections.
she’s forcing change, which is a very different take than Leslie’s. Leslie’s more about quiet influence and logical argument, I think. but Roz is impatient and wants it all now, now, now. She sees where she wants the world to be and doesn’t see how long it’ll take to get there. and that impatience is important and useful, because injustice should be intolerable, but…it’s a hard way to live
@Krys Thank you for saving me the trouble of saying the same thing. She often seems like a mirror of her sister, where Robin seems to toe the party line (and in my opinion doesn’t have much of an ideology of her own), she seems to be compassionate (if a bit clumsy) when dealing with people on an individual basis. Roz on the other hand has all sorts of high and mighty ideas, but often seems oblivious to individuals she claims to be sticking up for.
It’s still really uncool of her to be all holier-than-thou when this’ll likely ruin Leslie’s life in the short to medium term at the very least, though.
I honestly need to know what the details of this plan were because I feel like the possibility of Leslie being outed during all this had to have come up. Leslie was essentially agreeing to be apart of a sex scandal. What exactly were her intentions for that deleted picture if not to leak it or use it for blackmail? Again I know she changed her mind and what is happening now is not what she wanted but what exactly did she want? What was her goal here? Even in the most idealistic end game here Robin is a high profile republican politician. Even if Leslie just wanted to hang out and make out and watch Steven Universe she had to have been aware of the risk to her own privacy getting involved with someone so high profile would bring. Unless she’s just very naive.
I believe Roz’s plan was they’d meet, get to talking, possibly get to banging/dating, Robin would change her mind on LGBT+ folks, possibly come out of the closet, and (on that front anyways) stop being a large diameter asshole.
Yeah I know Roz’s goal. I’m more curious about Leslie’s. Especially with all the anger being pointed at 18 year old Roz and this idea that Leslie a grown ass woman in her 30’s needs to be handled with kid gloves.
What about anger being directed at a straight woman who gleefully reacts to the outing of queer women? Nothing in the comic indicates Leslie or Roz ever talked about Leslie being shoved into the public eye in this manner. If Roz’s goal was simply to make Robin realize she wasn’t straight (as far as I can tell this is what she implied to Leslie), why would Leslie ever assume that that would include her being thrown under the bus?
Leslie doesn’t need to be handled with kid gloves, but frankly any straight woman can gtfo with crowing about women being outed and certainly with implying that a gay women who acted foolishly on an ill-advised crush is a bad person who deserves public derision. Eighteen or not. Like, I can’t get across how fast I would nope away from a straight women who would tell me someone suffering from the fallout of being publicly outed ‘deserved it’, it’s one of the fastest ways they could signal they can’t be trusted. Especially if the crime is being adjacent to a bad person, and ESPECIALLY if they’d taken pains to help arrange the circumstances of the outing. It’s manipulative as hell.
You’re not answering my question you’re just redirecting things back to Roz. Roz is a kid who needs to learn a bit more empathy yes but Leslie is an adult who willingly conspired with an 18 year old she is in a position of authority over to seduce a high profile anti gay politician and I find it incredibly hard to believe that she never once considered this could blow up in her face. I am sympathetic to Leslie’s situation but if she is so shortsighted she could not have seen this resulting in potential scandal for her because she was so blinded by a crush and if she were so easily “manipulated” into such a high risk endeavor by a child I really and deeply have to question her judgment and whether she should be in a position of authority like this.
Also manipulative behavior is totally something I am willing to judge, even if the person being manipulated ‘should have known better’. Deliberately and disingenuously setting out to set up a situation to your benefit in a way that would damage others, using selective presentation of information, and then not caring about how people were damaged by your behavior is bad, even if you are eighteen and you are being manipulative towards someone who knows better. Making dumb decisions sure is something Leslie did, and yeah, she’s an adult. But Roz didn’t just ‘coincidentally’ drop info about Robin and aggressively push for Leslie to meet her for no reason. It was always her intent to manipulate her teacher without regard for the consequences for anyone but herself.
Similarly, a con artist’s marks are adults with agency, and often in order for a con to be successful, they have to be shortsighted and greedy. That doesn’t absolve the conman of being a bad person, and conmen very often use the ‘well they knew what they were getting into!’ or ‘they only got ripped off because they acted greedily’ defense to shift blame.
Note: I am NOT suggesting Roz is a con artist. I am suggesting that she was being deliberately manipulative, and that does reflect negatively on her, because aiming to manipulate people in the way she did is deeply sketch. I don’t think this makes her a cackling villain who took advantage of a poor innocent thirty year old woman. I do think she is knowingly complicit in what happened to Leslie, and her reaction to the fallout reflects poorly on her character. This isn’t about making her out to be evil, it’s about discussing this action and our reactions to it.
As I’ve indicated, afaik Roz is straight and that absolutely adds a personal dimension I cannot escape from. I will never be able to be comfortable with straight people who crow about the fallout of outings and this absolutely informs my reaction.
Also I’ve responded to you more than once so I just wanted to say nothing personal, I don’t think you’re a bad person or that there is anything wrong with you defending Roz and I hope I don’t come across that way. I don’t want to attack or anything and I hope I haven’t gotten too emotional at you. Hopefully I have explained my point of view so that if you don’t agree with it, you at least understand where I am coming from.
That’s the version of Roz’s plan that she was willing to say out loud, but her actions since then suggest heavily that this isn’t true. She’s celebrating this result as if she got what she wanted.
She’s also flat out blaming Leslie for her attraction to Robin. Becky is saying she understands Leslie, and then Roz tries to vilify her. Sure, she vilifies her sister, too, but those two are not exclusive.
She apparently just used Leslie. That’s why she’s currently throwing her under the bus–in this very conversation.
She did get what she wanted – a Robin substantially less likely to be elected. Hence why she’s celebrating. I do not believe her plan is much different than what she’s said it was, consistently, from the word go and that’s all I said here.
When I say ‘blaming Roz for this’ wrt my jokes about drinking I mean ‘blaming Roz for outing Robin’ when that is not a thing she did. Not for saying she got them together in the classroom, which is a thing she did.
But that’s not supposed to be what she wanted. Her supposed plan is to get her sister to change her mind. She did not achieve this goal. She thus has no reason to celebrate.
But, if her goal is to make her unelectable, then outing her is basically the only way to do that. Which means she did plan for them to be outed. And thus has every reason to celebrate.
Furthermore, getting them together in the classroom is not an unconnected event. The whole thing is tied together. And Roz also helped Leslie know where to meet Robin.
No, Roz is not solely responsible for Leslie being outed. But she shares that responsibility with Leslie, Robin, and the paparazzi. She’s trying to distance herself from that, hence throwing Leslie under the bus, which Becky caught.
No reason to celebrate? To quote a certain DeSanto on the matter, there are a whole lot of queer people living in her hall and Roz just swung an election in their favor.
I mean, yes, Roz wanted Robin to out herself and come to terms with her own sexuality, change her viewpoints. I assume Roz also wants a lot of things she doesn’t believe have a chance of happening. She’s celebrating an unexpected victory that she’ll gladly take and went beyond what she was probably even daring to hope for. And I do not get where on Earth you get Roz “distancing” herself from her role in this when if anything she’s giving herself too much credit; she’s the one bragging about the turn of events the other day to the girls in her hall like she was personally responsible (really, in the greater scheme of things, she wasn’t).
She also said ‘This isn’t my plan, but I’ll happily take this instead’. Ergo, this WAS NOT her plan, but the results are good enough (Robin won’t be re-elected, Manley will get the seat, she won’t have to be Robin’s political toy anymore, Manley’s apparently not an asshole on LGBT+ issues) that she’s celebrating anyways.
And outing Robin is not the only way to make her unelectable, especially not to her base. Going on record saying ‘My sister had an abortion and is maybe slightly more liberal than most of her party’ would probably do that if her base is as bad as Robin says they are. Also, coming out (as Roz intended) would probably kill Robin’s career where it stood, at least if she remained in her current party.
“Roz outed Robin” pretty strongly implies Roz took the picture and sent it to the newspaper. This is not a thing she did and THAT is what I’m objecting to, since you’re being pedantic about it. Roz arranged for Robin to come back to the classroom at Leslie’s request and told Leslie to look hot that day. That’s where her role in this ends, and people saying she did things she did not (like plan to out her sister, taking the picture, etc.) is what is getting stuck in my craw.
Leslie never agreed to be part of a sex scandal and never intended to have one.
To the contrary, she made it quite clear that outing Robin wasn’t her aim.
She might have been naive to think that going to a bar with Robin would not in itself be enough to hit the news, she was even more naive to think even if Robin was attracted to her,she would change her political stance.
But what she is getting here from Roz is plain sanctimonious bullshit and that would be the case even if Roz hadn’t been the person to egg her on.
Not to mention that meeting Becky will probably make Leslie’s day as well. With her co-workers and at least one student all judging her about the scandal, meeting a young homeless lesbian that not only doesn’t feel betrayed, but who understands? And that Leslie may be able to help? I think that’s going to be exactly the pick-me-up she needed.
So obviously, someone’s going to pull the fire alarm or something and class will get cancelled after all
Only AFTER Leslie gets there and puts 2 and 2 together concerning Becky. $5 says (if class IS interrupted) Leslie grabs Becky so they can have a nice long chat about her situation. Cue Becky breaking down in tears for someone doing so much simply because she needed the help and whoops there’s sawdust in my eyes BRB.
Except I wouldn’t be surprised if Joyce and/or Becky don’t trust her enough to go along with it. Joyce has already said as much when Leslie was asking about where her friend was staying.
In the real world, yes, I have decided that Leslie’s desk is full of useful pamphlets, and a couple chocolate bars too, and that she will totally go full Cerberus on making sure Becky gets to be safe.
In DoA, however, Willis lives on our sweet, sweet tears.
Roz still has her family’s lack of tact and speaks a bit too quickly, but her face in the second-to-last panel tells me she’s starting to recognize that habit (and Becky’s usually good at pointing that out), perhaps due to Leslie, which is a nice amount of character development. And Walky, at least this isn’t as scary as math class. 😛
It was Leslie’s idea. Roz is being garbage right now (How fucking dare she judge Leslie for what is described as an ill-advised crushed) and she was shitty last we saw her, but Leslie was an active participant in everything that happened until she left the bar. Everything after is Robin being pretty unspeakable.
I once had a class cancelled cuz the teacher got caught in traffic and was gonna be 15 minutes late and figured he’d be cool about it. No WAY a scandal like this wouldn’t cut that shit.
I once had a professor cancel all of his classes for the day because his home coffee maker was broken (he actually put this in the email). He lived across the street from the campus art gallery (where he taught), which had a coffee shop in it.
If i was in Leslie’s shoes I’d be too embarrassed to go to work. But if I had to do, I’d put on shades, a hat, and a coat. Or maybe that would attract too much attention, idk?
My prof wouldn’t have had a choice in the matter. My school has a rule – if the prof is 15 minutes late, you’re allowed to assume they’re not coming and leave.
Our uni has a 15-minute “no show, you can go” type of rule for classes. One time our prof shows up 10min late and yells from the back of the classroom “I’m moving today so class is cancelled, bye” and turned around to leave. We all looked at eachother like wtf, and so she stopped, turned around and goes “No, seriously, everybody leave” and left the classroom. ^=__=^;; Needless to say she got a terrible teacher eval from me (I mean, I hear there’s this thing called email that you can use to let people know these things ahead of time?? Also, she was pretty flaky throughout the semester and it was a summer class so…)
I’d feel sorrier for Leslie and madder at Roz if she didn’t have every reason to assume Leslie was just following through on the plan they’d both agreed to.
A fair enough point, I suppose. I’d assumed that Leslie had made it clear enough after the disastrous Robin-as-guest-speaker-class that she wasn’t down with the plan anymore, but I can definitely see that.
We might get more on this over the next few days. In any case, we’re at a point rife with potential character development for both Leslie and Roz.
Leslie did follow up on the plan, even after it fell apart. She went to the bar, and tried to get through to Robin. Robin’s thick skull got in the way.
I think Roz is a good person overall, but has no right to be mad at Leslie about this.
Her comment in panel for comes across as an explicit judgement of Leslie.
If you look at the context of the conversation she suddenly joined, and why she felt the need to butt into it, I don’t see how it can be anything else. She clearly felt that Becky shouldn’t be defending Leslie the way she was.
She’s definitely making a judgment about Leslie’s taste in women, yeah, but I still get the vibe everything she’s saying and any real anger here is directed at Robin. And again if Robin is operating on the assumption that Leslie was following through on a plan they’d both agreed to how sympathetic is she really going to be to Leslie? Going into this there had to be a discussion on the risk involved and that Leslie was willingly agreeing to be apart of a sex scandal.
Becky was talking Joyce down from holding Leslie’s crush against her, and Roz jumped into the conversation to disagree. That pretty strongly suggests she’s upset with Leslie.
While I agree that Robin probably is the root source of at least some of her anger, it’s Leslie that she’s directing it towards.
Which is (in my mind at least) hypocritical as hell on Roz’s part. Because she’s the one who got Leslie and Robin access to each other, and stoking the flames of a crush that she knew about and treated as ok, but now that the truth is out she’s claiming Leslie’s attraction to Robin is despicably traitorous.
Precisely this. If she thought Leslie’s crush was so bad, she could have, y’know, pointed out that her sister’s a deeply problematic person, instead of directly encouraging the attraction for her own ends.
Leslis is in her 30’s and Roz is 18. It’s not really her job to be educating Leslie on her problematic crushes. Yes Roz encouraged this but Leslie has been nursing this crush for years despite knowing who Robin is. Roz heleped the situation along but Leslie was looking for an excuse.
Leslie is not looking for anything. She has said absolutely nothing about Roz.
We are pointing out that Roz is as much at fault as Leslie, and is deflecting blame here by pretending Leslie is bad for having a crush on Robin.
Roz is at fault. You don’t get out of being at fault because the person you were using should have known better. And she clearly was using Leslie, since she doesn’t feel any sympathy for her.
That’s why, when Becky did have sympathy, Roz told her off.
She just now attacked Leslie for having the hots for a known bigot in power. It’s the reason that Becky said something about being thrown under the bus.
Roz is deflecting her own blame onto Leslie, when the truth is that they both are to blame.
Roz isn’t deflecting any blame because Roz doesn’t see this being a blameable offense. She hasn’t seen Leslie yet and hasn’t seen that emotional damage the days prior have wrought. Roz is still seeing everything that happened so far as a good thing, she’ll happily take the blame for it!
Well, not until she showed up and started nuking closets. A few of us have been waiting for her to give Roz a piece of her mind, especially after Leslie called out Roz.
Yeah, that whole section there is what basically completely soured my view of Roz. From basically a few comics back where she decided to be dismissive of Joyce being upset because of her not being outraged about everything previously in the class, then moving into apparently thinking that giving her a chance to learn and grow requires her to “treat Miss Fundy like a goddamned hero” when all they were asking was for her to be remotely civil and not start drama in the classroom.
Followed up by pushing all the guilt she feels that Joyce’s religion should be feeling for their actions and passing down ALL of the blame onto her for daring not to know better? Cause obviously Joyce’s entire identity is based on one singular trait about her existence?
And even at the end there, its not like she looks even remotely like she feels any guilt herself over the immediate hypocrisy of her actions as much as having just lost the argument of crowing out that Joyce “deserves” to be guilt tripped and emotionally destroyed because of the audacity of her actions despite having been literally raised to only know that one way of behaving.
All while being yeah, as far as anyone can tell a straight girl picking fights for the queer crowd that they don’t even want to have fought at the moment? She doesn’t help the discussion, she’s more the type that jumps in to start fires and shut discussion down because if you aren’t an activist, you’re the enemy. Aka. Basically the sort of thing I tend to avoid social media for. Everyone picking all the fights and gating everything off behind walls of “if you don’t already know, you’re not allowed to ever learn enough to qualify”.
Roz starts fires to burn down the establishment. And for a girl that’s lived 18 years seeing firsthand the harm Robin-style politicians can do and how uncaringly they do it I won’t fault Roz at all for being goddamn pissed every minute of her life it hasn’t ended, because the point of the fight isn’t convincing people their viewpoint is incorrect, the point of the fight is that you’re fighting first and foremost to change the status quo where people are being marginalized.
Leslie being mired in a sex scandal was not the intent although Roz is gladly celebrating it.
Roz asked more than once if Leslie understood what Robin’s politics were and Leslie responded yes. Roz asked more than once if Leslie wanted Roz to orchestrate an excuse for them to meet and Leslie responded yes.
I think Roz assumed Leslie, being the adult and a gender studies professor, went into this 100% willingly and would or should have been aware as Roz of any potential outcomes and consequences.
I think Roz did not realize how badly she had underestimated Leslie’s rationalizations of Robin’s behavior to feed into a happy fantasy.
I think when Roz found out that Leslie was deluding herself about Robin so much she’d overlooked her politics, Roz was probably disappointed, in the manner of a student disappointed by a teacher she liked and thought she could respect.
I think that not knowing what we know of Leslie’s situation in narrative detail, Roz isn’t a cruel or callous person for voicing her disappointment this way.
Not an antagonist in like she’s a bad guy. That would be any parent with a speaking line (or Mary but she’s so ineffective it’s laughable). Roz is a direct foil to Joyce and arguably Dorothy. Those two closest to main characters in this comic. Roz’s ideals, actions, and motivation are in direct competition with theirs. Not maliciously but it’s there. She was literally in competition with Dorothy a few chapters ago. I don’t know it I’m articulating this correctly but I think it’s a valid perspective.
She also had a (very short-lived) competition with Sarah for Jacob that dropped nearly immediately.
Roz would probably be a much bigger antagonist if she wasn’t mostly interacting with a lot of more awful people that make her look better (see: Mary, Robin, Joyce’s old principles).
See, I call that into question. She’s often been malicious towards Joyce, even if she occasionally backpedals when people call her moral high ground into question when she does take things to a point thats out of line.
She definitely sees herself as the “hard truth” that Joyce needs, but honestly, Joyce was already on the verge of realizing that she might have been hurting Becky and Ethan unintentionally by the point Roz tore into her anyways. Leslie was the provider of those “hard truths”.
I’m pretty sure there was some malice, or at least attempt to get back at Dorothy for implying she would be a horrible RA in the zeal she ended up going to to try and become RA as soon as she overheard Dorothy’s thoughts.
Just because her ideals are less distasteful than Robin, and she’s more socially competent doesn’t mean she’s not pretty similar to her sister in other ways.
That said, the youngest one seems pretty decent, if a bit spoiled perhaps.
I have trouble seeing Roz as just one more cast member who still has some growing up to do. Roz is someone for whom the ends always justifies the means. (As is, it could be argued, her sister.) As was mentioned upthread, Roz doesn’t particularly concern herself about any fallout as long as she can justify her motives. People with this attitude need to be watched very closely and can only be trusted for as long as they consider you on the right side of an issue. (Even now, Roz is throwing shade at Leslie for what Roz sees as a betrayal of her cause.) Maybe Roz will grow out of this, but somehow I doubt it. (Even it she does, it will probably only be seen in a follow-up webcomic after this one.)
You can like Mary!….and Ryan…I guess…and the parents too if you really want to but…look I don’t know where I was going with this they’re all very horrible.
Hank and Mr Saruyama seem like decent folks. Mr Walkerton has been fairly chill thus far, if not actively good, though I do have a vague recollection of him making insensitive remarks when Sal got all dolled up for freshman family weekend. Heck, even Ethan’s dad is semilikeable in a tragic “oh god that poor man” way, and I think even Ross has some fans. I personally enjoy considering the man’s motives and the twisted illogic that led from them to his methods – it’s less painful to analyze than real people, and it’s a good thought exercise in identifying and understanding patterns of thought to avoid.
Mr. Walkerton is awful. Sal’s said numerous times BOTH her parents are negligent and emotionally abusive, and, as you note, of the two he’s the only one we’ve seen insult Sal to her face. Charles is pretty damn bad.
The only chance I’ll give Charles is that we haven’t seen how he acts without Linda around yet. She’s domineering to say the least, he could be the “yes, dear” type who caves as his way to keep her happy. That would still make him complicit in the twins’ lopsided upbringing, but in my opinion that would bump him up a tier from “irredeemable heap of feces” to “the least they could do is try“.
I know a couple like this myself, the few times you catch the quiet one alone it’s like they’re an entirely different person from when they’re together.
Keeping quiet and letting Linda do what she wants does not equal ‘straight up insulting one child to her face while Linda is not paying attention’. Charles did that on his own.
Also, letting Linda emotionally abuse Sal and heap love on Walky and not doing anything at all to show Sal affection or attention growing up is not actually better. He’s still contributing to her neglect that way. Even if he weren’t, again, enabling her is not actually better. The right thing to do in that situation was to divorce her and try to get custody because she’s fucking up his kids (assuming, of course, he’s safe to do that, which we have no reason to believe he wouldn’t be).
From his expression, I got the distinct impression he was looking for something nice to say to a daughter who’s a stranger to him and trying to compliment something he believed she prided herself on. That his statement can easily be interpreted as racist is unfortunate, but I don’t see it as a deliberate insult.
He seemed much more relaxed around Walky at the football game, but he hasn’t spent as much time around Sal, given that she was away at boarding school, so I’d expect interactions with her to be awkward unfamiliar ground.
“I see your hair is curly again.” “Oh, yeah, that just…kinda happened.” “Too bad. Your hair is so pretty when it’s long and straight.”
Even if it WEREN’T racist to push black women towards straightening her hair, “too bad” is a fucking TERRIBLE thing to say to your child when you notice they’re wearing their hair differently. Seriously, anybody who OPENS after not seeing their child for 5 years by saying ‘Oh, your hair looks like this. Too bad, it’s prettier this other way’ is being a huge asshole. The racial layer just makes that even worse. Nor is ‘You look pretty this way’ a good way to compliment a look his daughter is NOT sporting right now. For all he knows, she decided to go natural. Anybody with a half functioning sense of empathy should know saying ‘Too bad’ about someone’s current look makes you a large diameter asshole.
And look at Sal’s face – she looks nervous here, like she’s thinking ‘Oh god, oh god, nononono, don’t start on my hair, come on, I just got here, don’t do this now.” This is a discussion they’ve had before, and from Sal’s face it did not go well.
Even if, for argument’s sake, we accept Charles was trying to be complimentary and missed the mark by several miles and is somehow ignorant to the anti-natural hair that goes around society (not impossible, it’s a huge part of internalized racism – oh wait), that does not excuse him from all the instances he’s taken part in Sal’s neglect and abuse. And we know he have because 9 times out of 10 when Sal mentions it, she says ‘our parents’. Parents. Plural. Not just Linda. Or she does one better and says ‘Mom and Dad’, explicitly including Charles in these instances.
Charles is a terrible parent. There’s no two ways about this.
Dinas parents are amazing. Well, except for not realizing that Amber’s father was an abusive monster.
Still they transferred Dina $200 to take her girlfriend out to eat after she belatedly let them know she had one, so…they’re pretty high up there.
Danny’s parents are the least blatently horrible of the ones who usually get listed. That might just be how little they were on panel though. I mean, my family often times seems ridiculously loving for all the crap most people seem to go through, but there’s been times where I’ve had to sit through basically the Pizzaria chats Danny’s parents were having.
Is it just the line later when he’s talking to Amazi-Girl about being used to being called stuff like “a piece of shit”, or was I missing something else in the comic? Or is it a Roomies/ItsWalky/Shortpacked thing? I’d love a breakdown of this if people want to give one.
According to Willis, they think of him the same way the comment section used to – that he’s a terrible fuckup who can’t do anything right because he’s a stupid, worthless piece of shit. They just cover it up by making jokes and fixating on his girlfriends and being pissy when they dump him.
Ah, okay. That sounds like something that probably would have been more apparent if they’d had more scenes.
That sort of opinion of Danny is really too bad though, since while he may be a bit prone to stumbling into things way over his head, he at least almost always seems to have his heart in the right place.
Kind of makes sense why he didn’t realize how horrible Amber’s father was and felt like he “had to agree with him, because Amber’s father is a parent” in retrospect. Since he’s already bought into the idea that parents know better than him.
Roz gets overzealous with her ally-ship, and a bit privilege-blind at times.
Jocelyne taught Joyce a similar lesson to the one Roz needs. Namely that while it’s great to be mad about other people being oppressed, you should actually listen to said oppressed people when it comes to how their oppression should be fought
Hopefully Roz will be open to that lesson instead of getting defensive
Eh, at a university level, they wouldn’t bother for one day worth of classes. Honestly, it would probably take an absence of at least a week before they’d bother trying to get someone to fill in.
Robins body count is presently zero since she’s only voted for anti-gay legislation which hasn’t passed. Which is the most unrealistic thing about this comic so far as it’s Indiana.
I really hope that one of these days Roz figures out what a self-righteous heel she is and how badly it hurts her cause. In the meantime I just try to tune out anything she has to say.
gosh she should be NICER, doesn’t she know you catch more flies with honey and more race/gender/sexuality supremacists by not challenging their authority or sense of self?
Yes, she should be nicer. Being nice has no bearing on whether you do any of the rest of the things you describe. Nice people challenge all of those things.
Roz has shown repeatedly that she’s more interested in the cause, in being right, than she is about helping people. Right now, she’s putting Leslie under the bus for being attracted to Robin, when she knows that she also played a part in setting them up.
There’s a reason why the person who actually convinced Joyce was not Roz. It was her best friend and nice teacher. And possibly her other friend (Dorothy).
Roz, on the other hand, was actually upset when Joyce had her realization. Because Joyce was the the bad guy’s team.
Joyce actually DID say Roz convinced her she was being terrible that day. She may not have convinced her LGBT+ people are, you know, people and deserve to be treated well and they get a lot of undeserved crap – you’re right, that was Leslie and Becky and a little Dorothy. Convincing her ‘I did terrible things when I was homophobic and I shouldn’t foist that on the church, I have to own it and not insist people stay in the closet like I do with Becky or try to make them straight like I do Ethan’? That was Roz.
@BBCC: That’s reading a lot into that one comment of Joyce’s. She might even believe it, but she was already headed in that direction. Might have sped things up a little bit.
Even if it did work on Joyce, that doesn’t mean it’s good practice in general. Roz was way the hell out of line in that scene and if Joyce had been in a slightly different place (or a different person) it might easily have wound up pushing them back into a defensive shell of denial.
And her breaking up with Ethan right after and how she stopped trying to get Becky to be quiet about being a lesbian.
And, imo, I don’t think she really was heading in that direction. Sure, she knew that LGBT+ people were people and that they were treated badly a lot – Becky and Leslie helped that. She was also refusing to own her part in that, and Dorothy sure as shit had no intentions in pointing out to her. Joyce was yelling about ‘the church’ doing these things and never once bothered to think she had any role in it.
Roz was out of line continuing after Leslie told her to stop. That said, we’re going to have to agree to disagree on overall effectiveness. I’ve met and known of too many people that getting yelled at worked for to say its inherently bad practice.
Point accepted, Carms, but I still feel that Roz’s grasp of speaking truth to power is limited at best, in no small part because she routinely seems to view other people’s issues as political points to be won without considering what impact she’s having on them. Her whole smug ‘I was born to this’ comments about trying to become RA really drove that home for me: she’s insincere and manipulative.
well ya know she could really stand being nicer TO THE PEOPLE SHE’S TRYING TO BE AN ALLY TO
Leslie had told her off once before for talking over a lesbian on LGBT+ matters, and this is the same thing
Roz has 0 moral high ground over Leslie, and it’s gross to allow her to pass judgement like that
No, they’ve interacted together before, albeit briefly. Becky’s essentially calling out that Roz didn’t care about how Leslie might have been hurt when Robin got outed and Roz was waving around the headline like it was the best news in the world. Plus, now that Leslie’s no longer needed for “the plan” Roz apparently feels like Leslie isn’t worthy of respect because Leslie was crushing on her sister. Which is kinda hypocritical of Roz.
Why would Roz be feeling that sorry for Leslie if as fair as she knows Leslie was carrying out a plan she’d a) agreed to and b) had to have known would lead to a public scandal which was the entire point of what they were doing?
First off, feeling sorry for people when bad things happen to them is the default. The only time I don’t is if I think they deserved it. Leslie didn’t deserve what happened to her. She wasn’t planning on the non-kiss or Robin trespassing and harassing her.
Second, Roz set them up. She helped to create this situation. When it’s partly your fault, most people also feel sorry for people.
Instead Roz blames her by saying it’s her fault for falling for Robin. She repudiates Becky’s sympathy for her. And so Becky rightly calls her on throwing Leslie under the bus.
Well it’s not just local gossip at this point, there was a photo in the newspaper. At this point even if she hadn’t seen the paper she would have overheard people talking about it.
I haven’t seen Survivor but I heard about it on some entertainment-news type show while flipping channels. Apparently a young man got surprise-outed as trans, during a super-stressful reality show, on national tv; did I get that right? The news network apologized afterwards, but jeez louise. That’s all I know.
Varner (a gay man) was in danger of being eliminated from the show. Meanwhile, he had worked out from contextual clues that Zeke (a transgender man) was trans. When the contestants met up to decide who would be voted out, in a desperate ploy, Varner outed Zeke as trans and claimed it was an example of his deceptiveness, also saying that he was making secret alliances with everybody else.
Every other contestant and the host immediately ripped into him for outing someone without their permission. Varner realized to his horror what he had done, and he became the second person in over thirty seasons to be uninamously voted out without an official vote.
To his credit, Varner seems to be in immense guilt ever since; according to him he’s been combating suicidal tendencies for months afterwards, and he got fired from his job a day after the episode aired. Not condoning what he did by any means (I’ve been watching the show for several years and it was the first time I had to physically turn it off and look up how the rest of the episode went online), but at least he realized how badly he screwed up.
Final Panel:
1.Good news Walky, you kept them from fighting (for the moment).
2. Bad news Walky, you’re now their mutual target.
But it’s really nice how Becky and Joyce can joke around like this. Since it means that Joyce is perfectly fine with realizing she was prejudiced, and it also implies that Becky is much more removed from her crush on Joyce than some of us thought.
…
Also update on the cancer. Due to the hyperthyroidism that’s being caused, my regular doctor and my psychiatrist agreed that I should temporarily up the doseage of my meds. Which is kinda making me feel kinda cloudy right now.
Think this is the second time Roz has been called out. Leslie called her out too, which got Roz to storm out of the classroom.
Becky is more of a peer of Roz’s with lived experiences being a lesbian. In a fundamentalist community. Having lost her father. Who was an abusive f@ckwad who chased after her and Dina with a gun. Pointed the gun at her and Joyce.
And Becky is direct and LOUD.
Oh man, this is not going to be one of my more popular analyses. Ah well, sorry folks.
Panel 1: Becky is in the Gender Studies class! Becky is in the Gender Studies class! Oh, this is going to be absolutely beautiful.
And her calling the smaller classrooms “Anderson-sized” is so adorable and sad. The latter because that size is a reminder of the past that she carries with her and all the bad memories that came with it.
Panel 2: Can we just take a second to bask in this moment?
Cause, Becky grew up not only being told that who she was was a sinner, but also being carefully kept from any knowledge of any gay people. Even now, she’s met a few other queer folks who are her own age, but this is a teacher, a person of authority who shares her sexuality.
And that means everything. One of my early teaching memories that has really stuck with me was teaching classes at a museum. It was the first job I was out to as trans and unfortunately, once HR found out about it, they started a very unsubtle campaign of discrimination and intentional dehumanization. This marked the beginning of the really bad years when everything in my life was going wrong. But during that time, I had a class and there was a little trans girl in it so I called her up, let her be the volunteer for the demonstration and did my thing. And afterwards, the mom of the kid stayed behind and asked me to speak more directly with her daughter.
Apparently, her daughter was only newly out herself and super nervous about everything going well and didn’t really have much in the way of trans role models in her life, but seeing me up at the front of the class meant the world to her. Because seeing an out trans teacher in that position of authority meant that she mattered and could succeed.
And I’ve tried to respect that ever since.
So for Becky here, to be able to see someone like her for the first time in the front of a classroom with everyone paying close attention to everything she says? That’s going to mean the world to her. And you see it in her excitement here.
That that teacher is also Leslie who is awesome is just going to make it all the better.
And oof, even Joyce knows about the news about Leslie. Not good.
That means almost every student in that class is going to have heard the news version and also be putting two and two together with the awkward messed up aborted class last time with Robin defending all her most heinous decisions. Which means a far few might be ready to go to scrap with Leslie.
And we already know that Leslie struggles with classroom management.
This is going to be a shitshow in the worst possible way.
Panel 3: Oh, man, I fucking love this panel.
Like, out of context of the reality of the characters and their words, just the image is like… oh, so beautifully queer. Two women in flannel. One full of butch confidence, putting her arm around the other as the other blushes and softly looks their direction.
In a different world, say the one Becky’s fantasies used to occupy, this is the beginning of a queer coming of age story.
But in context, it’s still beautiful. Because it’s a reclamation of what was a traumatic moment for both of them. For Becky, because her romantic love was unrequited when she was homeless and desperate. For Joyce because it was the moment that she realized that her “love between friends is pure and must be returned” was hopelessly naive and she couldn’t return her friend’s feelings and also because she began to realize the harm the homophobia she had been raised with was causing others.
That moment was awful for both of them, but here, it’s a light-hearted joke and a bonding moment.
She was smitten with a prejudiced girl once upon a time, but now the sting of that is lessened now that she has her dino girl and that prejudiced girl has very little of that old homophobic prejudice left in her.
It was a long time ago and this moment is a sign of how much they’ve healed and grown.
… Okay, yeah, this next one is going to earn me some probably well-deserved flak.
I love how clear it is that no ghost of Becky’s crush on Joyce is lingering over either of them. Not the slightest hint of either of them feeling awkward about bringing it up, even while Becky’s got her arm around Joyce.
I don’t know what it is, but something about the way those two are always so (very literally) close just makes me happy.
In the news recently, I’ve seen a study saying that dropout rates for black students fall off drastically if they have even one black teacher in elementary school. The effect lasts throughout the school years and may even affect college plans.
Representation matters.
Panel 4: I sympathize a lot with Roz here. Cause she’s making a damn good point. Robin isn’t just prejudiced, she’s prejudiced in a way where she’s using that prejudice to make it harder for others to live and give legal power to the campaigns of people who would gladly see all queer people burn if they could get away with it.
And for Roz, more personally, she had her freedom curtailed to serve against her political beliefs in defense of that monstrous campaign. Being a family prop for her sister against every ounce of her moral beliefs and in service to something she sees as openly hurting people. So yeah, she bristles at the attempt to make this cute, because to her, this is serious and she’s already been rounded on at least once already for celebrating her freedom from the toxic hell she had been chained to for so long.
And on that outing, she wasn’t responsible for it, but again, I come from a background that makes it real hard to look down on celebrating those outings of anti-gay politicians when they occur.
Cause like outing is awful and horrible and for those without power, absolutely devastating and potentially fatal. But I came of age when everything was shit with regards to queer rights. We were losing, regularly, more and more states passing DOMA style bans of even the possibility of gay marriage, almost no state had any form of ENDA, and the bigots were openly fundraising against us, using us to prop up harmful candidates who were hurting huge numbers of people.
Any victory we had was snatched away after all our hard work by a machine so much more well-funded than ours could ever be.
And then anti-gay politicians started getting outed. Like a lot of them. Even the head of NARTH, who were winning over and over again and convincing folks not only that gays couldn’t possibly be trusted to raise kids, but that gay kids should be sent to reparative therapy camps.
And it defanged that powerful movement. Cause people saw more and more these folks ranting about how gay people were monsters needing to be destroyed and rendered homeless and killed while slipping off in secret to hire us as sex workers, fuck us in truck stops and airports, and otherwise exploit us sexually.
And that resonated. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert mercilessly mocked them. People started cracking open jokes about angry homophobes being secretly gay where they had previously defered to these “obviously holy men”. The social power left and it allowed the magic 50% mark to be cleared and all the rights that flooded from that to come to pass.
And so, that’s what I remember. That marked my activist coming-of-age and yeah, I cheered when some of these bastards, including bastards that used my image to fundraise against those like me got taken down or mercilessly mocked. And now that we’re losing again, I think of how much a game-changer it would be if someone caught Mike Pence sneaking off to a rent boy or Brian Brown soliciting a trans sex worker.
Maybe that makes me an awful person, but I think if I’m going to be honest with myself, I somewhat share Roz’s belief that sometimes an outing can be a powerful tool for resisting an awful hate-fueled movement. Because hypocrisy moves the mushy middle even if they claim otherwise, especially if the hate movement is selling themselves on their moral superiority.
OTOH, Becky has every right not to trust that someone who is willing to out someone else in the way Roz did (which specifically ended up with Leslie in the crosshairs). Leaving aside the larger ‘is it ever justified’ question, I’d feel the same way in Becky’s position.
Also I can’t remember if Roz is straight, but if she is that definitely adds a dimension to her celebrating the outing of two queer women and implying Leslie is a bad person for her crush on Robin, then turning around and saying that Becky, a recently out lesbian should trust her. Because that signals ‘not a safe straight person’ pretty hard.
Personally, I see this as “doing the wrong thing for the right reasons”. It doesn’t help that the pacing and focus of this webcomic won’t allow us to see the bigger repercussions of her actions. Not soon enough, at least.
So I can sympathize with her but I also feel she did a very shitty and harmful thing. Things aren’t usually clear cut, specially those that matter the most.
As for outing in general and outing Robin in particular, I do see a large difference. As I understand it, those other examples were of figures leading double lives – anti-gay activists publicly and secret gay affairs. Robin, on the other hand, while she is the anti-gay activist, seems to have been in deep denial about being queer herself. I don’t think there’s any reason to think there’s a string of secret female lovers in her past.
I think this makes a difference for a couple of reasons. One is that there’s a good chance that Robin’s policies would change if she could be made to realize that she was herself queer. The other is that I really doubt Robin would be capable of keeping it secret once she realized it herself, so the moral question of outing nicely goes away.
Another difference is the examples Cerberus named were doing things that were exploitative and morally condemnable (as in, using their positions of authority and power to manipulate vulnerable people for sex). Robin has boundary issues, but they’re pretty within normal range for someone making a traumatic personal realisation.
I feel like I’d agree with Roz 100% if it were literally anyone else saying it, but Ros willingly and unabashedly helped orchestrate the events that led to this, knowing they could lead up to this, and with little to no remorse when this was what happened. So coming from her it seems hypocritical because Roz just isn’t very self-aware.
You can help someone attempt a liaison with a homophobe. You can call someone out for attempting a liaison with a homophobe. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Because how can you HAVE cake if you’ve already EATEN it? That doesn’t make sense. You’d need, like, two cakes. And then you’re a cake bourgeoisie, and your cakes need to be redistributed to the cake proletariat, and it becomes a whole thing.
Panel 5: That all being said, just as I empathize with Roz’s point and position, I also fully feel Becky’s response here. Because yeah, of course she’s not going to feel the same as Roz about this. She was never plugged into the hate machine like Roz was and had it define so much of her life.
Instead for her, outing represents the worst hell of her life. Being stripped of her family, her home, her education, leaving her stripped down in ways she hasn’t even fully begun to recover from. Outing is fresh trauma and razor blades to her and so someone celebrating that, even against an “awful person” isn’t going to move her to sympathy, because it cuts way too close to home on some very fresh wounds and she’s going to be much more likely to be sympathetic to the person outed.
Especially because she belonged to that hateful movement that propped up folks like Robin. And so it’s easy for her to read it as Roz shitting on her directly.
And it likely doesn’t help that Roz is interjecting here as if she was responsible for that outing (which is an image she worked hard to project earlier in the hall) and in direct response to them talking about Leslie who is someone Becky is super excited about meeting as the first queer person in authority she has ever met in her life and is so awesome she got Joyce to completely rethink how she approaches queer issues.
So yeah, she’s going to feel at threat and like she’d be quickly dismissed as collateral damage, because, yeah, Roz is dismissing the damage and awfulness happening to Leslie as collateral damage even though she’s very aware that Leslie tried to break things off and that the current situation is very likely her sister’s fault rather than Leslie’s.
And that dismissal is going to sting like hell and Becky is fully in her right to push back against that and remind her of how she has considered Leslie in all of this.
Panel 6: Oh, Roz… Like, on one hand, yeah, she’s right. She has a strong moral code and giving up a homeless queer youth as collateral damage is not something that’s very down with that moral code. But on the other, she’s wrong, because well, she is treating Leslie as collateral damage in this celebration and does have some hand in the event given that she tried to urge Leslie to seduce Robin in the first place. And she certainly is not showing much care or concern for how badly Leslie’s reputation is being hit by this “scandal” and the likely damage it has had to Leslie’s standing in the general queer community or with regards to her employment or ability to be respected by her students.
Like, Becky’s right, if Roz didn’t view Leslie as collateral damage, she would have tried to check in with her before class and see how she’s doing. But she didn’t. And that speaks a large volume whether that sits well with her morals or not.
I think this 3 part analysis is spot on. It definitely does remind us of what Roz’s view and background going into this is. At the same time, it very clearly examines and explains why a distinct group of us are feeling a little peeved at Roz’s statement. Because it feels like Roz wrote off Leslie as an “acceptable loss”.
And the trouble is, on a personal level, once you’ve seen someone write someone off as collateral damage, you know it’s something they are capable of doing to anyone. They have demonstrated there is a threshold beyond which they will absolutely and without compunction through someone else they know under the bus. You can never be sure you won’t end up as that person.
I mean, no Roz wasn’t directly responsible for this outing, but she was certainly involved and doesn’t seem to be shying away from that fact.
I’ve been saying for a while now that, IMO, Roz is a lot more like her sister than she’d like to admit. Both see other people, including their supposed “allies”, mostly as a means to their own ends. In public, they’ll say what they believe those other people want to hear, what will get them on their side, get them liked… but it’s all very deliberate and calculated, and in the end, all about R___ and getting what R___ wants.
Getting what R___ wants is a damned infuriating way of insinuating through simplification that Robin’s desire for political power somehow is an equivocally selfish thing to Roz wanting rights for other human beings.
See, I think what Roz really wants is more freedom for herself. To get out from under her family’s control and big sister’s political shadow and live her life as she wants to. (Which, apparently, involves some sort of political career of her own.)
Any causes she takes up to that end are the means, and any benefit to people not named Roz DeSanto is (depending on just how cynical one wants to be) an afterthought or a bonus.
( “Now what?”
“Well, I’m gonna go through her closets and try on all her gowns ‘n crowns, see if there are any I like… you can stay and watch if you want, I don’t care.”
“….”
“No, really. Don’t care.” )
If Roz wanted only freedom for herself she wouldn’t spend a goddamn astounding sum of time and dedication and effort lobbying and advocating and volunteering and dirtying her hands for the sake of advocating for reproductive and human rights. Look at what she does with her free time. It’s not only to benefit herself. She could live her life the way she wants to without starting a scandal. The scandal is to effect change and it’s a lot more work than doing what it takes to get what you want by being selfish.
Haha oh my god stick a pin in that first one since I’m able to argue it right now, I’ll explain later.
And yes. Yes she could. Passing out condoms in the hall to remind people to bang safely is not conducive in and of itself to destroying Robin’s political career, yet Roz spends her time doing this of her own volition without any prompt for the requirement of lights and cameras. Roz believes in these things. Roz believes so much in these things I am uncertain how anyone could be mistaken on it. Taking the petty, personal victories when they come doesn’t mean that’s actually what she’s fighting for.
I don’t think it’s entirely selfish, but her primary focus it women’s reproductive rights. And she straight up claims Robin’s outing as a “victory” for that cause rather than any LGBT+ cause. And it’s that kind of behavior that gives me red flags about Roz.
The thing is though, Leslie was OKAY being “an acceptable loss” in terms of this plan. Roz doesn’t know about the circumstances in which Robin broke into Leslie’s house without her consent.
I’m giving Roz leeway here because while she did engineer a plan to out her sister, she hardly manipulated Leslie.
Roz did not plan to out Robin. Her plan was for Robin to come to class, presumably afterwards she’d get to talking with Leslie, she’d realize A) she was an asshole and B) She was bi, she’d STOP being an asshole and then hopefully come out of the closet and hook up with Leslie (those last two not necessarily in that order).
This is getting said a lot, and it’s bullshit. Roz’s plan was for Robin to be outed. She wanted Robin to do it herself, but failing that, she was happy someone else did it for her. Those were her own words.
Stating that your intention is for someone to be outed on the other hand… Roz wanted her sister outed, she said it herself. “I wanted her to out herself, but this I will gladly take.” Everything she did was in furtherance of that goal, and she was more than happy how they got there, to the point of taking credit for it. “I just threw an election in their favor”. “I”. Not “whoever did this”. It’s willful delusion to try to convince yourself that she didn’t want or intend this.
She wanted her sister to come out. That said, she’s not upset that her sister was outed, she’s happy, as she is now unlikely to be re-elected. Again, her plan is for Robin to come out. She’s also said her plan was for Leslie to talk Robin into not being an asshole – “I think she needs to hear this stuff from a constituent her own age.”
Also – “This I will gladly take” = “This isn’t what I planned, but it’s an acceptable alternative.” Key words: not what she planned.
You don’t have to plan something to be happy about it.
Even if she did want someone else to out her, she did not do it.
I think a lot of Roz’s reaction to Leslie has to do with the student-teacher relationship on this one, and that Leslie may have disappointed a lot of Roz’s expectations on that one going into it. I don’t at all think Leslie “should have known” what she was getting into with Robin considering, honestly, nothing in the world can prepare someone for meeting someone capable of ruining your life as callously as Robin has, but from Roz’s point of view–having lived with Robin herself for 18 years, and having gone into this holding Leslie in the view of someone older with more life experience and an MA, who’s supposed to be teaching them–and the multiple times she flat-out warned / expressed what Robin was like out loud I can see why Roz would think Leslie “should have” been prepared for something like this. Roz has lived her whole life in some degree dealing with Robin being an irremovable presence in her life the way Leslie is just dealing with for the first time.
It’s pretty hard for me to cut Roz much slack for being disappointed in Leslie because of the “student-teacher relationship” here. She was the one working to set Leslie up with Robin. She didn’t try to warn Leslie off. She facilitated it, even suggesting more cleavage to seal the deal.
Mind you, all that was inappropriate for Leslie to discuss with a student and it was a failing on her part, but it’s still hypocritical for Roz to react badly to it, after setting it up.
Thank you Cerberus for your wonderful analysis. This strip was a bit confusing for me at first, but reading your analysis helped me with understanding both Becky and Roz’s points of view!
Leslie worked very hard against great resistance to get to an adjunct job and a small place of her own. Now she may lose that and be on the verge of homeless again, with a firing on her job history. Yes, Roz is OK with Leslie being collateral damage and she faces some severe damage indeed.
At least for me, what I hear in Roz’s words that bothers me isn’t so much acceptance of collateral damage, but the attack on Leslie for being smitten with her sister in the first place. A crush, which while it was pre-existent, only became something other than a fantasy with Roz’s active help.
Which now makes me wonder if Roz hasn’t actually been as sympathetic to Leslie all along as I thought. If when she first saw that crush, she wrote Leslie off as “the enemy” and was quite happy to entangle her in her plan to bring down her sister.
I’d thought that the plan was to use their mutual attraction to get Robin to listen to Leslie, realize she was queer and for that to lead to change, but maybe it never was.
For me, Roz is a great activist. She champions feminist causes, supplies information to people that need them, and does her best to promote feminism and other movements. She’s obviously well educated and well read on social justice issues, and has probably been involved in them for years. Her sister is a conservative politician with very harmful views, and I’d guess most of the people around her either believed those same things, or didn’t care enough to speak out. So Roz knows how politics work, knows how to fight back, and is willing to do so. That’s not easy, and this is obviously more than just a “stage” or “stunt” to annoy her sister. She’s used to being the most progressive person in the room, and as she told Leslie, she could probably teach the class.
However, its moments like this that show that she’s a bad ally. She doesn’t seem to care that Leslie was collatoral damage, and even though she didn’t take the picture, she knows her sister, and she knows the game. She took advantage of Leslie’s crush, and to her that’s ok because it advances the cause. She’s also talked over Leslie in class, which wasn’t just ignoring that she was the professor, it was ignoring that she was talking over a queer lady about queer issues. There are legitimate complaints that Leslie has acted unprofessionally with Roz, which is true, but Roz never really treated Leslie like she was her professor. Roz also gave Joyce shit for not realizing that queer people were people, which isn’t fair since people come along at different rates, and Roz knows Joyces background. Based on how she’s treated Dorothy before and at the party, and her comments about Joyce, I always got the feeling she took pride from being more feminist and progressive then them. And there is nothing wrong with taking pride in your accomplishments, as long as it doesn’t turn into scorn again people who aren’t as far along as you are.
Roz is a good person, and she’s going to go on to do great things. She has the same drive and ambition as her sister, and that’s good. In my opinion, she just has to stay away from the trap her sister fell into where she forgets the trees for the forest. Its great to fight for a cause, but you need to also remember the people you’re fighting those causes for.
@Blind… I’d have to disagree with “”Roz is a good person.” She’s worse than her sister when it comes to the forest and trees bit. Robin has actually shown more willingness to help people on a person to person basis, it’s her attempts to justify her politics (or what her handlers tell her are her politics) that gets her in trouble.
Yeah, I might not go as far as to say that Roz is necessarily a “bad person” but, and maybe the point where I divide the classifications is different than most, I balk at the idea that she’s a “good person”.
Even if she’s got the makings of being a “great person”, its rare to see her even attempt to treat anyone else even decently at least on panel. Quite a few of the times she has done so quickly reveal that she either benefits directly from doing so, or she feels like it’ll advance her cause.
And hey, maybe she’s “necessary” in her own way to that cause, but at the same time, she’s the sort of person who also pushes people away from the cause with the sheer amount of her self-righteous fervor for it. Gloating about things and using the victories of her personal agenda to pump people’s opinions of her up don’t sit well either.
Fighting for a just cause, does not make one justice. The same goes with supporting good things not innately making a person a good one. And people who are just being people, can do good or bad while claiming to be doing either, and there’s a lot of things that make me feel uncomfortable with calling Roz ‘good’ even if she’s done things that have resulted in good.
I think the Roz things that I take issue with stem from her VERY personal take on them, despite maybe proportionately leesss lived experience? Her activism is very much from the insides of these problems. She feminists from the position of a woman, but she also queer campaigns from VERY close to a queer experiential position. Which she doesn’t necessarily have. and she has HELLA personal stakes in Robin’s whole thing- which she has trouble keeping in proportion. I have the same problems with my PERSONAL investment in SJWing from a barely-marginalised-at-all position- holding space in my head for other people and for lived experience and actual expertise is HARD, it takes work and practise. Roz doesn’t have that down- all the fight is HERS, HER FIGHT. and it’s not, really.
FUCKING THANK YOU! I’ve never liked Becky more than this very moment.
I once described Robin as someone who would burn your house down because she refuses to accept that her actions have consequences. Roz will burn your house down because there are spiders in the attic and she doesn’t really care about your house as long as she gets rid of the spiders.
She withheld information from Joe that she should reasonably have expected to influence his decision to consent to the sex tape. “Oh, by the way, I’m doing this to deliberately cause a political shit storm that you’ll almost certainly get caught up in.” She didn’t give a shit about what would happen to Joe as long as she got what she was after.
I don’t believe for a second that Roz is so naive that she didn’t expect this to happen. Leslie was going to flirt with Robin until she realized she’s queer and have a sudden change of heart? And nobody is going to take pictures of a congresswoman in public in the midst of said flirting? I don’t buy it. Leslie, however, was smitten. She was motivated to believe she could reach out to Robin and find the decent person underneath. She desperately wanted it to be true. Roz took advantage of that and damn the consequences.
What was it Carla said to Ruth? “I’m used to being someone else’s acceptable losses”?
Joe consented to the recording and the leaking of the sex tape and has never given the vibe he gives a fuck about being caught up in a sex scandal and Leslie signed on for this…whatever situation that has unfolded with Robin. And I am really deeply creeped out at the implication that a Roz (a child) took advantage of Leslie (an adult) and that Leslie’s intentions should be written off as so innocent and pure and not allowed judgment. She willingly conspired with Roz and if we’re not going to believe that Roz could be so naive how naive exactly do we believe Leslie to be? In all of everyone’s justified irritation with Roz I think we’re all forgetting that Leslie is a fucking adult, a teacher, and an authority figure over Roz. Roz is an 18 year old child and between Leslie and Roz the one who should have been able to see how this situation could spiral and get a handle on it it should have been Leslie.
You’re right. Leslie has some responsibility here. I’m willing to give Leslie a pass because (1) she was still smitten when she allowed Robin to talk her into going for a drink, and (2) maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think I would have considered the possiblity of a photographer catching me if I had been her, and (3) the picture could never been as damaging to her reputation as Robin barracading (sp?) herself with Leslie in Leslie’s house is going to be. (Which is not something I think Leslie could have reasonably considered as a possibility.) Roz, while immature, is coming at this from a much more clear-eyed perspective than Leslie. I would also say that Roz’s agenda is a bit more far reaching than Leslie’s. Leslie wanted to do something about her crush no matter how ill-advised it was. Roz wanted her sister to come out as bisexual and/or end her chances of winning the election.
First of all Joe has issues which would make it hard for him to admit to not being okay with being taken advantage of sexually by an attractive woman. He most likely would have said yes anyways but I’m with Danny on being upset that she didn’t ask. (Although its quite possible she did tell him and he didn’t pay attention so no reason assume she did wrong on that account.)
By the way Roz is right now blaming Leslie for her crush on Robin. Its possible she was just telling Becky that Leslie is in a worse situation but that’s what it likely sounds like to Becky. That is likely what Becky is responding too. If people have complete control of who they are attracted to why would people choose to be attracted to people others will give them shit for. Why is Becky choosing to be homeless if she can choose who she is attracted too. Roz is right now essentially blaming Leslie for having a problematic crush that is essentially what homophobia is.
You are giving Roz a lot more credit than I think she deserves for how this played out, and forgetting that Leslie is supposed to be the “adult” in this situation, not Roz.
Roz straight-up warned Leslie multiple, multiple times that her sister was awful. Roz had no illusions that her sister was going to have a change of heart, Roz has tried to change her sister’s attitude for years, but by now she’s changed tactics thought Leslie was an adult who was capable of realizing that and knew what she was potentially getting into. Roz with her attitude toward casual sex probably isn’t capable of comprehending how much a fantasy of singular infatuation can impact a smitten person’s behavior with regards to someone who’s, honestly, awful in real life once they’re outside your head.
Roz has defense mechanisms in place from living through 18 years of the hell Robin put her through. And if Robin’s house is, per your metaphor, full of spiders in the attic that keep spreading and biting people until they die? Then Roz damn well going to be happy if she could in any way help start the fire that burns it down. Leslie being burned in the process was something Roz, an 18 year old freshman full of activist fury, thought should have been foreseeable to anyone who’s seen a fire before and knows that fire = hot even if she hadn’t gone and tried to spell it out.
Also I’m so excite for Becky to meet Leslie, cos Leslie IS DA GUD ADULT and LESLIE CAN HELP except, perhaps, not today, today is going to be brutal.
I love seeing this becky like shit. Dang Becky. You got her number. This is an acuity that I didn’t really expect, but in retrospect you can see it elsewhere
Becky doesn’t have a choice. Others can be oblivious, but she knows that not reading a situation correctly is dangerous. Abused children, homeless people, soldiers in harm’s way. Hyper-vigilant and it still doesn’t fully protect them.
i mean that’s how that skill develops, but it is still a super useful and super important skill, and once you can accept it as a part of your skillset it’s a really cool skill that not everybody has, as well as a very useful one.
To be honest, I don’t get why Roz decided to butt in, or what point is she trying to make. She’s clearly talking about her sister there but why? The conversation was about Leslie and how Becky wants to meet her. It just seems like an unnecessary attempt to steer the conversation to a topic she can talk her mouth off about.
Which is honestly seriously dumb.
Also, I don’t think Leslie even needs to know that Roz might have leaked the news, she’s still most likely having some choice words with her. About how her insane sister won’t leave her house, I think.
The path to hell is paved in good intentions. Roz had the best and most noble (or so she would say), but this is her shit show. This is her fault. I mean, she was so fucking proud of it last time we saw her! She might not be able to control what Leslie or Robin do, but she got the ball rolling. She wanted this or something to the same effect to happen, damned be the consequences.
I think she got involved because she objects to comparing Joyce, a mostly harmless but assy 18 year old, to Robin, a grown ass politician who should’ve known better. Hence why she emphasizes the position of power and that Robin is a woman, not some little girl.
And Roz didn’t leak the picture, she’s already said that wasn’t her. Her role was arranging Robin to come to class, which lead to them going to the bar to talk about why Robin was asked to leave. Her original plan was that they would get to talking (probably somewhere private, considering Leslie wanted to hook up) and hopefully Robin would realize she was an asshole and knock it off – if they hooked up in the process, bonus for Leslie! Win-win-win all around. Everything after Robin got kicked out did not involve Roz other than she invited Robin to the classroom.
It gives me the feeling she’s measuring both experiences, when they couldn’t be more different. And still, they are very similar in the point Becky touches. Focusing on the differences and bringing the attention to herself is unnecessary.
Roz wanted to change her sister by having Leslie seduce her. Yeah maybe Roz imagined Robin would have a quieter change of heart (although she knows her sister, right?) and that Robin would come to see the error in her ways and start working to right her wrongs.
Yet we saw her happily showing the news to everyone, even if she didn’t leak them, because exposing her sister in the worst possible way ever is also an acceptable outcome for her. If she wants to use that then she’s getting the whole package.
I said it above, Roz means well. That doesn’t make her any less shitty than she is.
The point Becky touches is what Roz is objecting to, because it conflates Joyce and Robin, when Robin is far more dangerous and did far more harm than Joyce ever could have.
Roz said she wanted her sister to come out of the closet – she also told Leslie she thought Robin needed to hear from someone her own age to make any changes, as she didn’t take her little sister seriously. The whole point of this was a change of heart, for Roz. Her being seduced was up in that mix because Leslie wanted to bang her.
Yes, because she just overheard someone saying an 18 year old asshole and a politician who votes to remove LGBT+ folks are equivalent. They are not. Joyce is nowhere near is bad as Robin is and pretending she is is a massive disservice to Joyce on her WORST day. You don’t have to be involved in a conversation to overhear and object to someone saying things that are very much untrue.
Talking about how Robin could fuck up the plan and what the plan actually was are two different things. Roz may have known Robin could fuck their plan up (hence why she kept asking if she and Leslie were still going through with it), but that doesn’t change what the plan was and it was not ‘change via seduction with no change of heart required’.
Roz didn’t leak the news. If she’d leaked the news you can bet your ass she would be owning up to it. What happened was from her perspective a very unexpectedly lucky twist of events in a best-case (or worst-case, for Robin’s political aspirations) career. And I would carefully consider what “damned be the consequences” here means because Robin winning this election, Leslie never meeting Roz’s sister, and Roz keeping her hands squeaky clean would have had, if thorough inaction, some different and potentially horrific consequences too.
I didn’t say she did. Phrasing is off; more like she’s going to be the prime suspect regardless of what she says.
This is just me, but I would never screw over one person to make a positive impact on a larger scale. I can respect those who think otherwise. Heck, I respect Roz. Doesn’t mean I have to like or support what she put in motion.
I used to feel that way and I understand why you do. And in some ways I agree. I don’t think I could, for example, kill another person to save myself, someone I cared about even if it came at the cost of that loved one’s life or other innocent lives. But I could screw someone over who I thought deserved it in a heartbeat if it meant saving others the pain of living with suffering potential, awful consequences of that person’s actions. I can see why you would not do the same and would not support me in doing so if I did that.
I am glad you say that you can respect those who would feel this way, and I’m very glad you have stated your respect for Roz here. But what you wrote of her before spoke very little of respect and was full of contempt, which is why I was arguing in the first place. Not condoning and castigating someone’s actions are kind of a different beast, and like everything else they come in degrees.
Yeah, but I’m pretty sure most of us are mainly having a wary dislike of Roz here due to her being fine with the end result screwing over Leslie’s life too, all the while seeming to walk off scot-free of any accounting for her part in the plan.
I personally am not beat up about Robin at all in this situation, but the way Roz seems to be not only just cutting loose any connection between her and Leslie previously as well as pretty actively trying to sour Becky’s viewpoint of Leslie leaves a really bad taste in my mouth about her.
Especially with thinking back to her treatment of Joyce and specifically thinking it was her right to hold Joyce to account for not actively rebelling against everything her religion had done in regards to homosexuals for the previous 18 years of her life. Everyone is apparently to be held accountable for the ‘wrongs’ they have done according to Roz, it seems. Except for her own, which maybe she doesn’t even see. Or try to look for, since she is part of such great causes.
Personally, I have little respect for such a person. I am probably the sort who would just freeze up, or perhaps would be unable to make a difference in any actual crisis or major issue, but personally I can’t really stand the thought of sacrificing someone else for the greater good actually being something someone good would do. Or would crow over like it was a personal victory, while also not even trying to provide any support to their co-conspirator. The way in which someone does something says more about them than what they do specifically.
And its really looking more and more to me like the main difference between Roz and Robin when it comes to human decency is who the acceptable targets are. Well, that and the fact that Roz has a maturity level higher than perhaps a four year old.
Why would she suddenly own up to anything now. When Roz get called on yelling at Leslie for some imagined favoritism, and Leslie called her on it, she gets mad and storms out. Can you show me any example of Roz owning up to anything?
My biggest issue with Roz is that she thinks she’s all about justice but fails to recognize her own hypocrisy. She doesn’t like what her sister does to please people to stay in power and yet was all about becoming RA to please people despite the fact that she didn’t want to and that Dorothy actually cared and wanted the position. Her comment in panel four is full of judgment for both her sister and her teacher for having a crush on her sister. Yet she was actively encouraging the courting.
There’s lots of examples really, and I don’t necessarily hate Roz. I just think she should spend some time on inner reflection rather than judging everyone else in the world so harshly.
At the end of the day her heart’s in the right place, but she’s way immature at the moment. Which, we all were at once! God knows I was. It’s just not always pleasant to watch.
I think it’s probably because of the way the sentence is structured (and the way it’s a fragment), but I can’t tell what Becky’s on about when she snaps at Roz. Somebody clarify, please.
Roz not being sympathetic to Leslie “knowingly” (from Roz’s point of view, who has been dealing with Robin her whole life and knows what she’s capable of, and assumes wrongfully her older gender studies teacher would act in full awareness of the the stakes in a way that’s separated or should be from a personal level) walking into the shitstorm that is Robin DeSanto is not the same as Roz being willing to do the same to a girl in Becky’s situation.
Leslie was their teacher. That doesn’t excuse a goddamn bit of the hell Robin has put Leslie through, but I do honestly believe it does excuse why Roz would or should not be 100% sympathetic as we are to Leslie’s plight. I have said before and will say again that Leslie is just now experiencing in a span of days something that Roz has had to deal with every single day of her life. Roz may or may not be straight (I’ve no reason to think she is, but you could make a case for it) but she does think of Leslie as an adult and a professional and someone who should be accountable setting an example for their class, and she’s shown not comprehending really that Leslie’s infatuation with Robin isn’t something that’s taking place on a coldly logical level where Leslie has put Robin’s real-life actions in perspective alongside her feelings. Infatuation does powerful things to people. Roz has built her personality over refusing to buy into fantasy of any kind romantic or otherwise if it means getting shit done and I don’t think she quite realizes the emotional impact this is having on her teacher, because when you’re a kid (eighteen, but honestly, eighteen is not much separated from a kid in U.S. terms and I don’t treat it as such) you don’t expect your teachers to be less capable than you are of protecting themselves from danger that seems plainly obvious. Roz’s biases aren’t taking into account Leslie’s life experiences and I don’t think we can fairly expect them to. Roz has so much anger at what her sister has done and has tried every other route that at this point, she will gladly celebrate an outing at morally unsound costs if it means an election that won’t be hurting the girls her own age that Roz sees and sees being vulnerable every day.
Becky is perfectly justified for thinking of Roz as a monster for doing something like that to the first bona fide Lesbian role model Becky’s probably gotten the chance to meet in her life, but WE know the story from all the angles and I’m getting pissed at how many people are discounting Roz’s reaction to the insinuation she’d do something like that, to someone like Becky, purposefully and willingly. They are perfect strangers but I have no doubt in my mind Roz would take a bullet for Becky without thinking it for a second (and, more importantly, I believe 100% she’d give Becky any real and practical help she could if their relationship were on the level of trust that could be extended) and she’s so viscerally hurt at Becky’s acting like Roz thinks of her as collateral damage that it infuriates me to see people cheering it on even if it has a very clear ring of truth in the same breath. Becky is still the very image of what Roz has been fighting for with what’s going on in Robin’s career right now. Roz has witnessed that Leslie herself straight-up admitted that she couldn’t justify her attraction to Robin considering how Robin’s policies would have impacted her the way they could / will impact a homeless lesbian girl like Becky now. Roz is eighteen and full of herself and she needs to let herself open back up to the small-scale impact of what she’s advocating for after so long throwing herself into the bigger picture mindlessly to protect herself from Robin’s horribleness being a personal thing she has to live with.
But Roz is a good person, dammit. I will fight tooth and nail on this. She would never hurt Becky on purpose. She was born into politics and fighting for the greater good even when it means getting her hands filthy is something she thinks of not as a personal victory (even when it is!) but as a moral obligation.
Dude. Yes, Roz is a good person, but Leslie has experienced more oppression at the hands of people like Robin than Roz ever will. She was disowned by her family for being a lesbian and was homeless for a while. Leslie was Becky, and had to fight long and hard to get where she is today.
And you’ll note that Roz had no problem with Leslie’s crush on her sister while they were conspiring together. Now Robin’s campaign is up in flames, Roz has what she wants, and suddenly she’s getting all judgemental about it? It’s not a great look.
If she doesn’t like people like Becky thinking she might throw them under the bus “for the greater cause”, she could stand to show a bit more compassion.
I don’t disagree with you about Robin’s attitude, but your comment actually reminded me of something: The last time Roz and Leslie spoke together.
Leslie said she couldn’t act on their plan for Leslie to get to talking with Robin and convince her she was wrong and maybe have Robin come out on her own volition and they’d bang, because Robin was too despicable and trying to do so was a mistake on Leslie’s part that she felt damaged her credibility and was outside her moral boundaries.
And the next day there’s a picture of them (from Roz’s POV) looking like they’re very very much on a date.
Do you think that might be why Roz is annoyed with Leslie? Like a “Screw you, it was outside your moral boundaries to talk her out of her shit, but it was okay to go on a date with her?” kind of deal? Basically what I’m asking is – do you think she might be mad at Leslie because, from her POV, it looks like Leslie’s enabling Robin by (again, far as she knows) dating her without saying boo about Robin’s shit, after turning down a plan to change Robin’s mind and getting her to come out on her own?
That’s possible, as is Roz reacting to the comparison rather than Becky’s defense of Leslie. Those would be much more understandable reasons to be upset, though I don’t get the clear impression that either is 100% the case. Hopefully she just doesn’t realize how harsh it would sound, but we’ll find out once Leslie arrives.
Roz could stand to show more compassion and you’re 100% right on that. And I also agree that the kind of oppression Leslie experienced is not something Roz has ever been faced with or ever will be and her actions and attitudes reflect that.
However I also believe the oppression Roz has experienced under Robin is not negligible or invalid even though it is obviously very different. Roz has not faced homelessness and that is an extremity of marginalization that is dire in a way she hasn’t gone through firsthand. Roz has also had to fight tooth and nail not only to separate herself from her sister’s godawful beliefs and political machine, but also to try and undo the damage she sees Robin doing to vulnerable, because Roz knows that if anyone’s in a position to do so on Robin’s own turf it has to be her. And it does have to be on that scale. That’s the system we live in. As good as it is to show compassion, sometimes compassion comes at a cost. “For the greater cause” is something easy to smear in a hypocritical light, and that’s a valid reading of it concerning Roz’s actions on the micro level, but putting that statement in quotes and dismissing it to focus on Roz’s personal moral ground entirely ignores the horrible reality that “for the greater cause” is in so many cases the shit that determines whether girls like Becky are going to be homeless for the next two years as well as the last. Roz is fighting for Becky. Becky has every right to be suspicious of Roz’s actions from the point of view of a newly and violently uncloseted lesbian girl but Roz also I think can’t be faulted for feeling hurt that Becky would treat her and Leslie’s situations here with total equivalence.
And I will not concede your noted point that Roz had ‘no problem’ with Leslie’s crush. Roz was flatly and unflatteringly incredulous of Leslie’s infatuation from start to finish from the moment they hatched this out, even as she was willing to work with it. She had a very hard time believing someone in Leslie’s position was capable of crushing as hard as she did on Robin, even as Roz was willing to play it to both suit her own and Leslie’s machinations. ‘You knew her politics,’ is one of the first things out of Roz’s mouth when Leslie aborts the congressional visit to the class in crisis. Roz can’t hold an understanding or capability of being able to deny the truth of what Robin is in a way Leslie has been able to, fantasizing from a distance. Roz has not even been able to keep her distance and it has cut her compassion down from the outer edges into what she is on the surface. Roz thought Leslie was barking up the wrong tree from day one but she figured Leslie being older and supposedly more educated knew all the same what she was getting into, none of which means Roz was genuinely hoping Leslie would get her wishes the way she wanted them–that requires a degree of hope and optimism that Roz just doesn’t have. I think Roz would have gotten plenty of satisfaction from Leslie doing a 180 and swearing off her sister’s image forever instead of going the other way into the spiral of how things have played off now. Roz thinks Leslie ought to hate her sister and Leslie herself agrees with that sentiment out loud even though she can’t control her feelings.
Also in hindsight I think I’m mistaken asserting Roz never thought Leslie might be capable of changing Robin’s heart, or that it wasn’t her original goal in setting them up to do so. I still don’t think she was super optimistic of her chances but she’s an activist so when Roz saw the attraction that seemed to be there she acted on it in the hopes of getting Robin to “out herself” (in Roz’s words) and maybe change her viewpoints where Roz couldn’t.
That doesn’t stop Roz from being happy if / when her sister fails these hopes and ends up politically jeopardized anyway, because Roz’s sister is kind of a shitbag congressperson.
And, even though it’s so obvious I keep forgetting I have to point this out, Roz is not accountable for what is going on right now with Leslie and Robin and even if Roz wanted to she couldn’t mastermind such a grand political shitstorm herself in a hundred years. What’s happening here has gone above and beyond Roz’s wildest dreams. Is she going to celebrate the political windfall and, selfishly, own vindication in turn knowing that what Roz was arguing to Robin was indeed founded on suspicions that Robin herself was queer, and stood to be damaged by her own policies? Hell yes she is.
Does that make her responsible for it the way Becky is insinuating? OF COURSE IT FUCKING DOESN’T ROZ ISN’T BATMAN.
Roz is responsible for her own actions and words. She butted into a conversation, and deliberately made challenged Becky’s assessment of what’s going on with Leslie and her sister in. I don’t care if she celebrates her sisters predicament. I do care that she feels the need to pile on to her sister in such a way to throw a fair amount of shit on Leslie, even though she was an active participant in this situation.
She’s 18? So what, as college student the shit I did was still my shit. And Roz did deliberately get this ball rolling. What Robin and Leslie do is on them, but Roz is very much treating Leslie as acceptable loss in a rather callous manner for a fellow “conspirator”.
Roz hasn’t seen Leslie in person yet and Roz has every reason as a newly enrolled college freshman to think she can hold her professors to her own higher standards, even as that itself is a flawed ideal.
Robin is a horrible person. Roz has seen Leslie acknowledge Robin is a horrible person. Becky saying Robin is “prejudiced” is both true and also a massive understatement because “prejudiced” is different when the person with biases is deciding things for other people. Leslie knew Robin is a congresswoman backing horrible policies that would hurt people, and Roz knew Leslie knew this. That Leslie has been victimized so brutally by Robin despite these things isn’t on Roz to feel personally accountable for because as far as she knew that Leslie was aware, Leslie should not have ever thought Robin would treat her as a human being. Roz is an asshole here and she treats Leslie as collateral damage but from her standing position Leslie seemingly every chance in the world to like, not go right and stand right under the roof before the house caved in. And Roz has lived so long with the awfulness Leslie is experiencing now it’s going to be hard for Roz to conceptualize what Leslie’s going through in this moment being dehumanized by Robin DeSanto personally for the first time up close and personal.
Yes Roz does have a right to hold Leslie to a higher standard, and I have no issue with that.
Yes Robin is a horrible person, and it would and is a special hell to be someone like Roz living with someone like that.
No Roz is not responsible for Leslie ignoring the warning signs and letting lust and a dream of converting Robin away from her party platform.
I don’t blame or wonder at Leslie getting a crush on her. Crushes are like that, they don’t care if the other person is good or bad for you. But that’s not Roz’s problem.
Nor am I surprised or hold it against Roz that she wouldn’t realize how Leslie is doing in the face of Robin’s direct awfulness. She’s to close to it for that to be a practical thing for her to realize at the moment.
Roz is responsible for her actions in actively creating the opportunity for them to meet. Roz was looking for something to derail her sister and she took the opportunity presented her. She is not so unaware that the current situation was not one of the possibilities she had thought of.
She’s complicit. This is a negative for me on a personal level, but on a political
level I can see the argument that it was necessary even if I disagree.
My beef is in how Roz felt the need to “correct” Becky about how bad this “prejudice” was. Despite the conversation not being one in which Roz was part of. The framing definitely was damning of how Leslie had “allowed” herself to be in lust/love with Robin. Like people get to choose their crushes, bullshit.
When you’ve gone out of your way to hook up someone to a person you know is that toxic. Well you get to own some that shit, even if your a wet behind the ears 18yr old.
Look I find Roz an interesting character if a bit toxic to some of the cast. I think that if she can ever make a clean break with the DeSanto’s she’ll be in a better place too support the causes dear to her heart.
I really don’t know what you’re arguing here or at least what part of it goes against what I’m saying, i.e., that Roz isn’t a bad person that I’m willing to defend her actions even in the face of Becky’s comments above about “collateral damage” with regards to Leslie.
Roz has lived with Robin for 18 years. She’s not down with people being cutesy about Robin’s viewpoints and “prejudice” being something you can just treat as a belief at surface level. She doesn’t think Becky should relate to Leslie because she doesn’t think Leslie really ought to have been so very infatuated with Robin as she was on a personal level instead of just the physical. Leslie herself believes the exact same thing. Roz is complicate, Leslie was complicit, this went a lot further than either of them expected and Roz isn’t getting upset about it. She’s upset that people would ever, ever defend her sister. Her horrible horrible sister. Even Leslie to Roz isn’t exempt from that.
She’s taking Becky’s excitement at meeting an adult lesbian in a position of authority, the first one she’s ever met, and trashing it by blaming Leslie for something she herself helped set up.
I might be wrong, but this reads to me as a deliberate attack on and discrediting of Leslie and it’s making me rethink a lot of the interaction between them.
Well, Roz’s last impression of Leslie was in class and at that time Leslie acted ashamed all of a sudden for being so infatuated with Robin, which is what first clued Roz in that she and Leslie might not actually be on the same page for what the purpose of the whole seduction plan was for.
I think she was disappointed at Leslie’s reaction to seeing Robin in person because Roz assumed Leslie knew already what Robin’s beliefs were based on how she campaigned and branded herself politically. Then she found out Leslie was idealizing her sister to the degree of not being realistic with herself about what Robin’s talking points actually were.
So I do think Roz’s words here are in some degree said with the conscious-or-not intention discrediting Leslie to Becky, and I think that’s dickish, actually, and that Roz is kind of an asshole for saying it. But I don’t think what she said is incorrect or that she has no basis to say it either.
Basically I’m calling out Roz as being an asshole in this moment.
The point Roz wanted to make was neither called for or needed by
Becky. Becky’s quite aware of the issues at stake. She was just being a friend to Joyce and offering reassurance in the face of her worries.
Roz just reacted to the statement just had to explain why it was so much worse. And the way she did it was rather negative in many ways.
Today I’m expressing less favorable impression of Roz here. In the context of what I know of the story, of the shit my family pulled and the stuff I did as a new college student plus how blind I was at the time to how it impacted others. Also Roz is sharp strong willed and a lot more on the ball then I think you give her credit for.
One thing we can also all agree on: Robin’s career /should/ die.
She deserves no power, or happiness for that matter.
It’s just a shame that it would take something like this to come to light, rather than the fact she’s a complete monster with policies which harm vulnerable people. I guess sometimes that’s the nature of the game. And we have no proof Roz took that photo resulting in the exposure. Roz got the ball rolling on attempted seduction, but Leslie went in her eyes wide open about it at the end of the day. So I’m kind of ‘eh’ on the idea of being angry with Roz. Mildly ticked at her for not having a moment of solemn relfection on Leslie, sure. But it’s kind of like, in some ways, being angry with Leslie in this game, and honestly Leslie has far more life experience to know what she was trying to do was ridiculous. And to not fucking hold hands with such a creature at a public bar for god’s sake.
Honestly only the fact Leslie has such far reaching repercussions, and the fact as a fictional character in this narrative I’ve been made to sympathies with her which kind of tempers my own anger at her- if I was someone who actually lived there in this universe, as someone who is wlw I would kind of be screeching internally: “What the blue HELL was she thinking getting involved with that piece of utter shit?!”.
Actually hmm that’s interesting- I wonder if Leslie is in any active local LGBT organisations. What is their reaction? And hell wider online LGBT reactions? Do some see it as a clever pincer move? A valid attempt but something which adds to the idea of outing as punishment? (A continued debate and one I’m not so sure on myself). An utter betrayal? Probably a mix honestly. I could see one person going through all kinds of emotions, especially if they only vaguely know her/know her by reputation. Hell even friends might be upset and rightly so.
Overall my only fault is Roz not having thought of how Leslie is doing/having some moment aside to look at what people online might be saying on her teacher and having some reflection on that. Granted I do somewhat suspect the internet is more focused on Robin’s failings rather than Leslies right now.
I get so much ookiness from people claiming that someone else ‘doesn’t deserve any happiness’.
Doesn’t deserve any power, yes. Hell yes. I can list people all day, hell, all lifetime, who don’t deserve the power over others that they have.
But ‘doesn’t deserve any happiness’? How about people who champion social justice causes start with respecting the basic human right of pursuit of happiness and accept that in fact, yes, they don’t get to judge who does or doesn’t ‘deserve’ it? That nobody does? That dignity, food, shelter, physical safety and happiness are something LITERALLY EVERY HUMAN BEING IN EXISTENCE deserves just by the merit of being alive?
Gaaarrh. It’s one thing to prioritize someone’s happiness below someone else’s because they were being horrible, but to go around judging who deserves or doesn’t deserve happiness period? HOW ABOUT WE DON’T DO THAT
Dude. No. There are people who don’t deserve happiness and we all know it. Are you saying Donald Trump deserves to be happy? Fucking self named ‘alt righters’? Fuck no. They deserve to be utterly miserable as the waste of spaces they are. They deserve to be ground into the dirt until they finally wise up. Not everyone deserves to be happy. It’s pretty much an utter fact. Deal.
Putting aside all my thoughts and feelings about Roz, I just want to say: SOON BECKY AND LESLIE WILL FINALLY MEET AND I’M EXCITED.
I’ve been wanting this to happen for a long time, because Becky really needs to have an adult in her life who will be on her side and both willing and able to help her. Leslie can be that person.
I just hope she WILL be that person, since her personal life is currently blowing up in her face and she might be a little distracted.
The thing is… Roz doesn’t like Joyce’s belief system; she never has but she doesn’t consider her morally equivalent to Robin. That was the point she was trying to make. She certainly wouldn’t consider Becky and Leslie’s respective crushes to be comparable in their implications.
What Becky is saying in return is that Roz has internalised enough of the DeSanto family’s political amorality that she has little right to stand in judgement of others. I can see where Becky was coming from because, irrespective of what she actually wanted and actually did, the way Roz was using Robin’s outing as the first entry in her political resumé when she was trying to get appointed RA made it seem like she manipulated Leslie into destroying herself to spite her sister.
The lesson? Don’t too publicly dance on someone’s grave; you might give others the impression that you pulled the trigger and didn’t care who was caught in the crossfire.
I don’t think Roz knows that Becky is talking about Joyce. She just assumes that Becky’s crush isn’t on a congressperson.
And again, the fact that she set Robin and Leslie up means that Roz is not blameless here, even if she wasn’t involved in getting the picture. Roz, Leslie, Robin, and whoever did take the photo are all at fault.
Roz would do well to learn guilt and shame, as she could then improve herself.
why the heck should Roz be guilty and ashamed for the fact that two adults consensually (as far as she knows! at this point she doesn’t know that Robin is a home invader) started a relationship that became public? She suggested it and helped get things started, but Leslie knew what was happening the whole time.
Perhaps Roz should feel bad on behalf of Leslie for enduring this media shitstorm, but shame? I don’t agree
I mean, I didn’t think Becky knew Roz all that well. The comment isn’t undeserved, but I think I missed the part were Becky even learned who Roz was let alone learned enough about her to deliver that kind of criticism.
I agree with you there, I still don’t know how Becky knows Roz at all so I’m assuming all she knows is about the time Roz blew up at Joyce because Joyce told her about that?
Although Roz denied taking the photo in the previous strip, she was still taking credit for “throwing an election”. I think we’re meant to assume word got around.
The thing that really bothers me about Roz’s character is her seeming ability to turn the emotions on and off at will and how she seems totally indifferent to the negative consequences her actions cause.
It’s not clear whether or not Roz masterminded the situation that outed Robin and thus ruined her political career, but what is clear is that when it did happen, she was there taking credit for it in her RA campaign. That’s honestly almost as bad even if it all happened by accident. She’s clearly indicating that she’s more than prepared to throw good people (Leslie) under the bus in service of whatever her opinion of “the greater good” is.
Roz is also acting really indignant here and previously in this class she went off on Joyce and couldn’t seem to calm down even when Leslie called her out on this. Yet, at the same time, she rooms with Mary and seems to have no issues with this, even though you would expect this situation to drive her insane. Roz seems to be able to turn the emotions on when it benefits her cause and shut them down when it doesn’t, and that gives me a really creepy vibe.
For fuck’s sake, helping Leslie seduce a woman that both Ros and Leslie both agreed and acknowledged as being an objectively horrible political influence and a bad person is not throwing Leslie under the bus. Roz knew Leslie knew Robin’s politics and Roz saw that Leslie wanted in anyway. Roz helped. She didn’t mastermind what happened and her celebration afterwards is because she didn’t, and this went beyond what’d she’d hoped was possible happening after the disaster in class. Stop putting “the greater good” in quotes like it’s something you can dismiss out of hand sarcastically. The greater good matters, dammit. Roz being willing to be a creep who’ll get her hands dirty doesn’t make her indifferent–what makes her sharp-tongued and willing to go that far is seeing so acutely the consequences of what happens when no one takes any action at all. Roz is prepared to throw Robin under the bus, not Leslie. Roz thought of Leslie as an equal in this. She thought they were conspiring to change Roz’s sister together, and this political shitstorm happening instead was a happy turn of events that still got a net turn of good in hurting Robin’s election.
Honestly, I feel it is very important to be very suspicious of arguments based on, “the greater good” because some of the most horrific things in history have been done in service of that ideal. This is especially true when your greater good position involves fucking someone over now in exchange for an uncertain potential benefit in the future. (Robin might get elected anyway) It’s very hard to get off that road once you start down it.
Remember, the political right also has their own idea of what the greater good is. The politician that says, “Well, this piece of legislation will completely fuck over the trans community, but they’re less than 0.5% of the population, so I don’t care” is also pushing his ideal of the greater good, and the result is awful.
Agreed. Especially when a straight person is invoking the ‘greater good’ for gay people as a reason to be okay with the suffering of, for instance, a recently publicly outed bi woman and the lesbian who is now caught in the crosshairs of a public sex scandal, the fallout of which will definitely open her up to being targeted by homophobes. (But it’s okay! She was gay for the wrong woman, so obviously she deserved what she got. Roz cares about the well being of GOOD gays).
You know what? Yes I am being hyperbolic. But it’s a very, very uncomfortable thing to see people talking about how this conduct is all totally ok because Roz has the greater good in mind.
I know that it is uncomfortable. I am sorry expressly for anxiety I am causing by trying to insinuate (I am not) that outing someone for any reason is something you should be able to do with a clean conscience. My aim is to point out that what Roz is celebrating is something that isn’t just a floaty ideal, it is an action with historical precedents that can and have changed momentum for the way human rights are governed–and in this particular scenario it’s done that for lgbt/queer communities.
Ok. I understand where you are coming from and I appreciate the clarification. My main focus is to say I feel the discomfort and negative reaction to this situation shouldn’t be minimized and the uncomfortable implications shouldn’t be minimized because there is a long term plan for the greater good. People are hurting now, and that’s important as well. It’s especially important that the nature of that hurt in the present is specifically colored by LGBT oppression and homophobic reactions to outings.
I’m not trying to say the long view isn’t important, and I see that you aren’t trying to say that what I’m talking about isn’t valid. I don’t think it’s demonizing Roz to react negatively to this insensitivity, and I think that understanding it is a deeply uncomfortable thing, I also think that it’s valid for people to have visceral negative reactions to it, and I guess that’s why I started to get worked up. I felt like people were implying there was no reason to have these reactions. I understand this wasn’t your intent (and I don’t want to single out just you), I’m afraid I got emotional, and there were a lot of little things, some of which I still find it difficult to articulate, contributing.
You are good in my book. : ) Thanks for understanding. I think the whole discussion surrounding this strip has been a lot to unpack and has a lot of nuances, and I genuinely appreciate your point of view.
Robin might get elected but everyone and their grandmother is not shutting up at this moment that it probably hurt her chances. History indeed has moments where acting for “the greater good” is a fancy way of covering for atrocity or where people act on what they think is good when it’s actually evil. But this is like, just laid out in fact, on a level we can see a matter of Roz willing to see her sister outed for the sake of this election.
The political right having their own idea of what greater good is doesn’t make their ideas valid. Their ideas are not valid. Fucking over the trans community is not valid. It is evil. Good and bad mean different things for different people and that changes among societies over time but if we can agree that humans should have rights that need to be respected, then we should also work to make sure those rights are respected for as many people as we can.
Lot of people itt defending roz and conveniently ignoring everyone who beings up that she is currently a straight woman who loudly celebrated the outing of one queer woman and is now pouring contempt on a lesbian for being attracted to the wrong girl. Regardless of the details, that is going to leave a bad taste in a lot of mouths.
Especially when she was super happy about Leslie’s crush when she could use it, but now it’s something she can conveniently use to imply to becky ‘no, you shouldn’t relate because she’s way bad’.
As for the greater good, how convenient for the suffering of this queer women to be totally kosher for the straight girl not to care about to acheive her greater good. After all, she, a straight girl, is for gay rights! Why don’t the silly gays realize that the suffering of gays is only okay to her when it applies to lgbt people who are bad? How foolish of Becky not to see that!
Seriously roz isn’t evil and its absolutely understandable for her to be happy about being out of robin’s control, but there are legit reasons not to like her conduct here.
I’m not conveniently ignoring anything and I don’t think we could assume at all Roz is straight, though I’m willing to concede why there is argument / evidence for it.
Roz’s conduct is plenty dislikable, in fact for the most part I’d be the first to say Roz is kind of an asshole. And Roz was NEVER “happy” that Leslie had Robin on a pedestal or had a crush on her. Roz saw Leslie’s infatuation as inexplicable and baffling and doubtlessly self-defeating, maybe even dumb (in her opinion) but that didn’t stop Roz from being willing to work with it. She thought Leslie knew what she was getting into and what Leslie was getting into was (in a best-case scenario) the pants of a lady that pushed for laws that hurting Becky now in very real ways. Wanting Becky to see this makes Roz inconsiderate but you’re really laying it on here.
Nevermind, I found it! Per Willis Roz has in fact stated herself as straight (which is something I’d forgotten, and frankly surprises me) so I’ll drop my argument on that front.
Those situations are only tenuously comparable Becky. For one thing underneath her prejudice Joyce has actually shown herself to be a relatively good person who cares about the effect her actions have on the people around her which is completely unlike Robin who is self-obsessed to a dangerous degree and has effectively zero regard for how she hurts other people so long as it doesn’t affect her.
And if Robin loses this election in the universe of this comic–and I’m starting to think she won’t, but I’d hope she does–then I think it applies 100%. And if Robin’s career is damaged by this and that impacts her ability to keep creating policies that hurt entire populaces on such a scale then yeah I think it’s better to have been done even as much as I hope for the best of Leslie getting out of it.
I strongly suspect that Robin hasn’t created a single policy in her entire career. That’s work and thinking that she’d work would be missing the whole point why she went into politics – To have power and privilege without actually having to make an effort to gain it.
Robin is like her voters. She leans towards whatever has the right letter by it. Get it “right” letter (heh). Not because she’s malicious but because it’s easy. She probably didn’t even read that bill. Whether this is worth vilifying her for is up to each’s personal opinion and can be debated. I personally think only her career should be forfeit (although there is considerable risk considering the implied citizenship of the district she represents someone even worse could take her place) She shouldn’t have been outed, that’s a huge violation of her privacy for basically doing what 90% of politicians do.
The question is always to whom the means are justified to.
A future history might justify the means, Roz definitely believes the means are justified, but…does Leslie feel they were?
Justification is about acquitting or absolving people for their actions. Something she’s not willing to do for Leslie, despite her own complicity in trying to talk her into acting on her impulses towards Robin.
Her doing it for the “greater good” also leaves the question of “whose greater good?”. Apparently its not Leslie’s greater good, and often at least in my experience people who tend to claim that line of reasoning are the ones whose “good” the means were meant to achieve. Even if its just destroying the career of a politician whose policies hurt other groups of people, I can’t help but question at this point at least if that wasn’t more to satisfy her own ego than it was to actually help the individuals in question.
Sure it doesn’t mean she’ll necessarily throw just anyone under a bus, and she might even be hurt from the implication Becky makes that she’d do so to Becky. But it shows that she’s willing to toss people under the bus for her personal view on whatever the “greater good” is and that its more an issue of whether doing so is actually ‘good enough’ to justify the “cost” she feels would have to be paid.
So, yeah, we’re just going to have to disagree for now about how “good” of a person that makes her. As well as how dis-likable she is.
Not that a person who contributes to the future betterment of existence for people has to be a good person, or a likable person, or even necessarily a person who tries to do good things. Hey, if we’re lucky, one of these days she might improve in some of those regards due to people like Becky calling her out when she deserves it. Honestly, not sure how much “justification” she has to complain, since she basically said she was “justified” in doing the same thing to Joyce previously before Leslie shut her down by mentioning that she was a Straight girl talking over a lesbian who had been telling her to shut up for 5 minutes.
Chloe: “Sorry Roz, we’ve decided to keep Ruth as RA, ask us again next year.”
Roz: “That’s bullshit! She’s far worse than you realise!”
Chloe: “As in….?”
Roz: “Like an un-enrolled person is squatting on our floor?”
Roz’s actions are speaking for themselves from my vantage point and they’re not telling me Roz is in a million years going to try and get Becky thrown out.
More like “Like her fucking one of her charges while she’s in a position of power over her? Like her hitting us or threatening to hit us? Like her being fresh out of a suicide ward and in need of a break, which she herself will tell you? Like her ADMITTING we deserved better this morning? Jesus, take your pick, there’s gotta be a million examples.”
Okay. First – y’all are prolific today, and I have a lot going on, I haven’t read everything so if I am repeating someone’s words… great minds…?
My thoughts –
Thank you, Becky. Always, speak up. Roz actually needs a friend like you to call her on her shit.
Roz did use Leslie. Yes, Leslie is an adult. Yes, Leslie should know better and shouldn’t be able to manipulated except for a couple things – Leslie is a teacher and Roz is a born politician. Widely different skill sets. Leslie might think that meeting Robin and “seducing” her is going to lead to nothing more than a few dates and Robin changing her politics and stuff. She wouldn’t think about political fallout as a matter of course. She is a normal person. Roz would think about that though. She would think about all the Machiavellian shit because that is what the DeSantos do. Roz knew her audience, and got Leslie to agree to meet Robin (her crush) and then arranged for her to meet her again in a bar.
The photo. Roz did not take the photo. But, she did know where they were going to be. It is possible that she leaked that information – not that she would need to – but she could have. And now, she is treating Leslie like collateral damage. As was stated up the thread, she hasn’t checked on Leslie, she doesn’t care. And, she knows her sister. She’s knows from 18 years of dealing with Robin what she can be like. I have a feeling that Roz will not be surprised to find out about Robin’s new career in home invasion.
I also wonder if deep down Roz isn’t a little mad at herself, because maybe she didn’t quite think it all the way through this time? Maybe, she didn’t intend for Leslie to be collateral damage. Because, I always had the opinion before this that she really liked Leslie. Like she wished that Leslie didn’t have a crush on her sister because her sister is so messed up, but since she did, she was going to make it work. And, now, maybe she’s seeing just how much worse this is for Leslie than it is for Robin. Now, these last thoughts are mostly about the fact that Roz is 18, not actually evil, and I think that this is where she starts to learn that the ends don’t justify the means. At least, I hope she starts to learn that lesson….
I actually don’t think Roz arranged for Robin to meet Leslie at the bar or played any part in that? Robin made it sound like she came back to see Leslie of her own volition and was usingRoz as an excuse to come back and talk to that cute cool lady teach’ again.
“There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats.
“And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”
-Terry Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum
See, the funny thing is that liking Roz is seemingly also controversial.
So, you know, probably best to just like her or dislike her according to your own feelings on whether you like or dislike her, cause your opinion on her will be controversial either way.
It seems to me that Becky goes from “vaguely aware about the situation” in panel two and three to “knows exactly who’s doing what and why” in panel five. Is this a case of sloppy writing or sloppy reading?
see i fuckin LOVE THIS because becky knows that her position in the dorm is a sort of hush-hush conditional very limited deal and it’s not a matter of whether she’s going to end up on the streets, but which authority figure is going to be responsible for that. roz, whose name was (and as far as becky’s aware, still is) in the running for that RA position, is a skilled politician and is generally able to manipulate social justice language into gaining her at least the begrudging respect of her peers. but becky who has REAL PROBLEMS is not fooled for a second. she acts aloof but she knows exactly what the deal is and in order to have it on the table she has to handle herself with a degree of foresight and tact and diplomacy that roz will never ever ever ever come CLOSE to.
because roz has manipulated people in the name of her own social cred and is celebrating and actively furthering damage to two lesbians for her own petty bullshit and becky fears god with a sincerity unmatched by anyone in the comic (even joyce) and so she’s got a good eye for that kind of….. overt evil
also….. i love the overt acknowledgement of becky’s crush on joyce. that’s suuuuch an important part of being a lesbian and having becky’s personality type (which i am and i do) is being able to talk openly and unashamedly with all your friends youve macked on about the times youve macked on them
roz has a competitive streak with leslie, btw. she’s relishing right now in leslie’s loss of reputation because it’s helping roz establish supremacy and authority, which are things roz chases pretty much for their own sake. she might be vaguely on the progressive side of things, but that’s just the means she uses to the ends of her own personal advancement, and that’s something obvious to becky
Well, at the very least its a way to justify past and future disruptions of the class by painting her in a better light than the teacher, if we want to go full cynicism about it.
Honestly, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who sees Becky’s retort as being connected to Roz trying to get into a position of power that could be used to destroy Becky’s life. Calling her out on her will to do things (including using the outing of two non-heterosexual women to push for approval ratings to make a play for the RA position) based on her own prejudices.
Because lets face it, Roz’s stance is highly biased. Whether that bias ends up helping or hurting the people she claims to be an activist for she’s already decided her stance and has a very locked in viewpoint about what that means about people.
Well, and the fact that she signed up for a Gender Studies class with the viewpoint of already ‘being able to teach the class’. I mean I suppose one could take her responses as snarky rebuttal…to the teacher of said class who she has never actually seemed to have any respect for, but I’m not sure Roz actually respects anyone, or at least not anyone but herself.
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careful, Walky, you can’t give this teach a beej
Not with that attitude!
Maybe if Walky puts on a long black wig and speaks with a Southern accent.
Sal has brown hair, but otherwise yeah, pretty much.
….Huh, I just realized Sal and Leslie have never interacted in either universe. Can we fix that?
What would they possibly have to say to each other though? I guess they’re both tangentially involved in the hunt for Ryan?
Maybe Sal will be in Leslie’s class next semester? I’m sure they’ll have something to talk about by 2025
maybe they’d have coffee and do a re-enactment of footloose
Dude, I’d settle for a ‘Wheres X?” “Oh, over there.” “Cool, thanks.”
….Which is basically what happened at the riot, regarding Ryan, but Sal never spoke to Leslie so I refuse to count it.
RALLY, not a riot.
Just barely.
Yep. I was freaking out about the possibility of Sal getting Zimmerman’d by someone at that rally or AG escalating into a riot or the crowd getting amped up or JESUS that rally had me on the skin of my teeth.
They probably interacted at the multiple weddings that took place in Shortpacked! but none of that was on screen.
They may have interacted during the first incident with HA2 but I’ll never know because the idea of paying money to read a webcomic is ridiculous. (hides copy of volume 1 of Digger by Ursula Vernon beneath dinner table)
see? I TOLD You beheading would make a great word replacement for blowjob!
“careful, Walky, you can’t give this teach a beheading”
Maybe if’ he’d put a Robin wig.
I believe it was firmly established scant pages ago that the lesbian would grow a weenus for the hanky panky.
I wonder how Howard and Joyce would talk about sex.
I really want to see this conversation.
Just watch the news. That’s the class.
Don’t think Roz is in a position to mock leslie for having a crush on Robin considering she tried to hook them up
SERIOUSLY!
Like, what the Hell? She’s gonna be mad at her now because she didn’t “fix” her sister?
By “fix” I mean I assume Roz thought in addition to outing herself, Robin would instantly flip her positions on a bunch of issues.
…Holy crap, once again I wish I could edit comments. That was more than unfortunate.
It seemed darkly fitting.
I assumed you meant fix everything that Roz disliked about her social-political stance. Sadly for Roz no mind wipes in this universe. so she can’t just blank slate people she doesn’t like.
As much as I commonly agree with Roz on most of her opinions surrounding her core gripes and issues, I wish this is something she would come to understand, someday.
This, definitely. Sure Leslie had a crush on Robin, but she wouldn’t have gotten any more involved with Robin if Roz hadn’t been trying to get them together.
Disparaging Leslie having an attraction to Robin is something Leslie herself did before * in the aftermath of the both of them mutually engineering this.
Roz has a little bit of Mike’s personality in her makeup. Cause trouble and think ot’s all for the best. That was originally going to be Roz has a bit of Mike in her, but …phrasing.
Now I’m picturing Mike wearing Roz’s makeup
Gotta love Walky’s bravery in interrupting a mutual stink eye and taking both, for the team.
why would roz consider Becky collateral damage? she actually has a point there (roz, not becky)
She considered Leslie collateral damage.
Because Roz has a bad habit of throwing folks under the bus to get what she wants. Or try and get what she wants, only to screw up and blame the person she used for her own plans failing
Between the Joe sex tape, pushing Robin and Leslie together (then blaming Leslie when that didn’t change robin’s sociopolitical agenda completely) and outright admitting and showing she was willing to manipulate everyone on the floor to get the RA position, Roz has pretty much used people and then thrown em aside for any gain she thinks she can get the whole comic then holding other people to account if she doesn’t get it
so do I think Roz would out becky’s status as not a student and have her kicked off campus if it could further any of her myriad goals? yes, because roz here is shaping up to be the perfect two-faced political bongo.
As far as I remember, she didn’t threw anyone under the bus after the Sex Tape nor when she tried to convince the Beck Dorm girls she would make a great RA.
She hasn’t betrayed Leslie either, at least not until now, but I agree today’s strip is worrying.
That’s because we know the whole story and all the subtle little tidbits. It looks very different from Becky’s point of view.
she released a sex tape online without asking her partners permission for the exact purpose of causing a scandal in her family. the same reason she outed the fact Leslie and Robin where together.
True, Joe didn’t mind the tape being released, but he also wasn’t consulted or asked. The same can’t be said for Leslie. and it’s not like she did it for any reason other than personal gain – to hopefully ruin her sisters political career so her sis would stop bugging her. nothing more, nothing less
so yeah, what happens if ros can get any advantage if she outs becky? based on how she’s acted so far, she’ll out becky
Joe consented the sex being filmed AND the tape being put online. She told him she was going to do so beforehand.
She didn’t point out that she was the sister of a congresswoman, which she probably should have, but otherwise it was completely upfront and consensual.
It’s actually fitting that this is where Robin and Roz are incredibly similar as characters, given that they surely grew up with the same value-set. I never really thought about it before from that angle, but they’re both unbelievably cut-throat, self-centered, and purely goal-oriented. It’s just that they have fundamentally different desires (power and influence for Robin, freedom and autonomy for Roz) that drive them to use the exact same tactics to further fundamentally opposed causes.
I don’t think this comic gets enough credit for how strong and realistic its’ characters are.
Identical tactics for opposite goals? Does this mean Robin is a Templar and Roz is an Assassin? Because I choose to believe that is what this means.
I like your point about Robin and Roz being similar but driven by different desires, but as an old Shortpacked! reader, I don’t really think Robin is driven by power and influence, I think she’s driven by other people’s approval and validation, and also by taking the easiest way out. When the loudest members of her constituency (aside from her sister) and colleagues are all urging her to take a particular political stance, then she’ll do it because it’s easiest and people like her when she does that. But if she comes to understand that people have been hurt and (perhaps more critical to Robin) disappointed by her actions, then she has the potential to change.
On the other hand, doing a 180 on ones’ political stances mid-election in a district that may not be supportive of her new stance is far from the easiest thing for Robin to do, so Robin’s got to be in a quandary right now. While we might not weigh factors the same way that she does, she is at the moment torn between her two most central drives, so it is very difficult for her. However, Robin has been known to act impulsively and deal with the fall-out later.
Or, she may just lock herself inside and eat Cadbury Cream eggs. Avoidance can be an irresistible response to conflict, and Robin’s preferred means of avoidance is easy, fun and delicious. So yeah, my money is 80% on Robin avoiding the whole thing (maybe even dropping out of the election so she doesn’t have to deal), 15% on Robin (possibly impulsively) publicly coming out and repudiating her old political stances, 5% on Robin staying with her same old political stances and denying the whole thing.
I’m pretty sure that somewhere in this story arc, quite possibly years of our real time away, there’s a scene with Robin making out with Leslie on the stage at a campaign event.
Whether that destroys her political career or not is another question.
are you sure we’re reading the same comic? Roz is nowhere near this evil mastermind type figure you’re describing. She’s angry in this comic, and I’ve read it multiple times and I honestly think we’re missing some key info because her anger does not make sense given the info we’ve been shown so far.
Obviously she leans more towards self-serving than self-sacrificing, but I do believe she’s acting in what she believes to be everybody’s best interest.
Well, except for the best interests of anyone else who makes “a sacrifice for the cause” that she’s willing to live with, or at least that’s how it sounds to me when she jumps into this particular private conversation the way she does.
Being self-serving is hard to fault on its own. Volunteering to help others make ‘necessary sacrifices’ for any sort of ‘greater good’ while being able to easily wipe their own hands of any trouble that comes of it…. I’ll basically fault that every time. Especially when there’s a lot of hypotheticals in regards to which means actually achieve the best end result anyways.
Like, to posit forwards, Leslie with her own personal experience in the matter is probably one of the best potential resources for Becky to be able to get her life figured out and get to a better place currently. Roz successfully destroying any positive viewpoint of her that Becky might have could potentially have kept Becky from being willing enough to trust Leslie enough to find out about any resources that Leslie might know of that could help Becky out.
I mean, this is assuming that Leslie is actually going to live up to her self proclaimed standard of being better than most of those other adults and actually does care enough about Becky to not immediately report her for her situation, but I’m pretty sure thats not an actual worry. If it is, well, maybe Roz was in the right for trying to paint her in a poor light.
But, honestly, I’m more willing to bet that Roz didn’t even stop to consider whether Becky feeling able to speak to Leslie about her current issues would be a good thing or not. “Social change isn’t created from small, polite splashes.” after all. Thats why she “prefers the bigger ones”. And I’m not sure she really cares much about who those larger ones catch in their wake for the most part. Maybe she cares enough about Becky to not intentionally do anything that would end up with her being an acceptable loss, but I’m not sure she intended a lot of the bad thats come of her actions so far either.
Shit, I can’t remember what Becky’s calling out Roz for can someone link me a reminder?
If I’m reading the situation right, it seems like common knowledge on the dorm floor (probably because Roz was showing it off and told Dorothy that it gave her the trust of the LGBT ladies on the floor) that Roz was involved in some way with Robin’s news related incident with Leslie. ‘Collateral damage’ is either referring to Leslie being outed or her own sister being outed. Or maybe both. Either way, Becky’s not happy with the situation.
Roz pretty much threw Leslie under a bus in order to accomplish her goal. Hard to believe she won’t do the same to anyone else if she figures her goal is “noble” enough.
Is there a possibility of Leslie conducting some form of revenge (or a less extreme term) on Roz?
Unlikely, knowing Leslie, but if she hears about Roz’s involvement in that hitting the news, she surely won’t be thrilled, and will likely make that abundantly clear to Roz.
That sounds about right. A pretty heated 1-on-1 talk.
honestly…i hope she doesn’t. i feel like making roz steep in guilt is probably the route that will change her behavior
Roz doesn’t feel guilty, though. She’s blaming Leslie, here.
i don’t really see how that follows? like, she was really happy that Robin got outed earlier? i haven’t seen how she’s blaming Leslie for anything? or what she’s blaming Leslie for?
idk like i guess i can see how you could read that, but like this strip goes: Becky is excited about getting to meet a fellow lesbian despite the recent controversy about her dating a homophobic conservative politician, Becky relates to that attraction while making a joke about her crush on Joyce, Roz not knowing what the joke is about asks how similar it was, Becky tells Roz to back off because she made Leslie collateral damage, and Roz gets defensive and jumpy.
i don’t really know precisely what Roz is feeling b/c that’s not really enough information to figure it out – she could be blaming Leslie for hooking up with Robin and destroying her reputation, or she could just be feeling edgy about it now that she’s seen what some of the consequences are. She was practically gloating about it earlier – she was really happy to see her sister embracing her gay side, and that that hypocrisy got exposed. And also like, as sisters-in-law go, Leslie is probably amazing. way to plan ahead, y’know?
i know that Roz may disagree with Leslie sometimes but she seems to come from a place of respect for her teacher. She hooked her up with her sister, which is not something I think she’d do with just anyone? A sister like Robin is going to hit that sweet spot of annoyance so strong you want to strangle her and a fierce protective streak where they’re genuinely vulnerable. and also public humiliation so everyone can see them the way you see them. and really strong anger where they’re really wrong, wrong, wrong.
………..i still don’t know what you’re blaming roz for here
Right here Roz is blaming Leslie for falling for Robin, who is in a political position of power and hurting people from that.
In a tone and stance that rather vilifies Leslie.
And Becky reads this clearly as Roz not being a reliable ally. I’m with her.
If I was 18 and my Gender Studies professor was head over heels for any of the shitbag congresspeople in our state, I’d frankly be disparaging as well sexuality of said attraction be damned.
@CJ: i guess i can see how you read that, but i feel like her body language is like. in between blaming, shutting herself off, and like. being upset with herself. her tone is pretty difficult to say since this is a visual medium! her timing is terrible, but that’s easy to screw up.
the choice to not trust someone is individual and imperative, and that’s a totally fair call for Becky to make. Leslie and Roz have a slightly different relationship, tho, and I’d think that Leslie’s…disappointment and hurt? would mean an actual lot to Roz.
meanwhile i really do hope that Leslie doesn’t take revenge on Roz for going along with Roz’ date setup because that would be petty and immature. and Leslie is better than that
@Minder: Would you have also tried to set that professor up with said shitbag congresscritter who happened to be your sister?
That really does rob Roz of any moral highground here.
@thejeff If that professor asked me to?
Even after I raised my eyebrow and asked my professor, just to make sure, that she did understand the other end of the setup plan–my sister–was in fact the same shitbag congressman we were both currently referring to?
Sure I would. I’d think my professor was either out of her mind or had a lot of guts, and was willing to risk quite a bit on a gamble, but if she was up for it and I thought we had a mutual understanding then yeah I would.
@Minder so what you’re saying is you have no problem with hypocrisy when you’re just following orders, even when you’re not really following orders per se.
@Pablo360
I wouldn’t just be following orders, because in this scenario it’s assumed that (like Roz) I either proposed the idea myself, or else was an active participant in engineering it.
Roz asked Leslie twice to make sure she still wanted to do this and Leslie said yes. Even after their fight in class. Roz’s mistake was thinking she and Leslie were on the same page about ‘why.’
@Minder
But my point is that you can’t call someone out for something you would be willing to arrange.
@Pablo360
Why not?
Minder: It doesn’t make sense to criticize someone for something you helped them do.
@Valerie It’s not very nice, sure, but criticizing over intent / belief makes sense fine if you’re doing the same thing as someone you disagree with for different reasons.
Like, this is a really silly example and I hate using metaphors so far-removed they’re too ridiculous to be applicable, but its kind of like…a friend or an acquaintance notices I’m hungry and offers to buy me a meal. I know this friend isn’t doing well financially, but depending on how hungry I am and how much I think the meal is going to cost them personally, I might give different answers.
@Valerie -CONTINUED- (sorry) Because if I know they really, really can’t afford to be buying me food, and they’re offering me a steak dinner, I’m perfectly liable to tell them they’re a moron and still take them up on their offer if I can’t afford to buy my own dinner either.
Minder: A better analogy would be, “Hey, you shouldn’t have burned down that house. Yes, I know I gave you the gasoline, and the matches, and I knew damn well what you were going to do with them, because you’d actually said, ‘I’m’a gonna burn down that house’, but I didn’t actually light the fire, you did, so I get to be morally superior to you, now.”
And this is why I hate analogies, because what I’d guess Roz is actually disparaging Leslie–for if she’s actually keeping Leslie in mind at all here–is Leslie turning out to have had a very different and illusory crush on Robin with different parameters than Roz assumed hatching this plan.
what roz is blaming leslie for. what are words
I don’t think there’s anything to link, Becky’s just calling out Roz for deciding that Leslie is collateral damage in taking Robin down.
I think she’s talking about Leslie being collateral damage:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/courting/
I think she’s just replying to Roz’s comment in panel 4, they’ve only interacted once before, when Becky invited Roz to Joyce’s party.
Probably this.
Well, shoot, now I love Becky even more now.
Whoa, go Becky, well done.
I can’t really dislike Roz, because she is many of us 5-10 years ago, all passion, no nuance, but goddamn if the girl doesn’t need to take a chill pill and sit down once in a while.
Also Joyce’s tiny smile is fuckin’ adorbs.
I’m just gonna sit here with a lemon drop mixed drink and watch the tire fire I suspect the comment section will become tonight.
*clinks glasses* I can’t booze it up cause of work in the morning, but me and my strawberry smoothie will be here for a bit.
I’m taking a drink every time someone acts like this blowing up on Leslie is somehow Roz’s fault.
I expect I’ll be dead by three.
Fault? No. But Roz’s attitude here is not a good look, especially given her role in dangling Robin in front of Leslie in the first place.
Roz’s role in dangling Robin in front of Leslie was her sister coming down to damage control her sex tape and have the dean bring her back into line. After that, Roz brought her back to the classroom, which Leslie agreed to and signed off on in advance, after Roz asked again for confirmation she wanted to do it.
Not liking Roz’s attitude is fine, but everything Roz was in on, Leslie was as well. Roz was not in on the encounter where Leslie met Robin and she was not at the bar where the picture was taken – Leslie agreed to those on her own.
I mean, that’s part of the point. Roz is as complicit in this as Leslie is, she was instrumental in bringing this plan together, and yet she’s acting as if she’s washed her hands and Leslie is as much of an oppressor as Robin is. Which is not a good look.
Roz’s plan had little to do with Robin being outed. The only part that connects to it is that Robin was in the classroom for it, which was part of Roz’s plan to hopefully have those two converse and have Robin stop being a homophobic fuck. She was outed at a bar, far away, while she was about to mack on Leslie (as far as the picture shows). Roz was not connected to that, and certainly not to the same degree as Leslie – Leslie agreed to go to the bar on her own volition, without any input from Roz. Roz is barely connected to the thing that got Robin outed, other than she gave a time and place for them to meet up. The rest of Roz’s plan never happened. Had it, you’d be right, she’d be as much a part of this as Robin and Leslie, but Roz’s plan relied on ‘good listener, heart in the right place big sister Robin’ listening to Leslie and realizing she was an asshole, realizing she was bi, and coming out voluntarily, which would not be this situation.
ignore my question below; thank you for explaining
But the fact is Roz is very much still partially responsible for pushing Robin at Leslie, and turning around and acting like Leslie is reprehensible for taking the bait is a shitty thing to do. That is literally all I’m saying here. Roz, a straight girl, taking potshots at a lesbian woman for daring to be attracted to someone is really gross.
Especially when this comes perilously close to implying Leslie’s complicit in her own oppression, and the oppression of other LGBT+ people.
Okay, that makes more sense and on that I can agree. I thought you were referring to what happened at the bar. Roz did indeed arrange for them to meet up again.
Roz knew what she was doing when she agreed to get his sister to come as a guest speaker. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/gag/
She’s also on record as saying that she wanted her sister to come out of her closet willingingly, but was okay with Robin being dragged out by the media.
*sigh* sister. Dammit.
her sister. Stupid computer language thingies!
Oh yeah, she definitely wanted those two to hook up, in addition to Leslie changing her sister’s mind on LGBT+ and coming out. Her role in this was arranging the class visit and making sure Leslie would look hot, but everything post class visit was on Robin and Leslie.
I don’t think it’s Roz’s fault at all. I do, however, find her judgementalness towards Leslie quite distasteful. Maybe she’s just trying to state that being attracted to prejudiced individuals with power is bad in general, but it feels like she’s proclaiming Leslie a traitor to the LGBT community for her attraction to Robin.
It’s okay to read it that way, but I know the comments section and I know there’s going to be a bunch of ‘Roz set Leslie up for this’ type comments, hence my lemon drops.
wait so Roz didn’t leak the picture of Leslie and Robin kissing?
i felt like that was implied but not confirmed
Nah, that was someone else.
it really would take like. next level pettiness to actually do something like that haha
See, now I want to blame Mary for taking the picture, but she was surprised to see it. Also, I’m pretty sure she isn’t in Leslie’s class, and wouldn’t go to a bar on her own. On to the next candidate.
if she did go to a bar i think we can be sure that she would cover herself in a full layer of bubblewrap and sanitizer so that none of the booze could seep into her by osmosis
She sure was happy about it, though.
No arguing that.
Cheers.
BRB. I’m clearly gonna need more liquor.
I got some Bacardi if you want it.
Think they’d be good with lemon liqueur?
For a given value of good, sure. I dunno about Rukduk’s but my Bacardi isn’t great.
It’s a bottle of 151 I got as a birthday gift from an uncle who forgot that I don’t drink anything stronger than a hard cider or a dunkel, and even those only occasionally. So…I kinda need to find something to do with this bottle of liquid fire before I get too curious and try making a Molotov… On top of all my other issues I may have a touch of pyromania…
I’ll take it then. Might make some other good mixed drink.
@BBCC Cool…how do I get it to you? Do I just put it on Craig’slist or something like that?
*snorts* Good luck with that.
Get some IRL friends who are versed in alcohol, have a movie party. Rogue One just came out for sale, or you could make it a Bad Movie Night (though still avoid the SW Christmas Special).
Ah, fire, ancient friend of humankind.
I’ve just got some Gold that was on sale and I mistook for quality rum. It’s okay, but I’m seldom in the mood for liquor, so it’s been slow going.
HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY MOTHERFUCKERS *slams glass down and downs it*
It’s about damn time someone called Roz on this nonsense.
Plus all the ones.
Not really in a spot to comment on second half of the comment, so just going to focus on the cute Joy and Becky moment there and how they are able to affectionately joke about that part of their lives.
Also I love Becky’s excited ‘we’re both lesbians! maybe we’ll be friends!’ reaction. It’s extremely personally relatable.
Yeah and maybe Becky could seek Leslie’s assistance with the latter being formerly homeless and cast out.
Becky’s loud and impulsive, but I think she has enough self-control to not openly admit she’s squatting in the dorms to a staff member. Ruth doesn’t even know.
Which is a damn shame.
Still, Leslie knows about “Joyce’s friend”. If she’s not too distracted, she may put two and two together and try to offer help.
That’s a big “if” though. And neither Joyce or Becky are likely to be too trusting. She really does need that sandwich board. 🙂
Ruth does know, but not because of Becky.
“that part of their lives”
It was like ten minutes ago.
“Hmm?…Oh sorry, were we talking about chocolate?”
Honestly even though we all know what Roz’s intentions were if she’s telling the truth about not being the one to have leaked the picture what happened to Leslie wasn’t actually her fault.
Also Leslie was a willing participant and Robin WAS using a position of power to hurt people so…
… Robin *broke into Leslie’s house while Leslie was asleep*.
In what fashion is Leslie a ‘willing participant’ in what’s currently going down?
I’m talking about when Leslie and Roz where scheming to have Leslie seduce Robin and the picture at the bar that was taken when Leslie agreed to have a drink with Robin. I’m not saying what is happening to Leslie is okay just that what it looks like from Roz’s pov is probably that Leslie continued with their previous plan. Everything that happened afterwards with Robin’s creepy behavior is obviously not okay and not what I was talking about.
Even ignoring Robin’s behavior or even their plan, Roz is being extremely overzealous and judgemental as hell if she thinks she has a good reason to be mad at Leslie for not doing enough to stand up homophobes
Where do you get the vibe she’s mad at Leslie? Pretty sure the “woman in a position of power” she’s pissed at here is Robin.
The way she phrases it still kind of comes off like she’s trying to ruin Becky’s impression of Leslie at least.
Though to me it seems like Becky is calling Roz out about the fact that she’s been blatantly pushing for a position of power within the dorms where she would be able to throw her under the bus as well.
Which might partially just be bias on my end cause I don’t really feel like Roz really has anyone’s interests at heart or worries about potential consequences due to being too busy being an in-your-face firebrand who often seems to talk down at and about others to push her own selfrighteousness.
Like how even when Joyce was trying to be more accepting of homosexuality and was obviously feeling bad over how she’d acted previously, Roz’s initial reaction was basically to rend into her over only just now starting to feel bad for her whole religion. She’s often seemed more interested in tearing down people she sees as potential enemies than actually helping out anyone else for selfless reasons.
I mean yeah, there’s been points where even with Joyce she’s shown some sympathy, but that doesn’t stop her from being aggressively distruptive towards Joyce and the rest of the class a few days later.
Like, just as a person, I kind of feel the way she acts toward other people is kind of horrible in general, at least what we see of her on panel. Even when she’s acting magnanimous it seems more about flaunting her popularity or dedication to her social causes than just doing what she can to help.
roz just really kind of struggles with seeing things as black and white, and also she loves attention. so like the way she goes about her causes is gonna be attention-seeking, a bit, but the struggle for her is to control what attention she gets. which – releasing her own sex tape was kind of very much about control of her own image, i think. her publicity is so tangled up with Robin’s that if she wants to do anything visible for the causes she believes in she has to distance herself.
and the black-and-white thinking really feeds into that and creates a kind of grandstanding. because there has to be something she can beat, right, she has to be able to win the battle and slay the dragon. and she seems to be very into a “no excuses” social justice praxis. WHICH. on a level, there are no excuses, but also people are fucked up and messy. she’s focusing more on winning than on making connections.
she’s forcing change, which is a very different take than Leslie’s. Leslie’s more about quiet influence and logical argument, I think. but Roz is impatient and wants it all now, now, now. She sees where she wants the world to be and doesn’t see how long it’ll take to get there. and that impatience is important and useful, because injustice should be intolerable, but…it’s a hard way to live
@Krys Thank you for saving me the trouble of saying the same thing. She often seems like a mirror of her sister, where Robin seems to toe the party line (and in my opinion doesn’t have much of an ideology of her own), she seems to be compassionate (if a bit clumsy) when dealing with people on an individual basis. Roz on the other hand has all sorts of high and mighty ideas, but often seems oblivious to individuals she claims to be sticking up for.
It’s still really uncool of her to be all holier-than-thou when this’ll likely ruin Leslie’s life in the short to medium term at the very least, though.
I do agree with that. I think she’s focusing way too much on getting back at her sister and not enough on how this will affect Leslie.
But she knew this was a possibility, that Robin coming out (or being outed) would likely end up hurting Leslie too.
She doesn’t get to pretend she wasn’t OK with that happening just because it didn’t happen the way she expected.
I honestly need to know what the details of this plan were because I feel like the possibility of Leslie being outed during all this had to have come up. Leslie was essentially agreeing to be apart of a sex scandal. What exactly were her intentions for that deleted picture if not to leak it or use it for blackmail? Again I know she changed her mind and what is happening now is not what she wanted but what exactly did she want? What was her goal here? Even in the most idealistic end game here Robin is a high profile republican politician. Even if Leslie just wanted to hang out and make out and watch Steven Universe she had to have been aware of the risk to her own privacy getting involved with someone so high profile would bring. Unless she’s just very naive.
I believe Roz’s plan was they’d meet, get to talking, possibly get to banging/dating, Robin would change her mind on LGBT+ folks, possibly come out of the closet, and (on that front anyways) stop being a large diameter asshole.
Yeah I know Roz’s goal. I’m more curious about Leslie’s. Especially with all the anger being pointed at 18 year old Roz and this idea that Leslie a grown ass woman in her 30’s needs to be handled with kid gloves.
What about anger being directed at a straight woman who gleefully reacts to the outing of queer women? Nothing in the comic indicates Leslie or Roz ever talked about Leslie being shoved into the public eye in this manner. If Roz’s goal was simply to make Robin realize she wasn’t straight (as far as I can tell this is what she implied to Leslie), why would Leslie ever assume that that would include her being thrown under the bus?
Leslie doesn’t need to be handled with kid gloves, but frankly any straight woman can gtfo with crowing about women being outed and certainly with implying that a gay women who acted foolishly on an ill-advised crush is a bad person who deserves public derision. Eighteen or not. Like, I can’t get across how fast I would nope away from a straight women who would tell me someone suffering from the fallout of being publicly outed ‘deserved it’, it’s one of the fastest ways they could signal they can’t be trusted. Especially if the crime is being adjacent to a bad person, and ESPECIALLY if they’d taken pains to help arrange the circumstances of the outing. It’s manipulative as hell.
You’re not answering my question you’re just redirecting things back to Roz. Roz is a kid who needs to learn a bit more empathy yes but Leslie is an adult who willingly conspired with an 18 year old she is in a position of authority over to seduce a high profile anti gay politician and I find it incredibly hard to believe that she never once considered this could blow up in her face. I am sympathetic to Leslie’s situation but if she is so shortsighted she could not have seen this resulting in potential scandal for her because she was so blinded by a crush and if she were so easily “manipulated” into such a high risk endeavor by a child I really and deeply have to question her judgment and whether she should be in a position of authority like this.
Also manipulative behavior is totally something I am willing to judge, even if the person being manipulated ‘should have known better’. Deliberately and disingenuously setting out to set up a situation to your benefit in a way that would damage others, using selective presentation of information, and then not caring about how people were damaged by your behavior is bad, even if you are eighteen and you are being manipulative towards someone who knows better. Making dumb decisions sure is something Leslie did, and yeah, she’s an adult. But Roz didn’t just ‘coincidentally’ drop info about Robin and aggressively push for Leslie to meet her for no reason. It was always her intent to manipulate her teacher without regard for the consequences for anyone but herself.
Similarly, a con artist’s marks are adults with agency, and often in order for a con to be successful, they have to be shortsighted and greedy. That doesn’t absolve the conman of being a bad person, and conmen very often use the ‘well they knew what they were getting into!’ or ‘they only got ripped off because they acted greedily’ defense to shift blame.
Note: I am NOT suggesting Roz is a con artist. I am suggesting that she was being deliberately manipulative, and that does reflect negatively on her, because aiming to manipulate people in the way she did is deeply sketch. I don’t think this makes her a cackling villain who took advantage of a poor innocent thirty year old woman. I do think she is knowingly complicit in what happened to Leslie, and her reaction to the fallout reflects poorly on her character. This isn’t about making her out to be evil, it’s about discussing this action and our reactions to it.
As I’ve indicated, afaik Roz is straight and that absolutely adds a personal dimension I cannot escape from. I will never be able to be comfortable with straight people who crow about the fallout of outings and this absolutely informs my reaction.
Also I’ve responded to you more than once so I just wanted to say nothing personal, I don’t think you’re a bad person or that there is anything wrong with you defending Roz and I hope I don’t come across that way. I don’t want to attack or anything and I hope I haven’t gotten too emotional at you. Hopefully I have explained my point of view so that if you don’t agree with it, you at least understand where I am coming from.
It’s fine, I mean I still don’t quite see the situation the same way that you do but I do get where you’re coming from and I don’t feel attacked.
That’s the version of Roz’s plan that she was willing to say out loud, but her actions since then suggest heavily that this isn’t true. She’s celebrating this result as if she got what she wanted.
She’s also flat out blaming Leslie for her attraction to Robin. Becky is saying she understands Leslie, and then Roz tries to vilify her. Sure, she vilifies her sister, too, but those two are not exclusive.
She apparently just used Leslie. That’s why she’s currently throwing her under the bus–in this very conversation.
That’s not saying it’s only Roz’s fault. Both Leslie and Robin are also at fault.
But trying to say Roz is not at fault is silly, and Drinking Kermit memes won’t change that.
She did get what she wanted – a Robin substantially less likely to be elected. Hence why she’s celebrating. I do not believe her plan is much different than what she’s said it was, consistently, from the word go and that’s all I said here.
When I say ‘blaming Roz for this’ wrt my jokes about drinking I mean ‘blaming Roz for outing Robin’ when that is not a thing she did. Not for saying she got them together in the classroom, which is a thing she did.
But that’s not supposed to be what she wanted. Her supposed plan is to get her sister to change her mind. She did not achieve this goal. She thus has no reason to celebrate.
But, if her goal is to make her unelectable, then outing her is basically the only way to do that. Which means she did plan for them to be outed. And thus has every reason to celebrate.
Furthermore, getting them together in the classroom is not an unconnected event. The whole thing is tied together. And Roz also helped Leslie know where to meet Robin.
No, Roz is not solely responsible for Leslie being outed. But she shares that responsibility with Leslie, Robin, and the paparazzi. She’s trying to distance herself from that, hence throwing Leslie under the bus, which Becky caught.
No reason to celebrate? To quote a certain DeSanto on the matter, there are a whole lot of queer people living in her hall and Roz just swung an election in their favor.
I mean, yes, Roz wanted Robin to out herself and come to terms with her own sexuality, change her viewpoints. I assume Roz also wants a lot of things she doesn’t believe have a chance of happening. She’s celebrating an unexpected victory that she’ll gladly take and went beyond what she was probably even daring to hope for. And I do not get where on Earth you get Roz “distancing” herself from her role in this when if anything she’s giving herself too much credit; she’s the one bragging about the turn of events the other day to the girls in her hall like she was personally responsible (really, in the greater scheme of things, she wasn’t).
She also said ‘This isn’t my plan, but I’ll happily take this instead’. Ergo, this WAS NOT her plan, but the results are good enough (Robin won’t be re-elected, Manley will get the seat, she won’t have to be Robin’s political toy anymore, Manley’s apparently not an asshole on LGBT+ issues) that she’s celebrating anyways.
And outing Robin is not the only way to make her unelectable, especially not to her base. Going on record saying ‘My sister had an abortion and is maybe slightly more liberal than most of her party’ would probably do that if her base is as bad as Robin says they are. Also, coming out (as Roz intended) would probably kill Robin’s career where it stood, at least if she remained in her current party.
“Roz outed Robin” pretty strongly implies Roz took the picture and sent it to the newspaper. This is not a thing she did and THAT is what I’m objecting to, since you’re being pedantic about it. Roz arranged for Robin to come back to the classroom at Leslie’s request and told Leslie to look hot that day. That’s where her role in this ends, and people saying she did things she did not (like plan to out her sister, taking the picture, etc.) is what is getting stuck in my craw.
Leslie never agreed to be part of a sex scandal and never intended to have one.
To the contrary, she made it quite clear that outing Robin wasn’t her aim.
She might have been naive to think that going to a bar with Robin would not in itself be enough to hit the news, she was even more naive to think even if Robin was attracted to her,she would change her political stance.
But what she is getting here from Roz is plain sanctimonious bullshit and that would be the case even if Roz hadn’t been the person to egg her on.
Roz is a shit, Becky is less a shit, go Becky
*cues up some country-and-western-era Eric Clapton on the hacked Muzak*
Finally! I can’t wait for these two to meet
This, so much!
Leslie, this is your chance to be the best grownup, I know you’ve had a terrible day but please get this teenager some resources.
Not to mention that meeting Becky will probably make Leslie’s day as well. With her co-workers and at least one student all judging her about the scandal, meeting a young homeless lesbian that not only doesn’t feel betrayed, but who understands? And that Leslie may be able to help? I think that’s going to be exactly the pick-me-up she needed.
So obviously, someone’s going to pull the fire alarm or something and class will get cancelled after all
Only AFTER Leslie gets there and puts 2 and 2 together concerning Becky. $5 says (if class IS interrupted) Leslie grabs Becky so they can have a nice long chat about her situation. Cue Becky breaking down in tears for someone doing so much simply because she needed the help and whoops there’s sawdust in my eyes BRB.
Except I wouldn’t be surprised if Joyce and/or Becky don’t trust her enough to go along with it. Joyce has already said as much when Leslie was asking about where her friend was staying.
Becky might be less afraid to take a chance with Leslie. God answers lesbian prayers, after all
In the real world, yes, I have decided that Leslie’s desk is full of useful pamphlets, and a couple chocolate bars too, and that she will totally go full Cerberus on making sure Becky gets to be safe.
In DoA, however, Willis lives on our sweet, sweet tears.
Roz still has her family’s lack of tact and speaks a bit too quickly, but her face in the second-to-last panel tells me she’s starting to recognize that habit (and Becky’s usually good at pointing that out), perhaps due to Leslie, which is a nice amount of character development. And Walky, at least this isn’t as scary as math class. 😛
Uh, wasn’t this your idea in the first place, Roz?
It was Leslie’s idea. Roz is being garbage right now (How fucking dare she judge Leslie for what is described as an ill-advised crushed) and she was shitty last we saw her, but Leslie was an active participant in everything that happened until she left the bar. Everything after is Robin being pretty unspeakable.
F’real tho, why ISN’T class canceled?
I once had a class cancelled cuz the teacher got caught in traffic and was gonna be 15 minutes late and figured he’d be cool about it. No WAY a scandal like this wouldn’t cut that shit.
I once had a professor cancel all of his classes for the day because his home coffee maker was broken (he actually put this in the email). He lived across the street from the campus art gallery (where he taught), which had a coffee shop in it.
If i was in Leslie’s shoes I’d be too embarrassed to go to work. But if I had to do, I’d put on shades, a hat, and a coat. Or maybe that would attract too much attention, idk?
instead she decided to cosplay as Marty McFly, and teach class.
I can’t unsee that now. And there just might be a Doc in IU, if what little knowledge of Walkyverse I have is right.
What, you think there’s a “Professor Doc” around? Why, that would be ridiculous.
Leslie seems to take teaching pretty seriously, and I get the feeling she’d like to get away from home for a few hours.
Oh yeah, Robin’s STILL at home. Now I get why she continued forward.
Because it’s Leslie, and she is fucking hardcore.
My prof wouldn’t have had a choice in the matter. My school has a rule – if the prof is 15 minutes late, you’re allowed to assume they’re not coming and leave.
Our uni has a 15-minute “no show, you can go” type of rule for classes. One time our prof shows up 10min late and yells from the back of the classroom “I’m moving today so class is cancelled, bye” and turned around to leave. We all looked at eachother like wtf, and so she stopped, turned around and goes “No, seriously, everybody leave” and left the classroom. ^=__=^;; Needless to say she got a terrible teacher eval from me (I mean, I hear there’s this thing called email that you can use to let people know these things ahead of time?? Also, she was pretty flaky throughout the semester and it was a summer class so…)
“I would never-” Maybe not, Roz, but you sure didn’t seem to care about the backlash Leslie would face when you were parading that headline around.
Roz’s ideals and beliefs are noble, but she also tends to be a little short-sighted and thoughtless.
I’d feel sorrier for Leslie and madder at Roz if she didn’t have every reason to assume Leslie was just following through on the plan they’d both agreed to.
A fair enough point, I suppose. I’d assumed that Leslie had made it clear enough after the disastrous Robin-as-guest-speaker-class that she wasn’t down with the plan anymore, but I can definitely see that.
We might get more on this over the next few days. In any case, we’re at a point rife with potential character development for both Leslie and Roz.
Leslie did follow up on the plan, even after it fell apart. She went to the bar, and tried to get through to Robin. Robin’s thick skull got in the way.
I think Roz is a good person overall, but has no right to be mad at Leslie about this.
I’m not getting the vibe that she’s mad at Leslie. The problem here is that she’s so mad at Robin she’s not really thinking about Leslie at all.
Her comment in panel for comes across as an explicit judgement of Leslie.
If you look at the context of the conversation she suddenly joined, and why she felt the need to butt into it, I don’t see how it can be anything else. She clearly felt that Becky shouldn’t be defending Leslie the way she was.
She’s definitely making a judgment about Leslie’s taste in women, yeah, but I still get the vibe everything she’s saying and any real anger here is directed at Robin. And again if Robin is operating on the assumption that Leslie was following through on a plan they’d both agreed to how sympathetic is she really going to be to Leslie? Going into this there had to be a discussion on the risk involved and that Leslie was willingly agreeing to be apart of a sex scandal.
*If ROZ is operating under the assumption.
Be nice if we could edit these.
Becky was talking Joyce down from holding Leslie’s crush against her, and Roz jumped into the conversation to disagree. That pretty strongly suggests she’s upset with Leslie.
While I agree that Robin probably is the root source of at least some of her anger, it’s Leslie that she’s directing it towards.
Which is (in my mind at least) hypocritical as hell on Roz’s part. Because she’s the one who got Leslie and Robin access to each other, and stoking the flames of a crush that she knew about and treated as ok, but now that the truth is out she’s claiming Leslie’s attraction to Robin is despicably traitorous.
Precisely this. If she thought Leslie’s crush was so bad, she could have, y’know, pointed out that her sister’s a deeply problematic person, instead of directly encouraging the attraction for her own ends.
Leslis is in her 30’s and Roz is 18. It’s not really her job to be educating Leslie on her problematic crushes. Yes Roz encouraged this but Leslie has been nursing this crush for years despite knowing who Robin is. Roz heleped the situation along but Leslie was looking for an excuse.
Leslie is not looking for anything. She has said absolutely nothing about Roz.
We are pointing out that Roz is as much at fault as Leslie, and is deflecting blame here by pretending Leslie is bad for having a crush on Robin.
Roz is at fault. You don’t get out of being at fault because the person you were using should have known better. And she clearly was using Leslie, since she doesn’t feel any sympathy for her.
That’s why, when Becky did have sympathy, Roz told her off.
I’m not even saying Roz is at fault here. I’m saying it’s deeply hypocritical for Roz to be tearing down Leslie for a crush that Roz helped encourage.
Yeah. It even comes across as painting Leslie as complicit in her own oppression, as well as the oppression of other LGBT+ people.
She just now attacked Leslie for having the hots for a known bigot in power. It’s the reason that Becky said something about being thrown under the bus.
Roz is deflecting her own blame onto Leslie, when the truth is that they both are to blame.
Roz isn’t deflecting any blame because Roz doesn’t see this being a blameable offense. She hasn’t seen Leslie yet and hasn’t seen that emotional damage the days prior have wrought. Roz is still seeing everything that happened so far as a good thing, she’ll happily take the blame for it!
Becky was the counter to Roz we never knew we wanted.
Well, not until she showed up and started nuking closets. A few of us have been waiting for her to give Roz a piece of her mind, especially after Leslie called out Roz.
Yeah, that whole section there is what basically completely soured my view of Roz. From basically a few comics back where she decided to be dismissive of Joyce being upset because of her not being outraged about everything previously in the class, then moving into apparently thinking that giving her a chance to learn and grow requires her to “treat Miss Fundy like a goddamned hero” when all they were asking was for her to be remotely civil and not start drama in the classroom.
Followed up by pushing all the guilt she feels that Joyce’s religion should be feeling for their actions and passing down ALL of the blame onto her for daring not to know better? Cause obviously Joyce’s entire identity is based on one singular trait about her existence?
And even at the end there, its not like she looks even remotely like she feels any guilt herself over the immediate hypocrisy of her actions as much as having just lost the argument of crowing out that Joyce “deserves” to be guilt tripped and emotionally destroyed because of the audacity of her actions despite having been literally raised to only know that one way of behaving.
All while being yeah, as far as anyone can tell a straight girl picking fights for the queer crowd that they don’t even want to have fought at the moment? She doesn’t help the discussion, she’s more the type that jumps in to start fires and shut discussion down because if you aren’t an activist, you’re the enemy. Aka. Basically the sort of thing I tend to avoid social media for. Everyone picking all the fights and gating everything off behind walls of “if you don’t already know, you’re not allowed to ever learn enough to qualify”.
Roz starts fires to burn down the establishment. And for a girl that’s lived 18 years seeing firsthand the harm Robin-style politicians can do and how uncaringly they do it I won’t fault Roz at all for being goddamn pissed every minute of her life it hasn’t ended, because the point of the fight isn’t convincing people their viewpoint is incorrect, the point of the fight is that you’re fighting first and foremost to change the status quo where people are being marginalized.
If you do not convince people that their thinking is problematic and their actions hurt real people, how to you propose to chance society?
By doing everything you can to help from the options in front of you.
Well, it appears Roz’s version of ‘help’ has been ‘get a homosexual teacher mired in a sex scandal to injure her sister’.
Using oppressed people as weapons to be discarded after use. Yep. That’s DEFINITELY ‘helping’.
Leslie being mired in a sex scandal was not the intent although Roz is gladly celebrating it.
Roz asked more than once if Leslie understood what Robin’s politics were and Leslie responded yes. Roz asked more than once if Leslie wanted Roz to orchestrate an excuse for them to meet and Leslie responded yes.
I think Roz assumed Leslie, being the adult and a gender studies professor, went into this 100% willingly and would or should have been aware as Roz of any potential outcomes and consequences.
I think Roz did not realize how badly she had underestimated Leslie’s rationalizations of Robin’s behavior to feed into a happy fantasy.
I think when Roz found out that Leslie was deluding herself about Robin so much she’d overlooked her politics, Roz was probably disappointed, in the manner of a student disappointed by a teacher she liked and thought she could respect.
I think that not knowing what we know of Leslie’s situation in narrative detail, Roz isn’t a cruel or callous person for voicing her disappointment this way.
Go, Becky. *waves pennant*
But Roz, don’t you do the same thing as much smaller scale ?
She did potentially ruin Leslie’s professional career, humiliated her at work, and put her in the center of a national media circus.
Is Roz, like, incapable of not being sanctimonious?
I kinda wonder what growing up a deSanto must be like.
I mean..are we supposed to like Roz? She’s kind of one of the primary antagonists of this comic.
Wouldn’t say she’s a direct antagonist; she’s the ‘harsh truth’ that Joyce sometimes needs, and her heart is, in some twisted way, in the right place.
Her attitude needs a major reality check, but you could say that for 80% of the cast.
And if nothing else, she probably gets a mote of sympathy for having to room with Mary and grow up with Robin.
Not an antagonist in like she’s a bad guy. That would be any parent with a speaking line (or Mary but she’s so ineffective it’s laughable). Roz is a direct foil to Joyce and arguably Dorothy. Those two closest to main characters in this comic. Roz’s ideals, actions, and motivation are in direct competition with theirs. Not maliciously but it’s there. She was literally in competition with Dorothy a few chapters ago. I don’t know it I’m articulating this correctly but I think it’s a valid perspective.
I concur.
She also had a (very short-lived) competition with Sarah for Jacob that dropped nearly immediately.
Roz would probably be a much bigger antagonist if she wasn’t mostly interacting with a lot of more awful people that make her look better (see: Mary, Robin, Joyce’s old principles).
ah the antagonist vs. villain divide. i APPRECIATE
>Not maliciously
See, I call that into question. She’s often been malicious towards Joyce, even if she occasionally backpedals when people call her moral high ground into question when she does take things to a point thats out of line.
She definitely sees herself as the “hard truth” that Joyce needs, but honestly, Joyce was already on the verge of realizing that she might have been hurting Becky and Ethan unintentionally by the point Roz tore into her anyways. Leslie was the provider of those “hard truths”.
I’m pretty sure there was some malice, or at least attempt to get back at Dorothy for implying she would be a horrible RA in the zeal she ended up going to to try and become RA as soon as she overheard Dorothy’s thoughts.
Just because her ideals are less distasteful than Robin, and she’s more socially competent doesn’t mean she’s not pretty similar to her sister in other ways.
That said, the youngest one seems pretty decent, if a bit spoiled perhaps.
I have trouble seeing Roz as just one more cast member who still has some growing up to do. Roz is someone for whom the ends always justifies the means. (As is, it could be argued, her sister.) As was mentioned upthread, Roz doesn’t particularly concern herself about any fallout as long as she can justify her motives. People with this attitude need to be watched very closely and can only be trusted for as long as they consider you on the right side of an issue. (Even now, Roz is throwing shade at Leslie for what Roz sees as a betrayal of her cause.) Maybe Roz will grow out of this, but somehow I doubt it. (Even it she does, it will probably only be seen in a follow-up webcomic after this one.)
I mean, she’s easy to hate, but you’re allowed to like whoever you want. (Except Mary. And Ryan. And… well, all paternal figures, I suppose.)
You can like Mary!….and Ryan…I guess…and the parents too if you really want to but…look I don’t know where I was going with this they’re all very horrible.
Hank and Mr Saruyama seem like decent folks. Mr Walkerton has been fairly chill thus far, if not actively good, though I do have a vague recollection of him making insensitive remarks when Sal got all dolled up for freshman family weekend. Heck, even Ethan’s dad is semilikeable in a tragic “oh god that poor man” way, and I think even Ross has some fans. I personally enjoy considering the man’s motives and the twisted illogic that led from them to his methods – it’s less painful to analyze than real people, and it’s a good thought exercise in identifying and understanding patterns of thought to avoid.
Mr. Walkerton is awful. Sal’s said numerous times BOTH her parents are negligent and emotionally abusive, and, as you note, of the two he’s the only one we’ve seen insult Sal to her face. Charles is pretty damn bad.
Despite superficial appearances, “You’re pretty when you make yourself look white,” is not a compliment.
I will fight everybody who says Charles is not that bad. He’s one half of my least favourite parents.
The only chance I’ll give Charles is that we haven’t seen how he acts without Linda around yet. She’s domineering to say the least, he could be the “yes, dear” type who caves as his way to keep her happy. That would still make him complicit in the twins’ lopsided upbringing, but in my opinion that would bump him up a tier from “irredeemable heap of feces” to “the least they could do is try“.
I know a couple like this myself, the few times you catch the quiet one alone it’s like they’re an entirely different person from when they’re together.
Keeping quiet and letting Linda do what she wants does not equal ‘straight up insulting one child to her face while Linda is not paying attention’. Charles did that on his own.
Also, letting Linda emotionally abuse Sal and heap love on Walky and not doing anything at all to show Sal affection or attention growing up is not actually better. He’s still contributing to her neglect that way. Even if he weren’t, again, enabling her is not actually better. The right thing to do in that situation was to divorce her and try to get custody because she’s fucking up his kids (assuming, of course, he’s safe to do that, which we have no reason to believe he wouldn’t be).
From his expression, I got the distinct impression he was looking for something nice to say to a daughter who’s a stranger to him and trying to compliment something he believed she prided herself on. That his statement can easily be interpreted as racist is unfortunate, but I don’t see it as a deliberate insult.
He seemed much more relaxed around Walky at the football game, but he hasn’t spent as much time around Sal, given that she was away at boarding school, so I’d expect interactions with her to be awkward unfamiliar ground.
“I see your hair is curly again.” “Oh, yeah, that just…kinda happened.” “Too bad. Your hair is so pretty when it’s long and straight.”
Even if it WEREN’T racist to push black women towards straightening her hair, “too bad” is a fucking TERRIBLE thing to say to your child when you notice they’re wearing their hair differently. Seriously, anybody who OPENS after not seeing their child for 5 years by saying ‘Oh, your hair looks like this. Too bad, it’s prettier this other way’ is being a huge asshole. The racial layer just makes that even worse. Nor is ‘You look pretty this way’ a good way to compliment a look his daughter is NOT sporting right now. For all he knows, she decided to go natural. Anybody with a half functioning sense of empathy should know saying ‘Too bad’ about someone’s current look makes you a large diameter asshole.
And look at Sal’s face – she looks nervous here, like she’s thinking ‘Oh god, oh god, nononono, don’t start on my hair, come on, I just got here, don’t do this now.” This is a discussion they’ve had before, and from Sal’s face it did not go well.
Even if, for argument’s sake, we accept Charles was trying to be complimentary and missed the mark by several miles and is somehow ignorant to the anti-natural hair that goes around society (not impossible, it’s a huge part of internalized racism – oh wait), that does not excuse him from all the instances he’s taken part in Sal’s neglect and abuse. And we know he have because 9 times out of 10 when Sal mentions it, she says ‘our parents’. Parents. Plural. Not just Linda. Or she does one better and says ‘Mom and Dad’, explicitly including Charles in these instances.
Charles is a terrible parent. There’s no two ways about this.
Dinas parents are amazing. Well, except for not realizing that Amber’s father was an abusive monster.
Still they transferred Dina $200 to take her girlfriend out to eat after she belatedly let them know she had one, so…they’re pretty high up there.
Danny’s parents are the least blatently horrible of the ones who usually get listed. That might just be how little they were on panel though. I mean, my family often times seems ridiculously loving for all the crap most people seem to go through, but there’s been times where I’ve had to sit through basically the Pizzaria chats Danny’s parents were having.
Is it just the line later when he’s talking to Amazi-Girl about being used to being called stuff like “a piece of shit”, or was I missing something else in the comic? Or is it a Roomies/ItsWalky/Shortpacked thing? I’d love a breakdown of this if people want to give one.
Danny’s parents didn’t hesitate to call him out when he Danned something up. They’re the comments section, personified.
According to Willis, they think of him the same way the comment section used to – that he’s a terrible fuckup who can’t do anything right because he’s a stupid, worthless piece of shit. They just cover it up by making jokes and fixating on his girlfriends and being pissy when they dump him.
Ah, okay. That sounds like something that probably would have been more apparent if they’d had more scenes.
That sort of opinion of Danny is really too bad though, since while he may be a bit prone to stumbling into things way over his head, he at least almost always seems to have his heart in the right place.
Kind of makes sense why he didn’t realize how horrible Amber’s father was and felt like he “had to agree with him, because Amber’s father is a parent” in retrospect. Since he’s already bought into the idea that parents know better than him.
Jesus 🙁
Hank Brown is a decent parent…
even Joe’s dad?
Roz gets overzealous with her ally-ship, and a bit privilege-blind at times.
Jocelyne taught Joyce a similar lesson to the one Roz needs. Namely that while it’s great to be mad about other people being oppressed, you should actually listen to said oppressed people when it comes to how their oppression should be fought
Hopefully Roz will be open to that lesson instead of getting defensive
Walky knows what’s important
Oooh, Becky. I didn’t know you had that spiderbite in ya.
And even if Leslie didn’t come, surely there is the possibility of a substitute (another GS teacher, an aide)?
Eh, at a university level, they wouldn’t bother for one day worth of classes. Honestly, it would probably take an absence of at least a week before they’d bother trying to get someone to fill in.
If Leslie had known in advance, she might TRY to arrange something, but tbh, yeah, they’d probably say screw it and cancel the class.
True that. This was VERY short notice.
Roz: I will destroy as many lives as necessary to do good.
the greater goooood
SHUT IT!
CRUSTY JUGGLERS
Put her body count where Robin’s is and then we’ll talk.
Robins body count is presently zero since she’s only voted for anti-gay legislation which hasn’t passed. Which is the most unrealistic thing about this comic so far as it’s Indiana.
Robin votes on legislation at a federal level. She’s from Indiana, but there are 424 other representatives that are not.
We know that one law didn’t pass. More important is that we know that Robin voted for it.
Y’know Roz weren’t you the one trying to set them up with each other in the first place?
I really hope that one of these days Roz figures out what a self-righteous heel she is and how badly it hurts her cause. In the meantime I just try to tune out anything she has to say.
gosh she should be NICER, doesn’t she know you catch more flies with honey and more race/gender/sexuality supremacists by not challenging their authority or sense of self?
Yes, she should be nicer. Being nice has no bearing on whether you do any of the rest of the things you describe. Nice people challenge all of those things.
Roz has shown repeatedly that she’s more interested in the cause, in being right, than she is about helping people. Right now, she’s putting Leslie under the bus for being attracted to Robin, when she knows that she also played a part in setting them up.
There’s a reason why the person who actually convinced Joyce was not Roz. It was her best friend and nice teacher. And possibly her other friend (Dorothy).
Roz, on the other hand, was actually upset when Joyce had her realization. Because Joyce was the the bad guy’s team.
Joyce actually DID say Roz convinced her she was being terrible that day. She may not have convinced her LGBT+ people are, you know, people and deserve to be treated well and they get a lot of undeserved crap – you’re right, that was Leslie and Becky and a little Dorothy. Convincing her ‘I did terrible things when I was homophobic and I shouldn’t foist that on the church, I have to own it and not insist people stay in the closet like I do with Becky or try to make them straight like I do Ethan’? That was Roz.
@BBCC: That’s reading a lot into that one comment of Joyce’s. She might even believe it, but she was already headed in that direction. Might have sped things up a little bit.
Even if it did work on Joyce, that doesn’t mean it’s good practice in general. Roz was way the hell out of line in that scene and if Joyce had been in a slightly different place (or a different person) it might easily have wound up pushing them back into a defensive shell of denial.
I’m also going off what Roz said and this comment from Willis regarding her being correct – http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/111423718947/does-joyce-actually-think-she-was-gay-hating-or
And her breaking up with Ethan right after and how she stopped trying to get Becky to be quiet about being a lesbian.
And, imo, I don’t think she really was heading in that direction. Sure, she knew that LGBT+ people were people and that they were treated badly a lot – Becky and Leslie helped that. She was also refusing to own her part in that, and Dorothy sure as shit had no intentions in pointing out to her. Joyce was yelling about ‘the church’ doing these things and never once bothered to think she had any role in it.
Roz was out of line continuing after Leslie told her to stop. That said, we’re going to have to agree to disagree on overall effectiveness. I’ve met and known of too many people that getting yelled at worked for to say its inherently bad practice.
Point accepted, Carms, but I still feel that Roz’s grasp of speaking truth to power is limited at best, in no small part because she routinely seems to view other people’s issues as political points to be won without considering what impact she’s having on them. Her whole smug ‘I was born to this’ comments about trying to become RA really drove that home for me: she’s insincere and manipulative.
well ya know she could really stand being nicer TO THE PEOPLE SHE’S TRYING TO BE AN ALLY TO
Leslie had told her off once before for talking over a lesbian on LGBT+ matters, and this is the same thing
Roz has 0 moral high ground over Leslie, and it’s gross to allow her to pass judgement like that
whoa where did Becky’s comment come from? Wait, how does she even know Roz? Only from what Joyce has told her?
Everyone seems to think Roz is the one who leaked the picture because of her showing it off the article to people.
No, they’ve interacted together before, albeit briefly. Becky’s essentially calling out that Roz didn’t care about how Leslie might have been hurt when Robin got outed and Roz was waving around the headline like it was the best news in the world. Plus, now that Leslie’s no longer needed for “the plan” Roz apparently feels like Leslie isn’t worthy of respect because Leslie was crushing on her sister. Which is kinda hypocritical of Roz.
Why would Roz be feeling that sorry for Leslie if as fair as she knows Leslie was carrying out a plan she’d a) agreed to and b) had to have known would lead to a public scandal which was the entire point of what they were doing?
*FAR, damn it, I wish we could edit 🙁
It’s not that she should feel sorry for Leslie, it’s that she shouldn’t be so condescending of her.
Yes. Thank you. I’m having a hard time stringing words together in a way that makes sense tonight. This is what I meant.
First off, feeling sorry for people when bad things happen to them is the default. The only time I don’t is if I think they deserved it. Leslie didn’t deserve what happened to her. She wasn’t planning on the non-kiss or Robin trespassing and harassing her.
Second, Roz set them up. She helped to create this situation. When it’s partly your fault, most people also feel sorry for people.
Instead Roz blames her by saying it’s her fault for falling for Robin. She repudiates Becky’s sympathy for her. And so Becky rightly calls her on throwing Leslie under the bus.
How does Becky know all this though? She wasn’t in the hallway and I didn’t take her to be one to keep up with local gossip
Well it’s not just local gossip at this point, there was a photo in the newspaper. At this point even if she hadn’t seen the paper she would have overheard people talking about it.
For people who’ve been keeping up to date on the fallout of Jeff Varner and Zeke Smith from Survivor, this storyline is scarily hitting home.
I wonder how many of us there are that read DoA and watch Survivor. At least two of us I guess?
I haven’t seen Survivor but I heard about it on some entertainment-news type show while flipping channels. Apparently a young man got surprise-outed as trans, during a super-stressful reality show, on national tv; did I get that right? The news network apologized afterwards, but jeez louise. That’s all I know.
Pretty much. Although, I will give the show one thing – they did apparently ask if it was alright to leave that scene in and they agreed.
A quick summary:
Varner (a gay man) was in danger of being eliminated from the show. Meanwhile, he had worked out from contextual clues that Zeke (a transgender man) was trans. When the contestants met up to decide who would be voted out, in a desperate ploy, Varner outed Zeke as trans and claimed it was an example of his deceptiveness, also saying that he was making secret alliances with everybody else.
Every other contestant and the host immediately ripped into him for outing someone without their permission. Varner realized to his horror what he had done, and he became the second person in over thirty seasons to be uninamously voted out without an official vote.
To his credit, Varner seems to be in immense guilt ever since; according to him he’s been combating suicidal tendencies for months afterwards, and he got fired from his job a day after the episode aired. Not condoning what he did by any means (I’ve been watching the show for several years and it was the first time I had to physically turn it off and look up how the rest of the episode went online), but at least he realized how badly he screwed up.
HOLY CRAP
Daaamn that’s awful.
Good summary. I would have said something much nastier. Probably involving the word “banjo”.
How the hell do they justify airing that? It’s not like that shit is filmed live
They requested the person who was outed’s permission before airing it and they said it was okay to air it.
Okay, that’s pleasantly surprising.
Final Panel:
1.Good news Walky, you kept them from fighting (for the moment).
2. Bad news Walky, you’re now their mutual target.
But it’s really nice how Becky and Joyce can joke around like this. Since it means that Joyce is perfectly fine with realizing she was prejudiced, and it also implies that Becky is much more removed from her crush on Joyce than some of us thought.
…
Also update on the cancer. Due to the hyperthyroidism that’s being caused, my regular doctor and my psychiatrist agreed that I should temporarily up the doseage of my meds. Which is kinda making me feel kinda cloudy right now.
Good news for Walky: he’s the target of measuring stares rather than the angry glares he interrupted.
Love and light be with you on the cancer front.
Hang in there, your body will adjust to the new dosage in time. One day at a time.
it probably helps that her girlfriend lets her play with her hair
Think this is the second time Roz has been called out. Leslie called her out too, which got Roz to storm out of the classroom.
Becky is more of a peer of Roz’s with lived experiences being a lesbian. In a fundamentalist community. Having lost her father. Who was an abusive f@ckwad who chased after her and Dina with a gun. Pointed the gun at her and Joyce.
And Becky is direct and LOUD.
Also GO BECKY.
Somebody get Roz some ice!
I kind of wonder if Becky’s reaction to Roz is a little bit of protectiveness over Joyce.
well that and probably herself
roz doesn’t really realize how dangerous what she’s been doing can be
It is pretty ironic that there are two pictures doing the rounds.
One, of a probable rapist, is met with scepticism and resistance.
The second, of two women kissing, is openly shared and the two women in question are derided and their careers are both put in jeopardy.
It’s pretty true to life, unfortunately. :c
:[
Comic Reactions:
Oh man, this is not going to be one of my more popular analyses. Ah well, sorry folks.
Panel 1: Becky is in the Gender Studies class! Becky is in the Gender Studies class! Oh, this is going to be absolutely beautiful.
And her calling the smaller classrooms “Anderson-sized” is so adorable and sad. The latter because that size is a reminder of the past that she carries with her and all the bad memories that came with it.
Panel 2: Can we just take a second to bask in this moment?
Cause, Becky grew up not only being told that who she was was a sinner, but also being carefully kept from any knowledge of any gay people. Even now, she’s met a few other queer folks who are her own age, but this is a teacher, a person of authority who shares her sexuality.
And that means everything. One of my early teaching memories that has really stuck with me was teaching classes at a museum. It was the first job I was out to as trans and unfortunately, once HR found out about it, they started a very unsubtle campaign of discrimination and intentional dehumanization. This marked the beginning of the really bad years when everything in my life was going wrong. But during that time, I had a class and there was a little trans girl in it so I called her up, let her be the volunteer for the demonstration and did my thing. And afterwards, the mom of the kid stayed behind and asked me to speak more directly with her daughter.
Apparently, her daughter was only newly out herself and super nervous about everything going well and didn’t really have much in the way of trans role models in her life, but seeing me up at the front of the class meant the world to her. Because seeing an out trans teacher in that position of authority meant that she mattered and could succeed.
And I’ve tried to respect that ever since.
So for Becky here, to be able to see someone like her for the first time in the front of a classroom with everyone paying close attention to everything she says? That’s going to mean the world to her. And you see it in her excitement here.
That that teacher is also Leslie who is awesome is just going to make it all the better.
And oof, even Joyce knows about the news about Leslie. Not good.
That means almost every student in that class is going to have heard the news version and also be putting two and two together with the awkward messed up aborted class last time with Robin defending all her most heinous decisions. Which means a far few might be ready to go to scrap with Leslie.
And we already know that Leslie struggles with classroom management.
This is going to be a shitshow in the worst possible way.
Panel 3: Oh, man, I fucking love this panel.
Like, out of context of the reality of the characters and their words, just the image is like… oh, so beautifully queer. Two women in flannel. One full of butch confidence, putting her arm around the other as the other blushes and softly looks their direction.
In a different world, say the one Becky’s fantasies used to occupy, this is the beginning of a queer coming of age story.
But in context, it’s still beautiful. Because it’s a reclamation of what was a traumatic moment for both of them. For Becky, because her romantic love was unrequited when she was homeless and desperate. For Joyce because it was the moment that she realized that her “love between friends is pure and must be returned” was hopelessly naive and she couldn’t return her friend’s feelings and also because she began to realize the harm the homophobia she had been raised with was causing others.
That moment was awful for both of them, but here, it’s a light-hearted joke and a bonding moment.
She was smitten with a prejudiced girl once upon a time, but now the sting of that is lessened now that she has her dino girl and that prejudiced girl has very little of that old homophobic prejudice left in her.
It was a long time ago and this moment is a sign of how much they’ve healed and grown.
… Okay, yeah, this next one is going to earn me some probably well-deserved flak.
That museum story tho. <3
I love how clear it is that no ghost of Becky’s crush on Joyce is lingering over either of them. Not the slightest hint of either of them feeling awkward about bringing it up, even while Becky’s got her arm around Joyce.
I don’t know what it is, but something about the way those two are always so (very literally) close just makes me happy.
In the news recently, I’ve seen a study saying that dropout rates for black students fall off drastically if they have even one black teacher in elementary school. The effect lasts throughout the school years and may even affect college plans.
Representation matters.
Panel 4: I sympathize a lot with Roz here. Cause she’s making a damn good point. Robin isn’t just prejudiced, she’s prejudiced in a way where she’s using that prejudice to make it harder for others to live and give legal power to the campaigns of people who would gladly see all queer people burn if they could get away with it.
And for Roz, more personally, she had her freedom curtailed to serve against her political beliefs in defense of that monstrous campaign. Being a family prop for her sister against every ounce of her moral beliefs and in service to something she sees as openly hurting people. So yeah, she bristles at the attempt to make this cute, because to her, this is serious and she’s already been rounded on at least once already for celebrating her freedom from the toxic hell she had been chained to for so long.
And on that outing, she wasn’t responsible for it, but again, I come from a background that makes it real hard to look down on celebrating those outings of anti-gay politicians when they occur.
Cause like outing is awful and horrible and for those without power, absolutely devastating and potentially fatal. But I came of age when everything was shit with regards to queer rights. We were losing, regularly, more and more states passing DOMA style bans of even the possibility of gay marriage, almost no state had any form of ENDA, and the bigots were openly fundraising against us, using us to prop up harmful candidates who were hurting huge numbers of people.
Any victory we had was snatched away after all our hard work by a machine so much more well-funded than ours could ever be.
And then anti-gay politicians started getting outed. Like a lot of them. Even the head of NARTH, who were winning over and over again and convincing folks not only that gays couldn’t possibly be trusted to raise kids, but that gay kids should be sent to reparative therapy camps.
And it defanged that powerful movement. Cause people saw more and more these folks ranting about how gay people were monsters needing to be destroyed and rendered homeless and killed while slipping off in secret to hire us as sex workers, fuck us in truck stops and airports, and otherwise exploit us sexually.
And that resonated. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert mercilessly mocked them. People started cracking open jokes about angry homophobes being secretly gay where they had previously defered to these “obviously holy men”. The social power left and it allowed the magic 50% mark to be cleared and all the rights that flooded from that to come to pass.
And so, that’s what I remember. That marked my activist coming-of-age and yeah, I cheered when some of these bastards, including bastards that used my image to fundraise against those like me got taken down or mercilessly mocked. And now that we’re losing again, I think of how much a game-changer it would be if someone caught Mike Pence sneaking off to a rent boy or Brian Brown soliciting a trans sex worker.
Maybe that makes me an awful person, but I think if I’m going to be honest with myself, I somewhat share Roz’s belief that sometimes an outing can be a powerful tool for resisting an awful hate-fueled movement. Because hypocrisy moves the mushy middle even if they claim otherwise, especially if the hate movement is selling themselves on their moral superiority.
OTOH, Becky has every right not to trust that someone who is willing to out someone else in the way Roz did (which specifically ended up with Leslie in the crosshairs). Leaving aside the larger ‘is it ever justified’ question, I’d feel the same way in Becky’s position.
Also I can’t remember if Roz is straight, but if she is that definitely adds a dimension to her celebrating the outing of two queer women and implying Leslie is a bad person for her crush on Robin, then turning around and saying that Becky, a recently out lesbian should trust her. Because that signals ‘not a safe straight person’ pretty hard.
Hear. Fucking. Hear. And also hugs.
Personally, I see this as “doing the wrong thing for the right reasons”. It doesn’t help that the pacing and focus of this webcomic won’t allow us to see the bigger repercussions of her actions. Not soon enough, at least.
So I can sympathize with her but I also feel she did a very shitty and harmful thing. Things aren’t usually clear cut, specially those that matter the most.
I agree that Roz was on board to roll the ball what could have been and turned out to be very shitty and harmful thing.
I disagree nonetheless that it was the wrong thing.
As for outing in general and outing Robin in particular, I do see a large difference. As I understand it, those other examples were of figures leading double lives – anti-gay activists publicly and secret gay affairs. Robin, on the other hand, while she is the anti-gay activist, seems to have been in deep denial about being queer herself. I don’t think there’s any reason to think there’s a string of secret female lovers in her past.
I think this makes a difference for a couple of reasons. One is that there’s a good chance that Robin’s policies would change if she could be made to realize that she was herself queer. The other is that I really doubt Robin would be capable of keeping it secret once she realized it herself, so the moral question of outing nicely goes away.
Another difference is the examples Cerberus named were doing things that were exploitative and morally condemnable (as in, using their positions of authority and power to manipulate vulnerable people for sex). Robin has boundary issues, but they’re pretty within normal range for someone making a traumatic personal realisation.
I feel like I’d agree with Roz 100% if it were literally anyone else saying it, but Ros willingly and unabashedly helped orchestrate the events that led to this, knowing they could lead up to this, and with little to no remorse when this was what happened. So coming from her it seems hypocritical because Roz just isn’t very self-aware.
You can help someone attempt a liaison with a homophobe. You can call someone out for attempting a liaison with a homophobe. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Because how can you HAVE cake if you’ve already EATEN it? That doesn’t make sense. You’d need, like, two cakes. And then you’re a cake bourgeoisie, and your cakes need to be redistributed to the cake proletariat, and it becomes a whole thing.
Panel 5: That all being said, just as I empathize with Roz’s point and position, I also fully feel Becky’s response here. Because yeah, of course she’s not going to feel the same as Roz about this. She was never plugged into the hate machine like Roz was and had it define so much of her life.
Instead for her, outing represents the worst hell of her life. Being stripped of her family, her home, her education, leaving her stripped down in ways she hasn’t even fully begun to recover from. Outing is fresh trauma and razor blades to her and so someone celebrating that, even against an “awful person” isn’t going to move her to sympathy, because it cuts way too close to home on some very fresh wounds and she’s going to be much more likely to be sympathetic to the person outed.
Especially because she belonged to that hateful movement that propped up folks like Robin. And so it’s easy for her to read it as Roz shitting on her directly.
And it likely doesn’t help that Roz is interjecting here as if she was responsible for that outing (which is an image she worked hard to project earlier in the hall) and in direct response to them talking about Leslie who is someone Becky is super excited about meeting as the first queer person in authority she has ever met in her life and is so awesome she got Joyce to completely rethink how she approaches queer issues.
So yeah, she’s going to feel at threat and like she’d be quickly dismissed as collateral damage, because, yeah, Roz is dismissing the damage and awfulness happening to Leslie as collateral damage even though she’s very aware that Leslie tried to break things off and that the current situation is very likely her sister’s fault rather than Leslie’s.
And that dismissal is going to sting like hell and Becky is fully in her right to push back against that and remind her of how she has considered Leslie in all of this.
Panel 6: Oh, Roz… Like, on one hand, yeah, she’s right. She has a strong moral code and giving up a homeless queer youth as collateral damage is not something that’s very down with that moral code. But on the other, she’s wrong, because well, she is treating Leslie as collateral damage in this celebration and does have some hand in the event given that she tried to urge Leslie to seduce Robin in the first place. And she certainly is not showing much care or concern for how badly Leslie’s reputation is being hit by this “scandal” and the likely damage it has had to Leslie’s standing in the general queer community or with regards to her employment or ability to be respected by her students.
Like, Becky’s right, if Roz didn’t view Leslie as collateral damage, she would have tried to check in with her before class and see how she’s doing. But she didn’t. And that speaks a large volume whether that sits well with her morals or not.
Panel 7: Oh Walky… Oh Walky… no. Just no, dude.
I think this 3 part analysis is spot on. It definitely does remind us of what Roz’s view and background going into this is. At the same time, it very clearly examines and explains why a distinct group of us are feeling a little peeved at Roz’s statement. Because it feels like Roz wrote off Leslie as an “acceptable loss”.
And the trouble is, on a personal level, once you’ve seen someone write someone off as collateral damage, you know it’s something they are capable of doing to anyone. They have demonstrated there is a threshold beyond which they will absolutely and without compunction through someone else they know under the bus. You can never be sure you won’t end up as that person.
I mean, no Roz wasn’t directly responsible for this outing, but she was certainly involved and doesn’t seem to be shying away from that fact.
I’ve been saying for a while now that, IMO, Roz is a lot more like her sister than she’d like to admit. Both see other people, including their supposed “allies”, mostly as a means to their own ends. In public, they’ll say what they believe those other people want to hear, what will get them on their side, get them liked… but it’s all very deliberate and calculated, and in the end, all about R___ and getting what R___ wants.
Getting what R___ wants is a damned infuriating way of insinuating through simplification that Robin’s desire for political power somehow is an equivocally selfish thing to Roz wanting rights for other human beings.
See, I think what Roz really wants is more freedom for herself. To get out from under her family’s control and big sister’s political shadow and live her life as she wants to. (Which, apparently, involves some sort of political career of her own.)
Any causes she takes up to that end are the means, and any benefit to people not named Roz DeSanto is (depending on just how cynical one wants to be) an afterthought or a bonus.
( “YES! The Evil Queen is dead, I’m free!”
“And… the people. The people are free.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.” )
( “Now what?”
“Well, I’m gonna go through her closets and try on all her gowns ‘n crowns, see if there are any I like… you can stay and watch if you want, I don’t care.”
“….”
“No, really. Don’t care.” )
If Roz wanted only freedom for herself she wouldn’t spend a goddamn astounding sum of time and dedication and effort lobbying and advocating and volunteering and dirtying her hands for the sake of advocating for reproductive and human rights. Look at what she does with her free time. It’s not only to benefit herself. She could live her life the way she wants to without starting a scandal. The scandal is to effect change and it’s a lot more work than doing what it takes to get what you want by being selfish.
orrrrr she wants to be a politician herself.
or already is, where it counts.
and could she, really? or can she only get out from under her sister’s public image/political career by destroying it?
Haha oh my god stick a pin in that first one since I’m able to argue it right now, I’ll explain later.
And yes. Yes she could. Passing out condoms in the hall to remind people to bang safely is not conducive in and of itself to destroying Robin’s political career, yet Roz spends her time doing this of her own volition without any prompt for the requirement of lights and cameras. Roz believes in these things. Roz believes so much in these things I am uncertain how anyone could be mistaken on it. Taking the petty, personal victories when they come doesn’t mean that’s actually what she’s fighting for.
I don’t think it’s entirely selfish, but her primary focus it women’s reproductive rights. And she straight up claims Robin’s outing as a “victory” for that cause rather than any LGBT+ cause. And it’s that kind of behavior that gives me red flags about Roz.
The thing is though, Leslie was OKAY being “an acceptable loss” in terms of this plan. Roz doesn’t know about the circumstances in which Robin broke into Leslie’s house without her consent.
I’m giving Roz leeway here because while she did engineer a plan to out her sister, she hardly manipulated Leslie.
Roz did not plan to out Robin. Her plan was for Robin to come to class, presumably afterwards she’d get to talking with Leslie, she’d realize A) she was an asshole and B) She was bi, she’d STOP being an asshole and then hopefully come out of the closet and hook up with Leslie (those last two not necessarily in that order).
She didn’t plan to, no. But she’s willing to take it, and all the collateral damage that Becky calls her on, as a win. Her own words.
Roz gets what she wants. That’s all that matters. Mission accomplished.
All I said was she did not ‘engineer a plan to out her sister’ as Derek said she did.
This is getting said a lot, and it’s bullshit. Roz’s plan was for Robin to be outed. She wanted Robin to do it herself, but failing that, she was happy someone else did it for her. Those were her own words.
Being happy someone did it anyways and planning for it to happen are two different things.
Stating that your intention is for someone to be outed on the other hand… Roz wanted her sister outed, she said it herself. “I wanted her to out herself, but this I will gladly take.” Everything she did was in furtherance of that goal, and she was more than happy how they got there, to the point of taking credit for it. “I just threw an election in their favor”. “I”. Not “whoever did this”. It’s willful delusion to try to convince yourself that she didn’t want or intend this.
She wanted her sister to come out. That said, she’s not upset that her sister was outed, she’s happy, as she is now unlikely to be re-elected. Again, her plan is for Robin to come out. She’s also said her plan was for Leslie to talk Robin into not being an asshole – “I think she needs to hear this stuff from a constituent her own age.”
Also – “This I will gladly take” = “This isn’t what I planned, but it’s an acceptable alternative.” Key words: not what she planned.
You don’t have to plan something to be happy about it.
Even if she did want someone else to out her, she did not do it.
I think a lot of Roz’s reaction to Leslie has to do with the student-teacher relationship on this one, and that Leslie may have disappointed a lot of Roz’s expectations on that one going into it. I don’t at all think Leslie “should have known” what she was getting into with Robin considering, honestly, nothing in the world can prepare someone for meeting someone capable of ruining your life as callously as Robin has, but from Roz’s point of view–having lived with Robin herself for 18 years, and having gone into this holding Leslie in the view of someone older with more life experience and an MA, who’s supposed to be teaching them–and the multiple times she flat-out warned / expressed what Robin was like out loud I can see why Roz would think Leslie “should have” been prepared for something like this. Roz has lived her whole life in some degree dealing with Robin being an irremovable presence in her life the way Leslie is just dealing with for the first time.
dont you love that eighteen-year-old feel when you expect adults to know more about the world than you and are extremely…disappointed
When you are a student and having to accept their authority it’s the most infuriating thing in the goddamn world.
It’s pretty hard for me to cut Roz much slack for being disappointed in Leslie because of the “student-teacher relationship” here. She was the one working to set Leslie up with Robin. She didn’t try to warn Leslie off. She facilitated it, even suggesting more cleavage to seal the deal.
Mind you, all that was inappropriate for Leslie to discuss with a student and it was a failing on her part, but it’s still hypocritical for Roz to react badly to it, after setting it up.
You may be right on that.
Great analysis! This strip was hard for me to disentangle so I mostly came to the comments for your analysis and i think you were spot on!
Thank you Cerberus for your wonderful analysis. This strip was a bit confusing for me at first, but reading your analysis helped me with understanding both Becky and Roz’s points of view!
Leslie worked very hard against great resistance to get to an adjunct job and a small place of her own. Now she may lose that and be on the verge of homeless again, with a firing on her job history. Yes, Roz is OK with Leslie being collateral damage and she faces some severe damage indeed.
Also love that Becky is echoing Carla on this.
At least for me, what I hear in Roz’s words that bothers me isn’t so much acceptance of collateral damage, but the attack on Leslie for being smitten with her sister in the first place. A crush, which while it was pre-existent, only became something other than a fantasy with Roz’s active help.
Which now makes me wonder if Roz hasn’t actually been as sympathetic to Leslie all along as I thought. If when she first saw that crush, she wrote Leslie off as “the enemy” and was quite happy to entangle her in her plan to bring down her sister.
I’d thought that the plan was to use their mutual attraction to get Robin to listen to Leslie, realize she was queer and for that to lead to change, but maybe it never was.
yeahhhhh
For me, Roz is a great activist. She champions feminist causes, supplies information to people that need them, and does her best to promote feminism and other movements. She’s obviously well educated and well read on social justice issues, and has probably been involved in them for years. Her sister is a conservative politician with very harmful views, and I’d guess most of the people around her either believed those same things, or didn’t care enough to speak out. So Roz knows how politics work, knows how to fight back, and is willing to do so. That’s not easy, and this is obviously more than just a “stage” or “stunt” to annoy her sister. She’s used to being the most progressive person in the room, and as she told Leslie, she could probably teach the class.
However, its moments like this that show that she’s a bad ally. She doesn’t seem to care that Leslie was collatoral damage, and even though she didn’t take the picture, she knows her sister, and she knows the game. She took advantage of Leslie’s crush, and to her that’s ok because it advances the cause. She’s also talked over Leslie in class, which wasn’t just ignoring that she was the professor, it was ignoring that she was talking over a queer lady about queer issues. There are legitimate complaints that Leslie has acted unprofessionally with Roz, which is true, but Roz never really treated Leslie like she was her professor. Roz also gave Joyce shit for not realizing that queer people were people, which isn’t fair since people come along at different rates, and Roz knows Joyces background. Based on how she’s treated Dorothy before and at the party, and her comments about Joyce, I always got the feeling she took pride from being more feminist and progressive then them. And there is nothing wrong with taking pride in your accomplishments, as long as it doesn’t turn into scorn again people who aren’t as far along as you are.
Roz is a good person, and she’s going to go on to do great things. She has the same drive and ambition as her sister, and that’s good. In my opinion, she just has to stay away from the trap her sister fell into where she forgets the trees for the forest. Its great to fight for a cause, but you need to also remember the people you’re fighting those causes for.
@Blind… I’d have to disagree with “”Roz is a good person.” She’s worse than her sister when it comes to the forest and trees bit. Robin has actually shown more willingness to help people on a person to person basis, it’s her attempts to justify her politics (or what her handlers tell her are her politics) that gets her in trouble.
Yeah, I might not go as far as to say that Roz is necessarily a “bad person” but, and maybe the point where I divide the classifications is different than most, I balk at the idea that she’s a “good person”.
Even if she’s got the makings of being a “great person”, its rare to see her even attempt to treat anyone else even decently at least on panel. Quite a few of the times she has done so quickly reveal that she either benefits directly from doing so, or she feels like it’ll advance her cause.
And hey, maybe she’s “necessary” in her own way to that cause, but at the same time, she’s the sort of person who also pushes people away from the cause with the sheer amount of her self-righteous fervor for it. Gloating about things and using the victories of her personal agenda to pump people’s opinions of her up don’t sit well either.
Fighting for a just cause, does not make one justice. The same goes with supporting good things not innately making a person a good one. And people who are just being people, can do good or bad while claiming to be doing either, and there’s a lot of things that make me feel uncomfortable with calling Roz ‘good’ even if she’s done things that have resulted in good.
No no no no no no no, no.
I think the Roz things that I take issue with stem from her VERY personal take on them, despite maybe proportionately leesss lived experience? Her activism is very much from the insides of these problems. She feminists from the position of a woman, but she also queer campaigns from VERY close to a queer experiential position. Which she doesn’t necessarily have. and she has HELLA personal stakes in Robin’s whole thing- which she has trouble keeping in proportion. I have the same problems with my PERSONAL investment in SJWing from a barely-marginalised-at-all position- holding space in my head for other people and for lived experience and actual expertise is HARD, it takes work and practise. Roz doesn’t have that down- all the fight is HERS, HER FIGHT. and it’s not, really.
Your weirding of language makes my brain hurt.
Nice defection, Walky.
Nice moment between Becky and Joyce. Even if it hurts they don’t let it fester. Whatever else they are, they are still best of friends.
FUCKING THANK YOU! I’ve never liked Becky more than this very moment.
I once described Robin as someone who would burn your house down because she refuses to accept that her actions have consequences. Roz will burn your house down because there are spiders in the attic and she doesn’t really care about your house as long as she gets rid of the spiders.
She withheld information from Joe that she should reasonably have expected to influence his decision to consent to the sex tape. “Oh, by the way, I’m doing this to deliberately cause a political shit storm that you’ll almost certainly get caught up in.” She didn’t give a shit about what would happen to Joe as long as she got what she was after.
I don’t believe for a second that Roz is so naive that she didn’t expect this to happen. Leslie was going to flirt with Robin until she realized she’s queer and have a sudden change of heart? And nobody is going to take pictures of a congresswoman in public in the midst of said flirting? I don’t buy it. Leslie, however, was smitten. She was motivated to believe she could reach out to Robin and find the decent person underneath. She desperately wanted it to be true. Roz took advantage of that and damn the consequences.
What was it Carla said to Ruth? “I’m used to being someone else’s acceptable losses”?
Fuck that noise.
Joe consented to the recording and the leaking of the sex tape and has never given the vibe he gives a fuck about being caught up in a sex scandal and Leslie signed on for this…whatever situation that has unfolded with Robin. And I am really deeply creeped out at the implication that a Roz (a child) took advantage of Leslie (an adult) and that Leslie’s intentions should be written off as so innocent and pure and not allowed judgment. She willingly conspired with Roz and if we’re not going to believe that Roz could be so naive how naive exactly do we believe Leslie to be? In all of everyone’s justified irritation with Roz I think we’re all forgetting that Leslie is a fucking adult, a teacher, and an authority figure over Roz. Roz is an 18 year old child and between Leslie and Roz the one who should have been able to see how this situation could spiral and get a handle on it it should have been Leslie.
You’re right. Leslie has some responsibility here. I’m willing to give Leslie a pass because (1) she was still smitten when she allowed Robin to talk her into going for a drink, and (2) maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think I would have considered the possiblity of a photographer catching me if I had been her, and (3) the picture could never been as damaging to her reputation as Robin barracading (sp?) herself with Leslie in Leslie’s house is going to be. (Which is not something I think Leslie could have reasonably considered as a possibility.) Roz, while immature, is coming at this from a much more clear-eyed perspective than Leslie. I would also say that Roz’s agenda is a bit more far reaching than Leslie’s. Leslie wanted to do something about her crush no matter how ill-advised it was. Roz wanted her sister to come out as bisexual and/or end her chances of winning the election.
First of all Joe has issues which would make it hard for him to admit to not being okay with being taken advantage of sexually by an attractive woman. He most likely would have said yes anyways but I’m with Danny on being upset that she didn’t ask. (Although its quite possible she did tell him and he didn’t pay attention so no reason assume she did wrong on that account.)
By the way Roz is right now blaming Leslie for her crush on Robin. Its possible she was just telling Becky that Leslie is in a worse situation but that’s what it likely sounds like to Becky. That is likely what Becky is responding too. If people have complete control of who they are attracted to why would people choose to be attracted to people others will give them shit for. Why is Becky choosing to be homeless if she can choose who she is attracted too. Roz is right now essentially blaming Leslie for having a problematic crush that is essentially what homophobia is.
You are giving Roz a lot more credit than I think she deserves for how this played out, and forgetting that Leslie is supposed to be the “adult” in this situation, not Roz.
Roz straight-up warned Leslie multiple, multiple times that her sister was awful. Roz had no illusions that her sister was going to have a change of heart, Roz has tried to change her sister’s attitude for years, but by now she’s changed tactics thought Leslie was an adult who was capable of realizing that and knew what she was potentially getting into. Roz with her attitude toward casual sex probably isn’t capable of comprehending how much a fantasy of singular infatuation can impact a smitten person’s behavior with regards to someone who’s, honestly, awful in real life once they’re outside your head.
Roz has defense mechanisms in place from living through 18 years of the hell Robin put her through. And if Robin’s house is, per your metaphor, full of spiders in the attic that keep spreading and biting people until they die? Then Roz damn well going to be happy if she could in any way help start the fire that burns it down. Leslie being burned in the process was something Roz, an 18 year old freshman full of activist fury, thought should have been foreseeable to anyone who’s seen a fire before and knows that fire = hot even if she hadn’t gone and tried to spell it out.
Also I’m so excite for Becky to meet Leslie, cos Leslie IS DA GUD ADULT and LESLIE CAN HELP except, perhaps, not today, today is going to be brutal.
I love seeing this becky like shit. Dang Becky. You got her number. This is an acuity that I didn’t really expect, but in retrospect you can see it elsewhere
honestly i think becky is super good at reading people and situations just in general
Becky doesn’t have a choice. Others can be oblivious, but she knows that not reading a situation correctly is dangerous. Abused children, homeless people, soldiers in harm’s way. Hyper-vigilant and it still doesn’t fully protect them.
yuuup
i mean that’s how that skill develops, but it is still a super useful and super important skill, and once you can accept it as a part of your skillset it’s a really cool skill that not everybody has, as well as a very useful one.
To be honest, I don’t get why Roz decided to butt in, or what point is she trying to make. She’s clearly talking about her sister there but why? The conversation was about Leslie and how Becky wants to meet her. It just seems like an unnecessary attempt to steer the conversation to a topic she can talk her mouth off about.
Which is honestly seriously dumb.
Also, I don’t think Leslie even needs to know that Roz might have leaked the news, she’s still most likely having some choice words with her. About how her insane sister won’t leave her house, I think.
The path to hell is paved in good intentions. Roz had the best and most noble (or so she would say), but this is her shit show. This is her fault. I mean, she was so fucking proud of it last time we saw her! She might not be able to control what Leslie or Robin do, but she got the ball rolling. She wanted this or something to the same effect to happen, damned be the consequences.
I think she got involved because she objects to comparing Joyce, a mostly harmless but assy 18 year old, to Robin, a grown ass politician who should’ve known better. Hence why she emphasizes the position of power and that Robin is a woman, not some little girl.
And Roz didn’t leak the picture, she’s already said that wasn’t her. Her role was arranging Robin to come to class, which lead to them going to the bar to talk about why Robin was asked to leave. Her original plan was that they would get to talking (probably somewhere private, considering Leslie wanted to hook up) and hopefully Robin would realize she was an asshole and knock it off – if they hooked up in the process, bonus for Leslie! Win-win-win all around. Everything after Robin got kicked out did not involve Roz other than she invited Robin to the classroom.
It gives me the feeling she’s measuring both experiences, when they couldn’t be more different. And still, they are very similar in the point Becky touches. Focusing on the differences and bringing the attention to herself is unnecessary.
Roz wanted to change her sister by having Leslie seduce her. Yeah maybe Roz imagined Robin would have a quieter change of heart (although she knows her sister, right?) and that Robin would come to see the error in her ways and start working to right her wrongs.
Yet we saw her happily showing the news to everyone, even if she didn’t leak them, because exposing her sister in the worst possible way ever is also an acceptable outcome for her. If she wants to use that then she’s getting the whole package.
I said it above, Roz means well. That doesn’t make her any less shitty than she is.
The point Becky touches is what Roz is objecting to, because it conflates Joyce and Robin, when Robin is far more dangerous and did far more harm than Joyce ever could have.
Roz said she wanted her sister to come out of the closet – she also told Leslie she thought Robin needed to hear from someone her own age to make any changes, as she didn’t take her little sister seriously. The whole point of this was a change of heart, for Roz. Her being seduced was up in that mix because Leslie wanted to bang her.
But who asked her? I doubt she was going to walk into that classroom unnoticed, but she just basically went and said “well my sister is worse”.
Feels like a disservice to Roz to think she didn’t know just how badly could her sister potentially fuck up.
Yes, because she just overheard someone saying an 18 year old asshole and a politician who votes to remove LGBT+ folks are equivalent. They are not. Joyce is nowhere near is bad as Robin is and pretending she is is a massive disservice to Joyce on her WORST day. You don’t have to be involved in a conversation to overhear and object to someone saying things that are very much untrue.
Talking about how Robin could fuck up the plan and what the plan actually was are two different things. Roz may have known Robin could fuck their plan up (hence why she kept asking if she and Leslie were still going through with it), but that doesn’t change what the plan was and it was not ‘change via seduction with no change of heart required’.
Roz didn’t leak the news. If she’d leaked the news you can bet your ass she would be owning up to it. What happened was from her perspective a very unexpectedly lucky twist of events in a best-case (or worst-case, for Robin’s political aspirations) career. And I would carefully consider what “damned be the consequences” here means because Robin winning this election, Leslie never meeting Roz’s sister, and Roz keeping her hands squeaky clean would have had, if thorough inaction, some different and potentially horrific consequences too.
I didn’t say she did. Phrasing is off; more like she’s going to be the prime suspect regardless of what she says.
This is just me, but I would never screw over one person to make a positive impact on a larger scale. I can respect those who think otherwise. Heck, I respect Roz. Doesn’t mean I have to like or support what she put in motion.
I used to feel that way and I understand why you do. And in some ways I agree. I don’t think I could, for example, kill another person to save myself, someone I cared about even if it came at the cost of that loved one’s life or other innocent lives. But I could screw someone over who I thought deserved it in a heartbeat if it meant saving others the pain of living with suffering potential, awful consequences of that person’s actions. I can see why you would not do the same and would not support me in doing so if I did that.
I am glad you say that you can respect those who would feel this way, and I’m very glad you have stated your respect for Roz here. But what you wrote of her before spoke very little of respect and was full of contempt, which is why I was arguing in the first place. Not condoning and castigating someone’s actions are kind of a different beast, and like everything else they come in degrees.
Yeah, but I’m pretty sure most of us are mainly having a wary dislike of Roz here due to her being fine with the end result screwing over Leslie’s life too, all the while seeming to walk off scot-free of any accounting for her part in the plan.
I personally am not beat up about Robin at all in this situation, but the way Roz seems to be not only just cutting loose any connection between her and Leslie previously as well as pretty actively trying to sour Becky’s viewpoint of Leslie leaves a really bad taste in my mouth about her.
Especially with thinking back to her treatment of Joyce and specifically thinking it was her right to hold Joyce to account for not actively rebelling against everything her religion had done in regards to homosexuals for the previous 18 years of her life. Everyone is apparently to be held accountable for the ‘wrongs’ they have done according to Roz, it seems. Except for her own, which maybe she doesn’t even see. Or try to look for, since she is part of such great causes.
Personally, I have little respect for such a person. I am probably the sort who would just freeze up, or perhaps would be unable to make a difference in any actual crisis or major issue, but personally I can’t really stand the thought of sacrificing someone else for the greater good actually being something someone good would do. Or would crow over like it was a personal victory, while also not even trying to provide any support to their co-conspirator. The way in which someone does something says more about them than what they do specifically.
And its really looking more and more to me like the main difference between Roz and Robin when it comes to human decency is who the acceptable targets are. Well, that and the fact that Roz has a maturity level higher than perhaps a four year old.
Why would she suddenly own up to anything now. When Roz get called on yelling at Leslie for some imagined favoritism, and Leslie called her on it, she gets mad and storms out. Can you show me any example of Roz owning up to anything?
I can, actually.
In fact, Roz ‘storming out of the room’ was literally Roz conceding it was indeed time for her to shut up and go outside like Leslie asked.
Roz is almost never polite about it, but fun fact, she actually appreciates being called out on her shit so she can learn.
My biggest issue with Roz is that she thinks she’s all about justice but fails to recognize her own hypocrisy. She doesn’t like what her sister does to please people to stay in power and yet was all about becoming RA to please people despite the fact that she didn’t want to and that Dorothy actually cared and wanted the position. Her comment in panel four is full of judgment for both her sister and her teacher for having a crush on her sister. Yet she was actively encouraging the courting.
There’s lots of examples really, and I don’t necessarily hate Roz. I just think she should spend some time on inner reflection rather than judging everyone else in the world so harshly.
At the end of the day her heart’s in the right place, but she’s way immature at the moment. Which, we all were at once! God knows I was. It’s just not always pleasant to watch.
Ah, to be 18, and know everything about how the world works, again…
I think it’s probably because of the way the sentence is structured (and the way it’s a fragment), but I can’t tell what Becky’s on about when she snaps at Roz. Somebody clarify, please.
Roz not being sympathetic to Leslie “knowingly” (from Roz’s point of view, who has been dealing with Robin her whole life and knows what she’s capable of, and assumes wrongfully her older gender studies teacher would act in full awareness of the the stakes in a way that’s separated or should be from a personal level) walking into the shitstorm that is Robin DeSanto is not the same as Roz being willing to do the same to a girl in Becky’s situation.
Leslie was their teacher. That doesn’t excuse a goddamn bit of the hell Robin has put Leslie through, but I do honestly believe it does excuse why Roz would or should not be 100% sympathetic as we are to Leslie’s plight. I have said before and will say again that Leslie is just now experiencing in a span of days something that Roz has had to deal with every single day of her life. Roz may or may not be straight (I’ve no reason to think she is, but you could make a case for it) but she does think of Leslie as an adult and a professional and someone who should be accountable setting an example for their class, and she’s shown not comprehending really that Leslie’s infatuation with Robin isn’t something that’s taking place on a coldly logical level where Leslie has put Robin’s real-life actions in perspective alongside her feelings. Infatuation does powerful things to people. Roz has built her personality over refusing to buy into fantasy of any kind romantic or otherwise if it means getting shit done and I don’t think she quite realizes the emotional impact this is having on her teacher, because when you’re a kid (eighteen, but honestly, eighteen is not much separated from a kid in U.S. terms and I don’t treat it as such) you don’t expect your teachers to be less capable than you are of protecting themselves from danger that seems plainly obvious. Roz’s biases aren’t taking into account Leslie’s life experiences and I don’t think we can fairly expect them to. Roz has so much anger at what her sister has done and has tried every other route that at this point, she will gladly celebrate an outing at morally unsound costs if it means an election that won’t be hurting the girls her own age that Roz sees and sees being vulnerable every day.
Becky is perfectly justified for thinking of Roz as a monster for doing something like that to the first bona fide Lesbian role model Becky’s probably gotten the chance to meet in her life, but WE know the story from all the angles and I’m getting pissed at how many people are discounting Roz’s reaction to the insinuation she’d do something like that, to someone like Becky, purposefully and willingly. They are perfect strangers but I have no doubt in my mind Roz would take a bullet for Becky without thinking it for a second (and, more importantly, I believe 100% she’d give Becky any real and practical help she could if their relationship were on the level of trust that could be extended) and she’s so viscerally hurt at Becky’s acting like Roz thinks of her as collateral damage that it infuriates me to see people cheering it on even if it has a very clear ring of truth in the same breath. Becky is still the very image of what Roz has been fighting for with what’s going on in Robin’s career right now. Roz has witnessed that Leslie herself straight-up admitted that she couldn’t justify her attraction to Robin considering how Robin’s policies would have impacted her the way they could / will impact a homeless lesbian girl like Becky now. Roz is eighteen and full of herself and she needs to let herself open back up to the small-scale impact of what she’s advocating for after so long throwing herself into the bigger picture mindlessly to protect herself from Robin’s horribleness being a personal thing she has to live with.
But Roz is a good person, dammit. I will fight tooth and nail on this. She would never hurt Becky on purpose. She was born into politics and fighting for the greater good even when it means getting her hands filthy is something she thinks of not as a personal victory (even when it is!) but as a moral obligation.
Dude. Yes, Roz is a good person, but Leslie has experienced more oppression at the hands of people like Robin than Roz ever will. She was disowned by her family for being a lesbian and was homeless for a while. Leslie was Becky, and had to fight long and hard to get where she is today.
And you’ll note that Roz had no problem with Leslie’s crush on her sister while they were conspiring together. Now Robin’s campaign is up in flames, Roz has what she wants, and suddenly she’s getting all judgemental about it? It’s not a great look.
If she doesn’t like people like Becky thinking she might throw them under the bus “for the greater cause”, she could stand to show a bit more compassion.
I don’t disagree with you about Robin’s attitude, but your comment actually reminded me of something: The last time Roz and Leslie spoke together.
Leslie said she couldn’t act on their plan for Leslie to get to talking with Robin and convince her she was wrong and maybe have Robin come out on her own volition and they’d bang, because Robin was too despicable and trying to do so was a mistake on Leslie’s part that she felt damaged her credibility and was outside her moral boundaries.
And the next day there’s a picture of them (from Roz’s POV) looking like they’re very very much on a date.
Do you think that might be why Roz is annoyed with Leslie? Like a “Screw you, it was outside your moral boundaries to talk her out of her shit, but it was okay to go on a date with her?” kind of deal? Basically what I’m asking is – do you think she might be mad at Leslie because, from her POV, it looks like Leslie’s enabling Robin by (again, far as she knows) dating her without saying boo about Robin’s shit, after turning down a plan to change Robin’s mind and getting her to come out on her own?
That’s possible, as is Roz reacting to the comparison rather than Becky’s defense of Leslie. Those would be much more understandable reasons to be upset, though I don’t get the clear impression that either is 100% the case. Hopefully she just doesn’t realize how harsh it would sound, but we’ll find out once Leslie arrives.
Yeah, I’m eagerly awaiting her next chat with Leslie.
Roz could stand to show more compassion and you’re 100% right on that. And I also agree that the kind of oppression Leslie experienced is not something Roz has ever been faced with or ever will be and her actions and attitudes reflect that.
However I also believe the oppression Roz has experienced under Robin is not negligible or invalid even though it is obviously very different. Roz has not faced homelessness and that is an extremity of marginalization that is dire in a way she hasn’t gone through firsthand. Roz has also had to fight tooth and nail not only to separate herself from her sister’s godawful beliefs and political machine, but also to try and undo the damage she sees Robin doing to vulnerable, because Roz knows that if anyone’s in a position to do so on Robin’s own turf it has to be her. And it does have to be on that scale. That’s the system we live in. As good as it is to show compassion, sometimes compassion comes at a cost. “For the greater cause” is something easy to smear in a hypocritical light, and that’s a valid reading of it concerning Roz’s actions on the micro level, but putting that statement in quotes and dismissing it to focus on Roz’s personal moral ground entirely ignores the horrible reality that “for the greater cause” is in so many cases the shit that determines whether girls like Becky are going to be homeless for the next two years as well as the last. Roz is fighting for Becky. Becky has every right to be suspicious of Roz’s actions from the point of view of a newly and violently uncloseted lesbian girl but Roz also I think can’t be faulted for feeling hurt that Becky would treat her and Leslie’s situations here with total equivalence.
And I will not concede your noted point that Roz had ‘no problem’ with Leslie’s crush. Roz was flatly and unflatteringly incredulous of Leslie’s infatuation from start to finish from the moment they hatched this out, even as she was willing to work with it. She had a very hard time believing someone in Leslie’s position was capable of crushing as hard as she did on Robin, even as Roz was willing to play it to both suit her own and Leslie’s machinations. ‘You knew her politics,’ is one of the first things out of Roz’s mouth when Leslie aborts the congressional visit to the class in crisis. Roz can’t hold an understanding or capability of being able to deny the truth of what Robin is in a way Leslie has been able to, fantasizing from a distance. Roz has not even been able to keep her distance and it has cut her compassion down from the outer edges into what she is on the surface. Roz thought Leslie was barking up the wrong tree from day one but she figured Leslie being older and supposedly more educated knew all the same what she was getting into, none of which means Roz was genuinely hoping Leslie would get her wishes the way she wanted them–that requires a degree of hope and optimism that Roz just doesn’t have. I think Roz would have gotten plenty of satisfaction from Leslie doing a 180 and swearing off her sister’s image forever instead of going the other way into the spiral of how things have played off now. Roz thinks Leslie ought to hate her sister and Leslie herself agrees with that sentiment out loud even though she can’t control her feelings.
that whole paragraph obviously should not have been italics soz, i’m not THAT emphatic on the whole darn thing
Also in hindsight I think I’m mistaken asserting Roz never thought Leslie might be capable of changing Robin’s heart, or that it wasn’t her original goal in setting them up to do so. I still don’t think she was super optimistic of her chances but she’s an activist so when Roz saw the attraction that seemed to be there she acted on it in the hopes of getting Robin to “out herself” (in Roz’s words) and maybe change her viewpoints where Roz couldn’t.
That doesn’t stop Roz from being happy if / when her sister fails these hopes and ends up politically jeopardized anyway, because Roz’s sister is kind of a shitbag congressperson.
Nice post. Really–very definition of “fair and balanced.” (OK, maybe Roz does have lines she won’t cross.)
I……help me out, I can’t tell which specific parts of this are meant sincerely and which are tongue-in-cheek from the mixed-signals punctuation
And, even though it’s so obvious I keep forgetting I have to point this out, Roz is not accountable for what is going on right now with Leslie and Robin and even if Roz wanted to she couldn’t mastermind such a grand political shitstorm herself in a hundred years. What’s happening here has gone above and beyond Roz’s wildest dreams. Is she going to celebrate the political windfall and, selfishly, own vindication in turn knowing that what Roz was arguing to Robin was indeed founded on suspicions that Robin herself was queer, and stood to be damaged by her own policies? Hell yes she is.
Does that make her responsible for it the way Becky is insinuating? OF COURSE IT FUCKING DOESN’T ROZ ISN’T BATMAN.
Roz is responsible for her own actions and words. She butted into a conversation, and deliberately made challenged Becky’s assessment of what’s going on with Leslie and her sister in. I don’t care if she celebrates her sisters predicament. I do care that she feels the need to pile on to her sister in such a way to throw a fair amount of shit on Leslie, even though she was an active participant in this situation.
She’s 18? So what, as college student the shit I did was still my shit. And Roz did deliberately get this ball rolling. What Robin and Leslie do is on them, but Roz is very much treating Leslie as acceptable loss in a rather callous manner for a fellow “conspirator”.
Roz hasn’t seen Leslie in person yet and Roz has every reason as a newly enrolled college freshman to think she can hold her professors to her own higher standards, even as that itself is a flawed ideal.
Robin is a horrible person. Roz has seen Leslie acknowledge Robin is a horrible person. Becky saying Robin is “prejudiced” is both true and also a massive understatement because “prejudiced” is different when the person with biases is deciding things for other people. Leslie knew Robin is a congresswoman backing horrible policies that would hurt people, and Roz knew Leslie knew this. That Leslie has been victimized so brutally by Robin despite these things isn’t on Roz to feel personally accountable for because as far as she knew that Leslie was aware, Leslie should not have ever thought Robin would treat her as a human being. Roz is an asshole here and she treats Leslie as collateral damage but from her standing position Leslie seemingly every chance in the world to like, not go right and stand right under the roof before the house caved in. And Roz has lived so long with the awfulness Leslie is experiencing now it’s going to be hard for Roz to conceptualize what Leslie’s going through in this moment being dehumanized by Robin DeSanto personally for the first time up close and personal.
Yes Roz does have a right to hold Leslie to a higher standard, and I have no issue with that.
Yes Robin is a horrible person, and it would and is a special hell to be someone like Roz living with someone like that.
No Roz is not responsible for Leslie ignoring the warning signs and letting lust and a dream of converting Robin away from her party platform.
I don’t blame or wonder at Leslie getting a crush on her. Crushes are like that, they don’t care if the other person is good or bad for you. But that’s not Roz’s problem.
Nor am I surprised or hold it against Roz that she wouldn’t realize how Leslie is doing in the face of Robin’s direct awfulness. She’s to close to it for that to be a practical thing for her to realize at the moment.
Roz is responsible for her actions in actively creating the opportunity for them to meet. Roz was looking for something to derail her sister and she took the opportunity presented her. She is not so unaware that the current situation was not one of the possibilities she had thought of.
She’s complicit. This is a negative for me on a personal level, but on a political
level I can see the argument that it was necessary even if I disagree.
My beef is in how Roz felt the need to “correct” Becky about how bad this “prejudice” was. Despite the conversation not being one in which Roz was part of. The framing definitely was damning of how Leslie had “allowed” herself to be in lust/love with Robin. Like people get to choose their crushes, bullshit.
When you’ve gone out of your way to hook up someone to a person you know is that toxic. Well you get to own some that shit, even if your a wet behind the ears 18yr old.
Look I find Roz an interesting character if a bit toxic to some of the cast. I think that if she can ever make a clean break with the DeSanto’s she’ll be in a better place too support the causes dear to her heart.
I really don’t know what you’re arguing here or at least what part of it goes against what I’m saying, i.e., that Roz isn’t a bad person that I’m willing to defend her actions even in the face of Becky’s comments above about “collateral damage” with regards to Leslie.
Roz has lived with Robin for 18 years. She’s not down with people being cutesy about Robin’s viewpoints and “prejudice” being something you can just treat as a belief at surface level. She doesn’t think Becky should relate to Leslie because she doesn’t think Leslie really ought to have been so very infatuated with Robin as she was on a personal level instead of just the physical. Leslie herself believes the exact same thing. Roz is complicate, Leslie was complicit, this went a lot further than either of them expected and Roz isn’t getting upset about it. She’s upset that people would ever, ever defend her sister. Her horrible horrible sister. Even Leslie to Roz isn’t exempt from that.
Exactly, but not quite the way you meant it.
She’s taking Becky’s excitement at meeting an adult lesbian in a position of authority, the first one she’s ever met, and trashing it by blaming Leslie for something she herself helped set up.
I might be wrong, but this reads to me as a deliberate attack on and discrediting of Leslie and it’s making me rethink a lot of the interaction between them.
Well, Roz’s last impression of Leslie was in class and at that time Leslie acted ashamed all of a sudden for being so infatuated with Robin, which is what first clued Roz in that she and Leslie might not actually be on the same page for what the purpose of the whole seduction plan was for.
I think she was disappointed at Leslie’s reaction to seeing Robin in person because Roz assumed Leslie knew already what Robin’s beliefs were based on how she campaigned and branded herself politically. Then she found out Leslie was idealizing her sister to the degree of not being realistic with herself about what Robin’s talking points actually were.
So I do think Roz’s words here are in some degree said with the conscious-or-not intention discrediting Leslie to Becky, and I think that’s dickish, actually, and that Roz is kind of an asshole for saying it. But I don’t think what she said is incorrect or that she has no basis to say it either.
Basically I’m calling out Roz as being an asshole in this moment.
The point Roz wanted to make was neither called for or needed by
Becky. Becky’s quite aware of the issues at stake. She was just being a friend to Joyce and offering reassurance in the face of her worries.
Roz just reacted to the statement just had to explain why it was so much worse. And the way she did it was rather negative in many ways.
Today I’m expressing less favorable impression of Roz here. In the context of what I know of the story, of the shit my family pulled and the stuff I did as a new college student plus how blind I was at the time to how it impacted others. Also Roz is sharp strong willed and a lot more on the ball then I think you give her credit for.
I completely agree with you on all of this so I guess that’s that.
One thing we can also all agree on: Robin’s career /should/ die.
She deserves no power, or happiness for that matter.
It’s just a shame that it would take something like this to come to light, rather than the fact she’s a complete monster with policies which harm vulnerable people. I guess sometimes that’s the nature of the game. And we have no proof Roz took that photo resulting in the exposure. Roz got the ball rolling on attempted seduction, but Leslie went in her eyes wide open about it at the end of the day. So I’m kind of ‘eh’ on the idea of being angry with Roz. Mildly ticked at her for not having a moment of solemn relfection on Leslie, sure. But it’s kind of like, in some ways, being angry with Leslie in this game, and honestly Leslie has far more life experience to know what she was trying to do was ridiculous. And to not fucking hold hands with such a creature at a public bar for god’s sake.
Honestly only the fact Leslie has such far reaching repercussions, and the fact as a fictional character in this narrative I’ve been made to sympathies with her which kind of tempers my own anger at her- if I was someone who actually lived there in this universe, as someone who is wlw I would kind of be screeching internally: “What the blue HELL was she thinking getting involved with that piece of utter shit?!”.
Actually hmm that’s interesting- I wonder if Leslie is in any active local LGBT organisations. What is their reaction? And hell wider online LGBT reactions? Do some see it as a clever pincer move? A valid attempt but something which adds to the idea of outing as punishment? (A continued debate and one I’m not so sure on myself). An utter betrayal? Probably a mix honestly. I could see one person going through all kinds of emotions, especially if they only vaguely know her/know her by reputation. Hell even friends might be upset and rightly so.
Overall my only fault is Roz not having thought of how Leslie is doing/having some moment aside to look at what people online might be saying on her teacher and having some reflection on that. Granted I do somewhat suspect the internet is more focused on Robin’s failings rather than Leslies right now.
I get so much ookiness from people claiming that someone else ‘doesn’t deserve any happiness’.
Doesn’t deserve any power, yes. Hell yes. I can list people all day, hell, all lifetime, who don’t deserve the power over others that they have.
But ‘doesn’t deserve any happiness’? How about people who champion social justice causes start with respecting the basic human right of pursuit of happiness and accept that in fact, yes, they don’t get to judge who does or doesn’t ‘deserve’ it? That nobody does? That dignity, food, shelter, physical safety and happiness are something LITERALLY EVERY HUMAN BEING IN EXISTENCE deserves just by the merit of being alive?
Gaaarrh. It’s one thing to prioritize someone’s happiness below someone else’s because they were being horrible, but to go around judging who deserves or doesn’t deserve happiness period? HOW ABOUT WE DON’T DO THAT
Dude. No. There are people who don’t deserve happiness and we all know it. Are you saying Donald Trump deserves to be happy? Fucking self named ‘alt righters’? Fuck no. They deserve to be utterly miserable as the waste of spaces they are. They deserve to be ground into the dirt until they finally wise up. Not everyone deserves to be happy. It’s pretty much an utter fact. Deal.
Putting aside all my thoughts and feelings about Roz, I just want to say: SOON BECKY AND LESLIE WILL FINALLY MEET AND I’M EXCITED.
I’ve been wanting this to happen for a long time, because Becky really needs to have an adult in her life who will be on her side and both willing and able to help her. Leslie can be that person.
I just hope she WILL be that person, since her personal life is currently blowing up in her face and she might be a little distracted.
The thing is… Roz doesn’t like Joyce’s belief system; she never has but she doesn’t consider her morally equivalent to Robin. That was the point she was trying to make. She certainly wouldn’t consider Becky and Leslie’s respective crushes to be comparable in their implications.
What Becky is saying in return is that Roz has internalised enough of the DeSanto family’s political amorality that she has little right to stand in judgement of others. I can see where Becky was coming from because, irrespective of what she actually wanted and actually did, the way Roz was using Robin’s outing as the first entry in her political resumé when she was trying to get appointed RA made it seem like she manipulated Leslie into destroying herself to spite her sister.
The lesson? Don’t too publicly dance on someone’s grave; you might give others the impression that you pulled the trigger and didn’t care who was caught in the crossfire.
I don’t think Roz knows that Becky is talking about Joyce. She just assumes that Becky’s crush isn’t on a congressperson.
And again, the fact that she set Robin and Leslie up means that Roz is not blameless here, even if she wasn’t involved in getting the picture. Roz, Leslie, Robin, and whoever did take the photo are all at fault.
Roz would do well to learn guilt and shame, as she could then improve herself.
why the heck should Roz be guilty and ashamed for the fact that two adults consensually (as far as she knows! at this point she doesn’t know that Robin is a home invader) started a relationship that became public? She suggested it and helped get things started, but Leslie knew what was happening the whole time.
Perhaps Roz should feel bad on behalf of Leslie for enduring this media shitstorm, but shame? I don’t agree
good move on breaking the tension, walky
I feel like I missed a scene or two where these ladies talked at each other.
I mean, I didn’t think Becky knew Roz all that well. The comment isn’t undeserved, but I think I missed the part were Becky even learned who Roz was let alone learned enough about her to deliver that kind of criticism.
I agree with you there, I still don’t know how Becky knows Roz at all so I’m assuming all she knows is about the time Roz blew up at Joyce because Joyce told her about that?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/gambit/
Although Roz denied taking the photo in the previous strip, she was still taking credit for “throwing an election”. I think we’re meant to assume word got around.
The thing that really bothers me about Roz’s character is her seeming ability to turn the emotions on and off at will and how she seems totally indifferent to the negative consequences her actions cause.
It’s not clear whether or not Roz masterminded the situation that outed Robin and thus ruined her political career, but what is clear is that when it did happen, she was there taking credit for it in her RA campaign. That’s honestly almost as bad even if it all happened by accident. She’s clearly indicating that she’s more than prepared to throw good people (Leslie) under the bus in service of whatever her opinion of “the greater good” is.
Roz is also acting really indignant here and previously in this class she went off on Joyce and couldn’t seem to calm down even when Leslie called her out on this. Yet, at the same time, she rooms with Mary and seems to have no issues with this, even though you would expect this situation to drive her insane. Roz seems to be able to turn the emotions on when it benefits her cause and shut them down when it doesn’t, and that gives me a really creepy vibe.
For fuck’s sake, helping Leslie seduce a woman that both Ros and Leslie both agreed and acknowledged as being an objectively horrible political influence and a bad person is not throwing Leslie under the bus. Roz knew Leslie knew Robin’s politics and Roz saw that Leslie wanted in anyway. Roz helped. She didn’t mastermind what happened and her celebration afterwards is because she didn’t, and this went beyond what’d she’d hoped was possible happening after the disaster in class. Stop putting “the greater good” in quotes like it’s something you can dismiss out of hand sarcastically. The greater good matters, dammit. Roz being willing to be a creep who’ll get her hands dirty doesn’t make her indifferent–what makes her sharp-tongued and willing to go that far is seeing so acutely the consequences of what happens when no one takes any action at all. Roz is prepared to throw Robin under the bus, not Leslie. Roz thought of Leslie as an equal in this. She thought they were conspiring to change Roz’s sister together, and this political shitstorm happening instead was a happy turn of events that still got a net turn of good in hurting Robin’s election.
Honestly, I feel it is very important to be very suspicious of arguments based on, “the greater good” because some of the most horrific things in history have been done in service of that ideal. This is especially true when your greater good position involves fucking someone over now in exchange for an uncertain potential benefit in the future. (Robin might get elected anyway) It’s very hard to get off that road once you start down it.
Remember, the political right also has their own idea of what the greater good is. The politician that says, “Well, this piece of legislation will completely fuck over the trans community, but they’re less than 0.5% of the population, so I don’t care” is also pushing his ideal of the greater good, and the result is awful.
Agreed. Especially when a straight person is invoking the ‘greater good’ for gay people as a reason to be okay with the suffering of, for instance, a recently publicly outed bi woman and the lesbian who is now caught in the crosshairs of a public sex scandal, the fallout of which will definitely open her up to being targeted by homophobes. (But it’s okay! She was gay for the wrong woman, so obviously she deserved what she got. Roz cares about the well being of GOOD gays).
You know what? Yes I am being hyperbolic. But it’s a very, very uncomfortable thing to see people talking about how this conduct is all totally ok because Roz has the greater good in mind.
I know that it is uncomfortable. I am sorry expressly for anxiety I am causing by trying to insinuate (I am not) that outing someone for any reason is something you should be able to do with a clean conscience. My aim is to point out that what Roz is celebrating is something that isn’t just a floaty ideal, it is an action with historical precedents that can and have changed momentum for the way human rights are governed–and in this particular scenario it’s done that for lgbt/queer communities.
Ok. I understand where you are coming from and I appreciate the clarification. My main focus is to say I feel the discomfort and negative reaction to this situation shouldn’t be minimized and the uncomfortable implications shouldn’t be minimized because there is a long term plan for the greater good. People are hurting now, and that’s important as well. It’s especially important that the nature of that hurt in the present is specifically colored by LGBT oppression and homophobic reactions to outings.
I’m not trying to say the long view isn’t important, and I see that you aren’t trying to say that what I’m talking about isn’t valid. I don’t think it’s demonizing Roz to react negatively to this insensitivity, and I think that understanding it is a deeply uncomfortable thing, I also think that it’s valid for people to have visceral negative reactions to it, and I guess that’s why I started to get worked up. I felt like people were implying there was no reason to have these reactions. I understand this wasn’t your intent (and I don’t want to single out just you), I’m afraid I got emotional, and there were a lot of little things, some of which I still find it difficult to articulate, contributing.
No, I get you. You’re good. I hope I’m good by your book too and you can probably tell I also get super emotional arguing stuff like this as well.
You are good in my book. : ) Thanks for understanding. I think the whole discussion surrounding this strip has been a lot to unpack and has a lot of nuances, and I genuinely appreciate your point of view.
Robin might get elected but everyone and their grandmother is not shutting up at this moment that it probably hurt her chances. History indeed has moments where acting for “the greater good” is a fancy way of covering for atrocity or where people act on what they think is good when it’s actually evil. But this is like, just laid out in fact, on a level we can see a matter of Roz willing to see her sister outed for the sake of this election.
The political right having their own idea of what greater good is doesn’t make their ideas valid. Their ideas are not valid. Fucking over the trans community is not valid. It is evil. Good and bad mean different things for different people and that changes among societies over time but if we can agree that humans should have rights that need to be respected, then we should also work to make sure those rights are respected for as many people as we can.
what on EARTH gave the impression she has no issues with Mary? You don’t have to complain about a person 24/7 to have issues with them
Tell you what, more of this Becky and less of the wacky Becky and I’ll be starting to like her
actual self-confidence!! what a world
Lot of people itt defending roz and conveniently ignoring everyone who beings up that she is currently a straight woman who loudly celebrated the outing of one queer woman and is now pouring contempt on a lesbian for being attracted to the wrong girl. Regardless of the details, that is going to leave a bad taste in a lot of mouths.
Especially when she was super happy about Leslie’s crush when she could use it, but now it’s something she can conveniently use to imply to becky ‘no, you shouldn’t relate because she’s way bad’.
As for the greater good, how convenient for the suffering of this queer women to be totally kosher for the straight girl not to care about to acheive her greater good. After all, she, a straight girl, is for gay rights! Why don’t the silly gays realize that the suffering of gays is only okay to her when it applies to lgbt people who are bad? How foolish of Becky not to see that!
Seriously roz isn’t evil and its absolutely understandable for her to be happy about being out of robin’s control, but there are legit reasons not to like her conduct here.
Oops, sorry Chris, Zoelogical, I meant to post this as a comment, not a reply to y’all.
I’m not conveniently ignoring anything and I don’t think we could assume at all Roz is straight, though I’m willing to concede why there is argument / evidence for it.
Roz’s conduct is plenty dislikable, in fact for the most part I’d be the first to say Roz is kind of an asshole. And Roz was NEVER “happy” that Leslie had Robin on a pedestal or had a crush on her. Roz saw Leslie’s infatuation as inexplicable and baffling and doubtlessly self-defeating, maybe even dumb (in her opinion) but that didn’t stop Roz from being willing to work with it. She thought Leslie knew what she was getting into and what Leslie was getting into was (in a best-case scenario) the pants of a lady that pushed for laws that hurting Becky now in very real ways. Wanting Becky to see this makes Roz inconsiderate but you’re really laying it on here.
We don’t have to assume Roz is straight. We have it as Word of God.
Okay! Can you link / cite me on that one, since I haven’t seen the actual confirmation?
Nevermind, I found it! Per Willis Roz has in fact stated herself as straight (which is something I’d forgotten, and frankly surprises me) so I’ll drop my argument on that front.
roz you forgot to wear plaid. it’s the day everybody wears plaid roz. roz. you forgot to wear plaid
If only this was another “Joyce dresses everybody!” days…
i think she didn’t get the memo about secret sapphic day
Those situations are only tenuously comparable Becky. For one thing underneath her prejudice Joyce has actually shown herself to be a relatively good person who cares about the effect her actions have on the people around her which is completely unlike Robin who is self-obsessed to a dangerous degree and has effectively zero regard for how she hurts other people so long as it doesn’t affect her.
Fuckin’ tell it, Becky! Woo!
Finally someone tries to make Roz understand that ends don’t justify the means.
I hate that I feel I have to argue this but sometimes, they actually do.
The debate is whether that applies here.
And sometimes it isn’t as clear cut…
And if Robin loses this election in the universe of this comic–and I’m starting to think she won’t, but I’d hope she does–then I think it applies 100%. And if Robin’s career is damaged by this and that impacts her ability to keep creating policies that hurt entire populaces on such a scale then yeah I think it’s better to have been done even as much as I hope for the best of Leslie getting out of it.
I strongly suspect that Robin hasn’t created a single policy in her entire career. That’s work and thinking that she’d work would be missing the whole point why she went into politics – To have power and privilege without actually having to make an effort to gain it.
SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO WRITE IT.
Robin is like her voters. She leans towards whatever has the right letter by it. Get it “right” letter (heh). Not because she’s malicious but because it’s easy. She probably didn’t even read that bill. Whether this is worth vilifying her for is up to each’s personal opinion and can be debated. I personally think only her career should be forfeit (although there is considerable risk considering the implied citizenship of the district she represents someone even worse could take her place) She shouldn’t have been outed, that’s a huge violation of her privacy for basically doing what 90% of politicians do.
The question is always to whom the means are justified to.
A future history might justify the means, Roz definitely believes the means are justified, but…does Leslie feel they were?
Justification is about acquitting or absolving people for their actions. Something she’s not willing to do for Leslie, despite her own complicity in trying to talk her into acting on her impulses towards Robin.
Her doing it for the “greater good” also leaves the question of “whose greater good?”. Apparently its not Leslie’s greater good, and often at least in my experience people who tend to claim that line of reasoning are the ones whose “good” the means were meant to achieve. Even if its just destroying the career of a politician whose policies hurt other groups of people, I can’t help but question at this point at least if that wasn’t more to satisfy her own ego than it was to actually help the individuals in question.
Sure it doesn’t mean she’ll necessarily throw just anyone under a bus, and she might even be hurt from the implication Becky makes that she’d do so to Becky. But it shows that she’s willing to toss people under the bus for her personal view on whatever the “greater good” is and that its more an issue of whether doing so is actually ‘good enough’ to justify the “cost” she feels would have to be paid.
So, yeah, we’re just going to have to disagree for now about how “good” of a person that makes her. As well as how dis-likable she is.
Not that a person who contributes to the future betterment of existence for people has to be a good person, or a likable person, or even necessarily a person who tries to do good things. Hey, if we’re lucky, one of these days she might improve in some of those regards due to people like Becky calling her out when she deserves it. Honestly, not sure how much “justification” she has to complain, since she basically said she was “justified” in doing the same thing to Joyce previously before Leslie shut her down by mentioning that she was a Straight girl talking over a lesbian who had been telling her to shut up for 5 minutes.
Chloe: “Sorry Roz, we’ve decided to keep Ruth as RA, ask us again next year.”
Roz: “That’s bullshit! She’s far worse than you realise!”
Chloe: “As in….?”
Roz: “Like an un-enrolled person is squatting on our floor?”
I can virtually guarantee that this happens.
I am stunned if you or others truly believe Roz would ever do this.
Doesn’t take much to stun you. This is the girl who compared herself to a supervillian like she thought it was a good thing.
Are you seriously going to use that silly joke as your first argument?
That certainly wasn’t the first argument. I think Roz’s action speak for themselves. I wish people would stop excusing her behavior.
Roz’s actions are speaking for themselves from my vantage point and they’re not telling me Roz is in a million years going to try and get Becky thrown out.
Roz is not Mary.
More like “Like her fucking one of her charges while she’s in a position of power over her? Like her hitting us or threatening to hit us? Like her being fresh out of a suicide ward and in need of a break, which she herself will tell you? Like her ADMITTING we deserved better this morning? Jesus, take your pick, there’s gotta be a million examples.”
Yeah, if Roz wanted to fuck over Ruth, Becky doesn’t remotely have a claim to the best argument.
I want to see Becky high-five Leslie, for several reasons.
*hugs Becky*
Help I love Becky now.
Okay. First – y’all are prolific today, and I have a lot going on, I haven’t read everything so if I am repeating someone’s words… great minds…?
My thoughts –
Thank you, Becky. Always, speak up. Roz actually needs a friend like you to call her on her shit.
Roz did use Leslie. Yes, Leslie is an adult. Yes, Leslie should know better and shouldn’t be able to manipulated except for a couple things – Leslie is a teacher and Roz is a born politician. Widely different skill sets. Leslie might think that meeting Robin and “seducing” her is going to lead to nothing more than a few dates and Robin changing her politics and stuff. She wouldn’t think about political fallout as a matter of course. She is a normal person. Roz would think about that though. She would think about all the Machiavellian shit because that is what the DeSantos do. Roz knew her audience, and got Leslie to agree to meet Robin (her crush) and then arranged for her to meet her again in a bar.
The photo. Roz did not take the photo. But, she did know where they were going to be. It is possible that she leaked that information – not that she would need to – but she could have. And now, she is treating Leslie like collateral damage. As was stated up the thread, she hasn’t checked on Leslie, she doesn’t care. And, she knows her sister. She’s knows from 18 years of dealing with Robin what she can be like. I have a feeling that Roz will not be surprised to find out about Robin’s new career in home invasion.
I also wonder if deep down Roz isn’t a little mad at herself, because maybe she didn’t quite think it all the way through this time? Maybe, she didn’t intend for Leslie to be collateral damage. Because, I always had the opinion before this that she really liked Leslie. Like she wished that Leslie didn’t have a crush on her sister because her sister is so messed up, but since she did, she was going to make it work. And, now, maybe she’s seeing just how much worse this is for Leslie than it is for Robin. Now, these last thoughts are mostly about the fact that Roz is 18, not actually evil, and I think that this is where she starts to learn that the ends don’t justify the means. At least, I hope she starts to learn that lesson….
I actually don’t think Roz arranged for Robin to meet Leslie at the bar or played any part in that? Robin made it sound like she came back to see Leslie of her own volition and was using Roz as an excuse to come back and talk to that
cutecool lady teach’ again.And, um, about that Machiavellian stuff…
Good point. I completely forgot that comic.
Roz maybe deserved that jab. Just a little bit.
(I like Roz but she is sometimes very hard to take.)
“There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment about the nature of sin, for example,” said Oats.
“And what do they think? Against it, are they?” said Granny Weatherwax.
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”
-Terry Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum
This should be on the top.
+1
@Felgraf Roz could use a good does of headology right now
Discworld stuff is really great for these sort of quotes.
That ceTerry Pratchett was amazing with language, and with characters. I’m really going to miss him.
I’m gonna say something. And it’s gonna be controversial.
I rather dislike Roz.
Hell yea
See, the funny thing is that liking Roz is seemingly also controversial.
So, you know, probably best to just like her or dislike her according to your own feelings on whether you like or dislike her, cause your opinion on her will be controversial either way.
*high fives becky* killer burn
It seems to me that Becky goes from “vaguely aware about the situation” in panel two and three to “knows exactly who’s doing what and why” in panel five. Is this a case of sloppy writing or sloppy reading?
She knows the situation, but she’s never met Leslie.
gODDAMN GODDAMN GODDAMN BECKY FUCK IT UUUUUUUUP
see i fuckin LOVE THIS because becky knows that her position in the dorm is a sort of hush-hush conditional very limited deal and it’s not a matter of whether she’s going to end up on the streets, but which authority figure is going to be responsible for that. roz, whose name was (and as far as becky’s aware, still is) in the running for that RA position, is a skilled politician and is generally able to manipulate social justice language into gaining her at least the begrudging respect of her peers. but becky who has REAL PROBLEMS is not fooled for a second. she acts aloof but she knows exactly what the deal is and in order to have it on the table she has to handle herself with a degree of foresight and tact and diplomacy that roz will never ever ever ever come CLOSE to.
because roz has manipulated people in the name of her own social cred and is celebrating and actively furthering damage to two lesbians for her own petty bullshit and becky fears god with a sincerity unmatched by anyone in the comic (even joyce) and so she’s got a good eye for that kind of….. overt evil
also….. i love the overt acknowledgement of becky’s crush on joyce. that’s suuuuch an important part of being a lesbian and having becky’s personality type (which i am and i do) is being able to talk openly and unashamedly with all your friends youve macked on about the times youve macked on them
roz has a competitive streak with leslie, btw. she’s relishing right now in leslie’s loss of reputation because it’s helping roz establish supremacy and authority, which are things roz chases pretty much for their own sake. she might be vaguely on the progressive side of things, but that’s just the means she uses to the ends of her own personal advancement, and that’s something obvious to becky
Well, at the very least its a way to justify past and future disruptions of the class by painting her in a better light than the teacher, if we want to go full cynicism about it.
Honestly, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who sees Becky’s retort as being connected to Roz trying to get into a position of power that could be used to destroy Becky’s life. Calling her out on her will to do things (including using the outing of two non-heterosexual women to push for approval ratings to make a play for the RA position) based on her own prejudices.
Because lets face it, Roz’s stance is highly biased. Whether that bias ends up helping or hurting the people she claims to be an activist for she’s already decided her stance and has a very locked in viewpoint about what that means about people.
Well, and the fact that she signed up for a Gender Studies class with the viewpoint of already ‘being able to teach the class’. I mean I suppose one could take her responses as snarky rebuttal…to the teacher of said class who she has never actually seemed to have any respect for, but I’m not sure Roz actually respects anyone, or at least not anyone but herself.
I always got the feeling that she was “progressive” because her sister was “Conservative”