It could be that Dan is suddenly thinking of reasons he can blame this on himself. Ie Dan previously would have considered the list as merely some foolishness on Joes parts. He did Joe some favours, and it was likely to backfire on Joe (cause he’s a fool), but really not Dan’s problem to worry about.
But now Dan’s mind will be saying “you made this! You risked the safety of all women around here! You should have taken care of security! Sexual Predators are your fault, as is anything bad that happens in the future!”
That he might have done it … is possible. Maybe to get this very thing: that Joe spend more time with him; he has Danned things up before. But this would be epic-level Danning. :O
And “caught” implies our sexual predator was not outright murdered by Amber. I’m conflicted about that.
If you stretch the definition of castration beyond its breaking point, vasectomy? Some men have some masculine hangups about the procedure, but it significantly reduces the instances of unpleasant surprises.
Then again I may be the worst person to confirm that for you as I reliably spend at least part of every day in what would be considered “weird” parts of the internet ;D
I’ll give you a serach term: ball busting
It dosn’t seem like it’d be Joe’s *thing*, but on the other hand he does seem to be a kind of sexual jack of all trades, willing to take a dip in anything at least once
For a reasonably sized subset of submissive men both castration and the threat of castration are definitely a kinks.
With the persona Joe projects it seems unlikely that he’d be (openly) sub or switch, but there is also a subset of dominant men and women who enjoy the interpersonal byplay of a relationship with a dominant partner where both parties are trying to exert their individual dominance over the other person in the relationship and I could see Joe being into at least the idea of that with the idea of a threat of castration being an enjoyable part of that for him.
Nah dude, think it just means “you thought you knew me well enough to rate me an eleven on a one to ten scale on a list of desired intimacy and you really didn’t need to know crap about me to do that.” Which is a quality of which I think Rachel would not be a fan.
Yes! And THIS is why so many women see these kinds of “ratings” as degrading rather than a compliment, even when rated highly, because it demonstrates that to the person making the judgement, how hot you look is literally all they need to know about you; that you’re a decoration, not a complex, sentient being with thoughts, passions, ambitions, values, virtues and flaws, desires and fears, and all of the other varied and sometimes contradictory features that make other humans worth interacting with.
“You’re pretty, so you’ll do” is actually not very flattering. But it’s pretty much impossible to explain to someone who thinks like Joe.
I took it as meaning that she was particularly threatened and endangered when the list was published, because Joe had designated her as an extremely desirable target for sexual predators.
I’m picturing a dramatic reveal like the one at the end of “World Enough and Time”, although I have no idea why Matt Smith would need to visit IU and dress up as Rachel.
I’m more leaning to him realizing what he created. Joe might’ve created the content, but Danny created the medium, and… yeah. It’s not terrible for Danny to be feeling guilt over this.
Yeah, I’m really torn on how this could go. That he leaked the list was my first thought, too, but at the same time I can’t really imagine Danny being bold enough to leak it himself.
So, this could be a realization of “Okay, I always thought these things Joe does were gross, but maybe they’re not as harmless as I always thought…”
It would provide some context to his ‘Jacob wouldn’t have done this for you’ line from earlier if it turns out he engineered the situation. I had felt that line seemed somewhat odd.
And notice that she actually shows concern for other women, in that she might be repulsed by what Joe did, but she wouldn’t risk the safety of other women to get him in trouble over it.
This is something Joe (and Danny) desperately needed to hear. I don’t think either fully realized the implications of the list beyond its obvious misogyny.
I think now that Danny gets it, there’s no way he’s gonna keep being Joe’s friend if Joe refuses to understand it. And Joe doesn’t want to lose Danny. He doesn’t understand here but he’s gonna or he’ll be in for a world of hurt
Danny is attached to Joe, and I think he’ll try his absolute best to get Joe to see the error of his ways, and I would like to believe it’ll work!
But if Joe refuses to change, Danny will find new, less shitty friends and move on. He already started that process when Joe was ignoring him and generally being an asshole every time Danny was looking for support. I want to believe that since Joe has shown he doesn’t want to lose Danny, that threat will be enough to get him to listen.
IMHO, that’s something a lot of men don’t realize when they single out women by sl*t-shaming them, insulting/bullying them, spreading rumours about them, etc. (in person or online). Such accusations are reprehensible enough by themselves but can also *literally* put women’s safety, well-being, and lives in danger.
Maybe Danny meant well. While I have some issues with the current online phrase “intent is not magic,” I think it applies *100%* here. By trying to “teach Joe a lesson,” Danny may have put the safety of who knows how many women on this campus in serious danger.
Ooooh, you think Danny leaked the list?? I thought his last line was just him realizing that this is a lot more than just women being pissed off about being rated by some douchebag on campus.
Thanks! I see this as a great example of privilege in action – when you are used to always being safe in a particular situation because of who you are, it doesn’t occur to you that someone else with a different identity might *not* be.
See below for my thoughts about Danny leaking the list; basically I could see him ill-advisedly doing it to “teach Joe a lesson” about how he treats women.
The list gave pretty good descriptions (and sometimes even names) of women living in Joe’s building specifically. The implication is that this pretty much pointed Ryan right to their doorstep in his search for Dorothy, Amazi-Girl, Joyce, and Sal.
And if not Ryan, than any other creepy dude looking to score with someone they perceive as easy or whatever they’re looking for. Joe did all the “research” for them, they just need to get into the building.
Joe’s list can tell any scumbag who gets their hands on it who the attractive targets are, and possibly who the easy targets are (he considers Billie “desperate,” for example, and could possibly have referenced her drinking in the notes Joyce didn’t read aloud).
Even if he hadn’t seen Dorothy on his way to class, Joe’s list could have given Ryan a good idea of where to look for Joyce. Think about it; how many “Churchy blondes” who wear “sweatervests,” “won’t shut up about Jesus,” and have a “cranky black roommate”could there possibly be on campus?
Honestly – I’m a woman and that aspect of this hadn’t occurred to me (I went to an all-girls secondary school (aged 11-18) and fraternities aren’t really a thing in the UK and I was too ill to go out much so to my knowledge I have never been ‘rated’ or ranked compared to other girls) – now it has been said, yes – I can see why Rachel feels a bulls eye has been painted on her back, but before that explanation I wondered if they had danced the horizontal rango together and her performance sent her rating off the charts, and that’s why she pointed out her ranking in relation to how well he knows her…
I guess it also depends how detailed the descriptions are and how easy to locate/identify people from the list without any knowledge of them (e.g. somebody spotting Joyce would know she likes sweater vests and her hair colour but wouldn’t necessarily be able to immediately tell she’s a devout, practising Christian etc.) – I had assumed they could easily identify themselves and friends but not people they hadn’t had any interaction with, and it hadn’t occurred to me that their dorm/majors/any classes they have with Joe would be included. But it sounds like the boys messed up big here…
We don’t know how far-reaching the list is yet, but Mandy mentioned that it appears to cover everyone in their building. That would make it pretty easy to find anyone on the list, since they’re all together.
Yup. I’ve always gone to really huge schools. However, if someone had a physical description of and some details about a woman they were trying to find, they could ask around my friend group and/or the other students in my major (or my dorm that one year I lived in a really small dorm) and probably identify that person pretty quickly.
“Hey, dude, I’m looking for this girl who is majoring in Astrophysics. She is skinny and pretty with long red hair and freckles. I think she wears a lot of dresses. We were at the same party a while ago and she dropped her scarf there. I want to give it back to her but I didn’t catch her name or where she lives.”
“Sure! That’s *name redacted as this actually kind of describes someone with whom I went to school*”
With Joe’s list, Ryan or anyone else wouldn’t have much trouble locating most of the women on it. 🙁
Okay, so first off, retracting my commentary on Rachel from yesterday’s strip, but more importantly: what? “The map thing was not an angle I’d considered”?
Did they really not? I thought I saw it in the comments at least a few times, and, well, it seems obvious as one of the problems with the list in the first place.
Wouldn’t that make him all the better to leak it if he wanted to?
Plus this whole thing works out great for him – his best friend can’t obsessively chase girls anymore and now has to spend time with him (and Danny also just lost HIS girlfriend). Maybe it was Danny’s way of chasing off the lonelies, with an added dash of short-sighted “I am totally helping Joe become a better person”.
Um. Why are we so fixated on the idea that anyone ‘leaked’ it? That anyone in particular would even need to?
Joe handed that thing out to eeeveryone. It may have gotten around in his sketchy circles. For all we know, maybe Ryan leaked it. I mean . . . He had to learn about the girls somehow. Right?
Yeah, Joe hasn’t been “passing the list around”. What he DOES do is go around telling high-ranked girls their ranking number, as if they’re supposed to be flattered.
It’s skeevy, but a different type of skeeviness from running around sharing the list with other guys. (Not trying to defend him, just trying to be precise.)
Why the hell would you set up an RSS feed if not to let other people see it?
What I don’t think we’ve seen is anyone actually take him up on the offer.
I know he asked Danny if he was subscribed early on and he said he was remiss in not offering the password to Raidah. I suppose that could have been sarcasm, but it’s not clear at best. The most straightforward read is that it’s true. He even pulls out his phone as if sending it to her then and there.
It could just be part of the act, like talking about threesomes was, but I’m not sold on it yet. He at least goes around talking about the list and sarcastically offering it to people. If someone took him up on it, it’s hard for me to imagine him backing down.
This doesn’t mean it was Danny, was it? When he says he hadn’t considered it, he means in terms of figuring out who did it, right? Or maybe in terms of helping Joe create it in the first place?
Honestly, yesterday’s comic is what has me questioning whether or not this was meant to implicate him. But also, I’m clicking with the idea that it was him because *insert Shyamalan meme here*
I don’t think Danny would throw someone else under the bus like that. If he was guilty, he’d probably have tried to come up with a reason it couldn’t be her without implicating himself.
The system makes it easy for them not to consider it. It’s the blinders of privilege. All the life experiences of women tend to be hidden by a thick layer of harassment and censorship to those who try and talk about it, treated as something to dismiss. And so it’s easy to grow up not knowing the context that women live through and how all those “cool guy techniques” actually affect them.
For those who want to be better, it’s often a long slog of listening and undoing a lot of cultural messaging to get to a point where they do consider these things.
It really isn’t. An overwhelming number of women routinely have concerns for their safety dismissed by men. A lot of men don’t believe women when they tell them they feel threatended or unsafe. These are not sexist assumptions, these are facts. Also, nowhere did I – or anyone in this chain – say that all men do this. Cerberus even mentioned the people, many of them men, who try to unlearn these behaviours. Because those obviously exist. So. No sexism here, just a depiction of some real world experiences.
Hence why I said “close to sexism” and not “is sexist”
Just to point it out I’m a girl, and yes I have been dismissed by strangers who are guys when it comes to feeling threatened, but most of my guy friends gets why I don’t want to be in the middle of a booth surrounded by guys I don’t know. (And this is where I take issue, my guy friends know I don’t like being physically stuck/surrounded by guys I don’t know, and therefore make a point of sitting next to me, or giving me an escape route)
For any guy reading my this comment, being basically stuck next to a guy I don’t know who’s twice my size is really uncomfortable because I can’t “bash my way out” if it should be needed.
People are generally blind to their own privilege. This isn’t a guy thing, or a white thing, or a straight thing, or a christian thing, or a rich thing, it’s just a people thing. We see the injustices that we’re victimized by, but when things are tilted our way, that’s just how the world should be.
For example: A lesbian black Muslim woman living in Los Angeles has privileges that a straight white Christian man living in rural Montana does not, such as “Much better access to a variety of healthy food”, “Much easier to travel to other states” or “Larger variety of potential jobs”, and these are things that most people living in LA rarely think about because of course you can just book a direct flight to New York, don’t you have airports in Montana?
Men have a lot more advantages than women do, of course, that should go without saying. But it’s just how all people react to these sorts of things.
well then, all she needed was the fist of logic. that joe’s more concerned about/focused on himself and threatens to take down his sexist rating about her, as though that would upset her (and not the presence of the rating itself, nooooo) still makes him a prick.
Basically that he did it to make Joe see his friendship as important. But that seems out of character for Danny to me? But then, who knows what this NEW Danny is capable of.
Maybe? But even leaving aside that it’s woefully out of character for him, I have trouble believing that he could execute an op like this and have it work this close to as intended without first seriously leveling up his planning skill.
Well then, maybe it didn’t work out as intended at all. That’d make it harder for us to guess what his motive might’ve been, if it wasn’t actually accomplished.
Probably for Joe to realize he’s a jackass? And for Joe to start treating women with respect?
I dunno, though, it really did seem like he was honestly theorizing with Joe. I find it hard to believe he’d say “[Rachel has] motive, ability, and opportunity” if he knew for a fact it wasn’t her. Danny doesn’t throw people under the bus.
Wouldn’t that require him to actually try to help Joe learn from the experience rather than cop out when called out for not doing it? No, IF Danny was behind this, which I find unlikely, the only possible motive is to showcase his ‘friendship’ to Joe. If that were the case then the quotes around ‘friendship’ would apply.
I guess, unless he’s afraid that if he brings up the subject himself that Joe will stop being friends with him. In which case, he’s being sort of passive-agressive to try to fix the issue without risking the friendship.
I don’t think Danny’s so jealous of Joe that he would pull a stunt to get closer to him, but trying to do the right thing in an absolutely stupid way that’s probably going to blow up in his face… that’s the Danny we all know and love.
Now I’m starting to think he actually IS behind this.
I suppose if he didn’t foresee Joe actually confronting her, that’s a fair point. Still seems awfully underhanded, though. But if he’s scared enough about what Joe thinks, he might do that to shift the spotlight (and potentially the blame) away from him.
Maybe I’m reading it wrong and being too influenced by other commenters. However, I could see Danny leaking the list in order to “teach Joe a lesson” – namely, to try to make him be a better person by having to face the direct effects of objectifying and “ranking” women.
See my comment above. IF Danny did this, he may have meant well, but ultimately his actions may have been far more directly damaging to these women than Joe’s objectification and misogyny.
For all that Danny is supposed to be a “good egg,” if he leaked the list and didn’t think what that might mean for the women on it, IMHO he’s nearly as narrow-minded and sexist as Joe.
It’s an obvious reading, and beyond making people here think so, I think Joe could take it that way.
But I agree, I think that it could be a misleading one. Danny hasn’t shown much sign of leaking the list; it reads just as well as him suddenly worried for some of the women he knows are vulnerable.
You know, I have never much liked Rachel (here or in the Walkyverse).
During this conversation with Joe, I have agreed with every single one of her points – but I am still put-off by how she presents those points. Makes it very hard to actually enjoy Joe getting a verbal beatdown when I so dislike the person giving it to him. *sigh*
i mean i still haven’t heard anything about him so i have no way of knowing this for sure. being in the hospital isn’t the same thing as being in a coma, or being unable to text.
i still have no idea how joe’s list got leaked and it’s really bugging me
it’s not like the party was at the dorm. it was at a completely different place – in a house, even. and Joyce didn’t get a whole lot of public attention after that, even as the girl who punched a college gunman in the face. i kind of highly doubt she gave interviews.
i mean it could have been amber’s phone, but that’s not the only way to do it
i mean like i feel like mary’s happiness has been well and truly covered by the power trip she’s on. like. that’s enough reason for her to be this…..gracious in victory. -chokes on her own words-
and i really do honestly believe that she would be stymied by joe’s password
For the people theorozing Danny he hasn’t ability and opportunity but not a motive. He is Joe’s friend so he actually has motive to do the opposite and help hide it.
you can read being his friend as motive, tho. Joe’s not super likely to suffer long term backlash, tbh- if Danny thinks this might be a learning experience and opportunity for growth, that might be motive enough.
it’s kinda out of character tho.
He has the same non-shitty motive as most of the other suspects – causing Joe to suffer consequences for being a PUA-type and therefor learn not to be a PUA-type.
Danny’s brain: Oh shit oh shit I just realized why Joe’s “list” is really really horrible and not just immature!!
Joe’s brain: Dur. Pretty Lady talk mean to Joe. Joe upset now. Now Joe talk mean back.
I think it might be both. Joe’s list is horrible and also it may have helped a sexual predator AND to top it off, Danny’s the one that helped him make it.
Wait, didn’t they say Ryan got arrested? And they likely got his face.
Plus that’s not his MO either. He roofies girl at parties. Which he is likely not doing anymore, either, because he only did it as long as he could get away with it.
I think the girls are safe from Ryan, thankfully.
It’s the scripted response for a man in toxic masculinity. To get angry at the uppity she-creature who dared sass back and make you feel not in absolute control and power.
And yeah, it’s dangerous as fuck if allowed to go unchecked.
I didn’t realize the more horrifying implications of the leaked list – did Joe really put the women’s locations on them as well?! If so, that’s really dumb.
Possible, but either way it’s probably not terribly hard to find them. At the very least predators can probably locate their emails or run into them by chance; worst-case scenario, predators can just make a few calls to residence management and easily determine the room addresses of any women on the list.
Honestly I can’t even imagine they’d have to call someone. At least at my college, the directory is online now. Have a name? Here’s an address, and phone number, and email. You can of course have these things restricted for yourself, but at this point freshman year? I’d guess most students don’t even know about it, let alone taken care of it.
Oh, I forgot their real names aren’t on there. Which means there does have to be some prior knowledge on who these girls are.
…Or potentially the predator could just jump to conclusions and target girls who the predator views similar to Joe’s descriptions…
Unpopular post warning:
I agree that the “do list” is disgusting. I get that it is indeed possible a sex predator could use it in some way. I don’t get why, in the age of facebook and online student directories, a sex predator would bother with an (up to now) password protected list that they would have to know about beforehand. Why would they bother?
Because the list tells them about the women, let’s them pick a target and gives an idea how to approach them.
Then you can use the directory or other means to find them.
And the predator wouldn’t have known about Joe’s list or how to access it before it was leaked – unless Joe told him and gave him the password, which we’ve seen him do. Not to predators specifically, but pretty freely.
Other than Joe’s opinions, what privileged info is there on the list? Assuming there is indeed a student directory available to other students and most of them use facebook. I am not disputing the possibility or the horribleness or anything, just surprised that people are treating it as the blueprints to a bank vault or something.
Because it’s a one-stop shop for all the statistics a sleazebag would want for selecting a target. Cross-referencing names with social media would take a lot of effort, Joe’s list practically distills that into a catalog.
Eh, I won’t argue the point further but you’re talking about sexual predators, not software pirates. They’re not going to give up because they need to type a name in two different websites. At the same time the ‘do list’, as far as we’ve been shown, is just a nickname or sometimes a name, a number and a creepy comment, not “all the statistics a sleazebag would want”.
reeeely looking forward to the character growth surely barreling towards Joe like a freight train right now. surely. just a whole train of grwoth right to the face..
Joe. Joe, please. Joey, my lad. My geezer. My top boy. I know you’re not a deliberately awful human being- like, you don’t wake up and think “I am going to be a right shit to the womenpeople today, because fuck it it’s tuesday”. You might be an complete pig, but I appreciate that there are several levels way below yours that you COULD sink to but don’t, and that is in itself a small victory. You have, at the bare minimum, SOME redeeming factors- somewhere deep, deep, deep down, burried under several bottles of Versace Blue Jeans Man and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
But please. Please, I am literally begging you, gain a sense of self awareness and understanding of your actions and general character in a wider context then simply “late night softcore special”. Learn to empathise with others for gods sake. Not only will your chances of forming meaningful connections with other people (INCLUDING them there wimmins you so frequently “quest” for) go up exponentionally- which given how obviously damaged you are, you quite clearly need- but you’ll ALSO stop being The Guy Who Is Still Can’t Understand Why Rating Women On A Scale Of One To Ten And Generally Being King Straw Misogynist The 92nd Even After An Actual Literal Rapist With A Knife Was Caught On The Campus Grounds Is Kind Of Not An Admirable Trait For A Gentlemen Of Leisure To Have, And Is Somehow Completely Unaware Of How You Might Be Coming Off Worse Then You Do Even On A Good Day As A Result Of Your Emotional Immaturity Becuase Of Said Incident With An Actual Literal Rapist With A Knife™, you absolute pissing canteloupe.
Signed,
A Deeply Concerned Commenter from Beyond the 4th Wall
I once had an overripe watermelon spring a leak out the side and release a tiny pressurized jet of liquid, I bet a cantaloupe could do something similar under the right circumstances.
Seriously. The entire last week (in dumiverse) probably fills out the newspaper…and we’re discussing one man’s online stupidity? There must be a Willis angle.
Here it is!
While I currently *hate* Joe, I have to applaud Willis for creating such a realistic character. It’s tempting to think that all male misogynists and sexists are greasy characters hiding in dark alleys or moustache-twirling, cackling villains. In real life they can be perfectly charming, seemingly-decent people in other areas who have mile-wide “blind spots” of sexism when it comes to women.
I generally have a lot of male friends (I’m a cis woman). Two of my most recent best friends were men (I say “were” because I’ve fallen out of touch with both of them and am not sure where our friendship stands at the moment). These were men who helped me when I needed it, took care of me when I got really drunk or upset, listened to me when I needed to talk to someone, and let me cry on their shoulders. They also both spouted some of the most *horrible* stuff about women and feminism. One of them basically told me that I didn’t understand what women need in a relationship with a man (short version: to be subservient to a strong man) because I wasn’t a “typical” woman. *rageface* After a while I just stopped bringing up any kinds of topics relating to sex, sexuality, and gender. (One of these men also claimed that women cannot ever have sex because only P-in-V is “real sex.” As a pansexual woman, I am SO happy to hear that I’ve never had sex with a woman! *sarcasm filter*)
These men’s attitudes towards women-other-than-me is not the primary reason I’ve fallen out of touch with them, but it’s a part of it. I’m tempted to say that they are “good people” except for their attitudes about women, but I’m not sure that’s fair. I can understand bigotry because of ignorance – I grew up in a very white part of the country (New England) and I wasn’t exactly the most racially conscious person until I left the area and actively started educating myself on multiculturalism. But I spent hours of my life trying to “educate” these two men about feminism and equal rights and I honestly don’t know if I changed their minds at all (except maybe to make them think I was “different” than the other women out there). And that in and of itself is dangerous. I started identifying with the oppressor because, to them, I was someone “special” who was better than other women. I wonder if that’s not what is going on with Danny’s relationship with Joe. Whether or not he leaked that list, he is complicit in Joe’s misogyny – just as I was with these two male friends.
tl;dr – People are complex and I appreciate that Willis creates complex characters.
oh god that’s so gross and i’m so sorry you had to deal with that
……i mean, yeah, at the point where a large part of your relationship with someone is educating them, it’s not a healthy friendship. mentorship, maybe, but that’s not the same thing
um. yes. i mean. people’s good and people’s evil and people’s neutral exist all at the same time, which is what makes it confusing. it’s fluid and weird and unexpected. it’s just – we’re all so freaking messy
Thank you. 🙂 The sad part is that this kind of experience doesn’t seem to be that uncommon…terms like “mansplaining” and “friendzone” (used by men about women) exist for a reason.
And I can’t claim that I haven’t said horrible things about individual people or collective groups of people that make me ashamed of myself to this day and sometimes keep me awake at 3 AM – yeah, I definitely agree that we’re all “messy.”
I just get SO tired of men dismissing women and women’s rights and concerns. This has always been a thing but IMHO it’s gotten worse since the U.S. Presidential campaign and election of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. I have professional colleagues with advanced graduate degrees who continue to insist that sexism played NO ROLE AT ALL in the election and we shouldn’t pay “so much attention” to you-know-who’s remarks about grabbing women by their ladyparts, the numerous accusations of assault and rape, and his ongoing dismissive and insulting remarks towards women.
Sidenote: Is Joe a No. 45-in-training? I live in NYC and have never met the PoTUS in person (nor do I want to!), but I know more than a few people who have. By all accounts, in person he can be incredibly charismatic and gracious. Life and people are confusing. 😕
*appropriate gesture of support* for dealing with that.
But also, yeah, that’s the tragic part of things like sexism, racism, etc… Sometimes it’s the actions of mustache twirling villains cackling with glee at the idea of hurting the powerless and watching them die.
But far more often, it’s people one knows. One’s family members, one’s lovers, one’s friends or acquaintances. And often times the mustache-twirling villains, the rapists, the out-and-out abusive sexists turn out to be those same people. The people we work with, live with, see at holidays. Some of them are doing extensive harm behind closed doors.
And they don’t always mean too, but toxic masculinity makes a prison that makes justifying these actions easier and easier.
My personal jury is still out on whether or not I’m going to re-initiate contact with these two people. I fell out of touch mainly because of people moving and my lack of time/career stress. Plus I’m pretty lousy about keeping in touch with people in general.
I don’t know…I miss them both dearly. They have been two of the few people in my life who understand me more profoundly than most people do, and who haven’t shied away once I’ve revealed that “darker” side of myself to them. But as U.S. society changes and as I get older I find myself less and less tolerant of “toxic masculinity.”
*shrug* I’ve got a lot of plans for the rest of this summer so it probably isn’t the best time to re-forge connexions anyways. I guess I’ll wait and see how I feel in the fall and go from there.
I think she’s implying that, being rated an 11 makes her the biggest target on the “treasure map.” If any predators really are using it to find their targets, SHE’S the one who needs to be afraid first. And because of this, she obviously can’t be the leaker.
I think it’s because everything may have ended up reasonably okay on the surface, but I think the most extensive damage is going to be on Amber/AG’s psyche.
Or potentially Dorothy’s. We know she’s in therapy and doesn’t even want to talk to Walky about what happened.
Maybe I’m personalizing here, because Dorothy reminds me a wee bit of myself at that age. It seems like she came from a relatively good family, had a fairly privileged upbringing, and didn’t come into contact with a lot of the more sordid realities of life. The fact that she wants to go into politics shows that she believes in law and order and that the system works. From personal experience, I can say it’s really traumatic when you have that comfortable, sheltered world-view challenged.
And I never experienced anything *nearly* as violently traumatic as Dorothy did that night…
The “map” is listed in detail here: Archive:
“Men are from Beck, Women are from Clark”
That’s all the “secret” detail of the “map”: Women live in the Clark wing of the building and that is common knowledge.
One of my favorite parts of the strip is how it shifts in context to real-world events.
Like, Joe’s behavior is already fairly gross, but takes on an extra edge in the world of Trump, where gross “boys will be boys” sexism may very well have doomed our entire nation and possibly the world. It takes on an extra edge where there’s been a spike in sexual assaults of marginalized community members because they know involving the cops is even more of a danger than usual.
It resonates in stronger ways. And that applies to the personal as well. I’m trying not to overly slam on Joe, but well, still floating in the numb stage of recovering from yet another sexual assault, I feel Rachel here. I feel that righteous fury for the attitudes that prop up that sort of sexual entitlement and toxic masculinity that leads into shit like that. I feel being done with this sort of tired sexist crap we can’t seem to ever excise out of our collective culture, no matter how much harm it does.
But it’s the systems I hate most of all, and the reality of the situation is the systems poison the folks trapped in it almost as much as those who fall afoul of it. And we see it here with a lot of Joe’s responses and actions and how well they fit certain requirements of toxic masculinity for his worse.
Panel 1: But before getting into all that, I want to just take a second to applaud the lack of chill Rachel has here. Like, she’s been harassed outside her door, had an RA she viewed as a dangerous abuser get reinstated with no real explanation, and has now been stopped on her way to class to be given a litany of sexist bullshit about her major and her worth as a person on top of being objectified by a man who to her perspective seems to be actively refusing to introspect about what he did.
And she doesn’t take it. She storms in, gives her piece of mind and storms back out. No fear, no hesitation, no kowtowing to the social norms that ask women to be meek and deferential and air on the side of politely excusing themselves. And I love that. I wish I did that more often than I do (there’s times when I do the full Rachel (mostly defending friends from street harassment), but more often than not, I’m pleasant disengagement person).
I feel this so hard. There are people at the job I’m leaving who have actually stood up to management and I *wish* I could be them. But growing up in a cult really makes you afraid of authority figures, plus being socialised female and having bad social anxiety…
Anyway, I wanted to say I always love your comic reactions though I think this is the first time we’ve interacted and I, an internet stranger (and fellow trans person! Yay!), have come to care about you, so I wish you all the best in recovering from that horrible thing that happened.
And yeah, I’m proud that standing up for students is another area where I’m more Rachel-like and I’m proud of the fight I had this last year for the kids who needed it.
I just wish I could fight for my own safety and value as a human half as much as I fight for others.
Panel 2: There’s two huge pieces to this. First is Rachel’s content here. Joe’s list is a treasure map for every wannabe sexual abuser. Because it’s dripping in PUA culture with descriptions and enough identifying information to find people as well as maps of insecurities to exploit or regions where their options for escape are limited.
In the wrong hands, it’s a gold mine of information to harm women, in the neutral hands, it encourages the objectification of women and is meant to shame guys who date “low”. Joe should never have created the list in the first place, but if he was going to have this creepy habit, he really shouldn’t have spread it wide and far to anyone who would stand still in his vicinity with RSS feeds and subscription lists.
It’s something I’ve been wary about regarding his list for awhile. And the reason he’s spread it, the reason he’s kept it relates to the second piece.
Which is ego.
Joe’s whole worldview is predicated on him being at the center of everyone’s lives. His tastes must define the “objective standards” of beauty, his boner updates must be wanted and valuable rather than creepy and pathetic, people must care about their ranking in his system, people must want to be like him even though he’s a sad man who has only gotten laid in spite of his toxic personality not because of it.
And here, he still clings to this fantasy that someone hacked him. That someone actively did this just to mess with him and ruin his nonexistent “reputation” with the ladies. That it isn’t likely on him spreading his list around with little concern for security or spread around for a reason that had nothing to do with him.
That he might just be an unpleasant wasp on the days of these women rather than the lodestone they all orbit around.
And it’s what keeps him trapped in this toxic masculinity for now, and what he’s going to have to shred in painful fashion. He can’t bear to let go this mess that is hurting him and hurting others because to do so would be to admit that he can’t hide away from vulnerability, that he can’t devise a system to round off the sharp edges of asking people out or for sex, that he’s wasted his life on something juvenile and awful and genuinely hurtful and harmful for others.
To admit one’s wrong is unmanly in this culture, so even if you’re tumbling down, double down. Like Trump voters, doubling down in support for his fascist nightmare hellscape, because to do otherwise would be to admit fault like a “woman” in their eyes.
And it’s the thread that may very well doom us all. It certainly is dooming Joe.
Panel 3: And we see that confirmed here. Rather than admit even the smallest inaccuracy in his accusation even though it would literally harm him none to do so and would save a lot of social face, he doubles down simply to avoid admitting fault and gets defensive.
And it’s something he does every time he screws up or gets called out. Retreats into a spiky defensiveness and tries to turn it back on the other person. Trigger a PTSD episode in Joyce? Well, it’s her fault for over-reacting and now she owes him an apology. Make an ass of yourself walking in late on a depressing topic? Turn it into a victim complex about the teacher being out to get you. Harass Sarah to the point where she has to scream at you to get you to stop? Make like a victim and like she’s over-reacting.
It’s honestly a tragedy.
And I love Rachel here. Not just because she’s storming out, fully done with this shit, but because of how she turns Joe’s defensiveness back on him. Like, Joe in his defensiveness says he doesn’t know her very well, but that’s just the point. He doesn’t know any of the women he’s judging very well. He doesn’t know their characters, their hopes, their dreams, their struggles, their quirks, their personalities.
His rating system is solely based on his immediate boner reaction. It’s literally a boner update, updating the world about the state of his boner in the vicinity of various women. And that’s shitty. To be sized up as meat and rated with no care of who you are, simply what utility you could have for their cocks as a pleasing shape and nothing else. It makes one feel hunted, and it makes one unsafe. A world where we are viewed as in the moment objects holding the “sex” allows it to become easy to justify hurting us for that sex or taking it by force or coercion or simply by exploitation of the social contract.
And Rachel bares that down to its core. He doesn’t know her at all, but he still rated her an eleven, still refers to her by that number, based on nothing but ephemeral crap. And if it was just a private thought he kept to himself it would be one thing, but the fact that he’s instilled a sense of mystical power to this sad litany of boner feels, making it into a public spectacle, is where he dips into the sadder aspects of PUA culture.
The performance of horny, throwing “field reports” and “rankings” around to impress other sad sacks who are teetering on the edge of becoming rapists as they alienate any women who might have been willing to give them a chance and any men who would intervene to talk them down.
It’s a cage. And Joe needs to escape it for his own good. And it doesn’t even have to end in him seeking out romantic relationships. It’s okay to be aromantic.
Panel 4: And here is where the implication of what Danny has enabled hits Danny with full force.
Like, he always knew his friend was a bit sexist. He always knew the list was a bit off and insulting. He always knew that he shouldn’t get dragged into Joe’s view of how to interact with women. But I think like many men, he didn’t think about what impact aggressive sexism and sexual harassment have on the women around him. How much harm Joe and his list have done. How dangerous what he helped set up always was in the wrong hands.
And that’s a part of growing up for men who want to be “good eggs”. Realizing the full scope of the systems of oppression that surround you for others, how their lives are impacting by things the world has carefully worked to hide from you. And I think this is a major awakening in his growth as a feminist guy. Recognizing that Joe’s actions aren’t just harmless stupidity but have negative impacts on the women around him and that following and enabling him may actually be doing others harm.
I don’t know how he’ll react to it, but I think this is the first step on a long awakening that will lead him to being an even better egg going forward.
And Joe… oh Joe… *shakes head*. There’s so much to be said about him, but I feel there are two parts of this that deserve special consideration.
1) His violent anger when called out on his behavior. Like, whenever he feels cornered or put in a position where he doesn’t feel he can double-down on his actions, where a woman has made him feel awkward by outsmarting him or refusing to accept his reframing of an issue, he reacts with this violent anger.
And we’ve seen it a bunch. We saw it with him yelling at Joyce to tell the woman she was on the phone with that he never sexually assaulted her. We saw it with him when Joyce called him out on his list and how much it hurt her. We saw it when Danny didn’t make him feel better by filling out the panicking best friend role. We saw it when Joyce called him out for staring at Leslie’s tits. We saw it when Leslie revealed the fucked up context of his inappropriate lesbian joke given her current lesson. We’ve seen it multiple times when Danny hasn’t reacted the way he wanted.
Something doesn’t go his way, he doubles down with anger and it’s hard not to read a lot into that. Anger is after all, the only emotion men are allowed to feel under toxic masculinity. No sadness, no regret, no fear or indecision, only anger. And we see that with Joe. He’s either confident, neutral, or mad. And he doesn’t allow himself the space to be sad, to be introspective. Partly because he’s afraid of it, partly because that’s one of the prices of toxic masculinity.
2) He uses the list as a punishment for uppity women.
Like, its hard to ignore that for all his talk of it being a private list for him and his friends, he is really invested in the women he is surrounded about knowing that if they displease him by pushing back or resisting or calling him out, he will punish them in their rankings, dropping them down. And he expects this to hurt and for people to be willing to do him favors (like sleeping with him or letting him out of class early) to increase their overall ranking on his bullshit list.
We saw this with Joyce’s 0-minus, as punishment for that catastrophic date. We saw it with his shenanigans with Roz while she was subbing Leslie’s class. We see it here. He wants women to feel bad when they drop in ranking. He wants to punish women with his ratings. He wants it to hurt them, to chastise them, to show them up for making him feel vulnerable or foolish or self-conscious.
And that’s actually kind of terrifying. Like, that’s one of the more frightening things about toxic masculinity. That it encourages a state where one’s sexuality is seen as a weapon to wield against women, to put them in line, to keep them from revealing the gaping flaws in the toxic masculinity lifestyle, to make them regret being all feminist and resisting the “ironclad” systems and techniques.
It’s the fear that is put on those of us who are women or read as women. That if we fight back against that street harasser, that sexual assaulter, that toxic troll, that we’ll be made example of and hurt by this mixture of anger, resentment, and the feeling that sexuality can be used to hurt us.
It’s what gets us raped.
And that’s where Joe’s path will end if he doesn’t get off. I think he will get off this path. I think this might be the dramatic fall he needs to realize how toxic this is to his own life and others and how hiding away from vulnerability just makes him a worse person. But if he didn’t?
Well put! I agree with everything you said, Cerberus. This is what I’ve been insomniatically (is that a word?) trying to say, but you are far more eloquent than I. 😊
(Also, appropriate gesture of support for the assault you mentioned. And virtual cookies and milk if you like them. Favourite comfort food/activity of choice if not.)
I think Trump is a symptom of the institutionalized sexism and misogyny that has always existed in U.S. society. But he’s “legitimized” toxic masculinity and has served as an “escape valve” for all those men who hang out in the MRA forums on reddit and/or rant about feminazis and “uppity b*tches.” I am in no way surprised that there has been a spike in sexual assaults. When the PoTUS BRAGS about harrassing and assaulting women – and, just a few days ago, commented on the French First Lady’s body *during an internationally televised diplomatic meeting* – the clear message is that toxic masculinity is okay. It’s more than okay – it’s laudable.
In short, Trump’s U.S. is Joe’s oyster. Or the sh!t to Ryan’s pig.
Men who don’t support Trump are often too quick to dismiss his toxic masculinity to focus on “more important” issues. This is yet another example of men dismissing women and their concerns. According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) approximately 1 in 6 women in the U.S. have been a victim of attempted or completed rape. If you know 6 women, you know someone who has been raped. Those numbers get even higher if you specifically look at Trans*women or women of colour. Pretty much *every single woman* I know has been the victim of sexual assault or harassment. How is the fact that our (I’m from the U.S.) president is aiding and abetting this atrocity somehow not worth the attention paid to his other actions and ideologies?
Like you said, it’s terrifying. I have a 3-year old niece. Worrying about what kind of culture she’s growing up in keeps me awake at night. A big part of me wants her to grow up to be a woman (assuming that’s how she identifies – right now she does call herself a “girl”) who will fight back against sexism. Another big part of me just wants her to be safe. And the U.S. is a VERY unsafe place for girls and women right now.
I can’t remember if I’ve recommended this book before (I’ve been recommending it all over the place online so I’m losing track) but you MUST read “Dietland” by Sarai Walker. It’s very timely and, if nothing else, it’s wonderfully cathartic!
From my observation, the answer to that is generally constructed along the lines of “lolol you dumb carebear welcome to the REAL WORLD” etc.
But beyond those assholes, the still-tiresome answer is “because we can’t agree on what that entails”. That’s why I don’t trust communities whose only rule is “don’t be a dick”. In many people’s opinions, pestering women about their gender and making bigoted comments isn’t “being a dick” at all. In fact, *objecting* to it is what counts as “being a dick”.
The inability to agree on what it means is pretty much the problem. Invariably communities with only that rule expect someone to be a doormat in order to avoid being a dick. Who that someone or group of someones is will vary depending on the flavor of the community’s views.
I guess I’m old-fashioned (and getting old – but that’s a whole other anxiety attack). When I say “Don’t be a dick” (I’ve actually started using the word “butt” as in “You’re being a butt” in order to avoid gendered slurs), this is what I mean.
Don’t insult or belittle people.
Don’t minimize someone else’s experience.
Don’t presume that you know better than someone else, especially if that other person is a member of a social/sexual/gendered/cultural/racial/etc. group of which you’re not a member.
Don’t be mean and don’t bully people.
Try not to use language or terminology that is insulting to other people.
If you upset someone, apologize.
Basically: try to *empathize* with other people and respect them, as you expect they will try to empathize with and respect you.
Sure, that sounds reasonable enough, and I think a lot of people think they’re doing all this. Except they’re blind to their own subconscious exceptions. Or conscious exceptions that they believe to be righteous.
Fair enough. As I said in a post further down, I’ve been called a bleeding-heart liberal more than once…
My mom is a doctor and professor of psychology. One of the things she asks her Psych101 students is: “What do you think is the most important human emotion?” When she asked me that, I thought about it, and said, “Empathy.”
IMHO, that is the key here. Would Joe be such a butt if he actually realized how the women on his list felt? Would Ryan be such a horrible human being if he had a full understanding of how much he traumatized the women he assaulted?
I am not AT ALL saying that I’m always capable of truly understanding someone else’s perspective. I try and often (maybe usually) fail. But I think it’s an important first step towards leaving personal “blindness” and “righteousness” behind.
Yup, empathy isn’t the whole game, but it’s definitely a major point of the game and it’s why when we want to train soldiers, we put them through a brutal training regimen to get them a point where their natural empathy for others won’t make them hesitate to shoot when needed.
And it’s why hate groups work so hard to dehumanize and alienate the groups they hate. Make sure their followers are not forming friendships or hanging out with them and view them as something almost demonic and inhuman that one must destroy before they destroy them. Because otherwise empathy takes over.
It’s why coming out was such a powerful activist tool. Because it reminded so many haters that what they were hating wasn’t some illusive other but their own family members and friends. It’s why empathy-starved Republicans nonetheless tend to have dramatic changes of heart when someone close to them is affected by something terrible they enabled.
We are a social species, empathy is the glue that binds.
But it’s not always enough and there’s a lot out there to try and carve out exceptions or soft targets that one’s empathy should not extend out to.
I don’t think this behavior only exists on one side or the other of political lines. I get called both every day, and I think I’m only kind of a dick. Because yeah the first excuse about real life is a cop-out. Even if you do have to make decisions that you know will hurt people sometimes, you should actually be very aware of that instead of writing it off.
@Cerberus: This gets so messy and sad, doesn’t it? I mean, you can’t pass legislation ordering people to care about each other. But (and I am NOT trying to sound sappy here), I honestly believe that mutual understanding and consideration (i.e., empathy) is maybe the only thing that can save the human species and the world at this point.
I’m waiting for the day some woman laughs in his face when he threatens to demote her on the List. It’s the only appropriate response to the sheer deluded pettiness of the threat.
While unimportant, it’s notable he IS friends with Joyce now but never updated her rating because he doesn’t consider personalities save in the negative.
I don’t think Danny leaked it, I think like many others have said that he’d just realised how screwed up the list was and is really regretting his part in it.
As to who really ‘leaked’ it, the map aspect makes it less likely to have been any of the female characters.
Male character wise, none of the regulars would have any motive.
So, are there any less than popular side character guys around that Joe has belittled over his sexual prowess and their (assumed) virginity or such, especially IT types? Thinking along the lines of a MGTOW type wanted revenge on the PUA guy – any characters that could fit the bill?
A few thoughts. Aggressive, masculine men like Joe are held up by male culture as being the ideal. That’s the essence of toxic masculinity. But it is also true that many women find that stereotype attractive as well. There’s a reason Joe has hooked up with so many people after all. Our society has trained not only men to find that behavior attractive, but women as well. So what is the most effective way to stop male aggressiveness, when men are so often rewarded for such behavior?
It might go deeper than just social brainwashing. It might go into biology and how women look for strong, aggression males who will give them protection and resources necessary to conceive and support children.
Nope. That’s a very reductive understanding of biology based on the behavior of wolves in captivity that has been debunked for a long time. Bonobos are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, a social species, and what you’re describing is the opposite of how lady bonobos pick mates.
Li is 100% right. But if you really want to get into reductionist Darwinism, in most developed countries in the world right now (like the U.S.), strength and aggression are not actually the best survival traits. We no longer have to hunt our food and physically fight off invading tribes. The “fittest” in modern developed countries are people who are intelligent, determined, and clever (and perhaps part of the ogliarchy as well). Conan (the Barbarian) doesn’t rule the developed world; instead we have the late Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Steven Hawking.
Darwin said that evolution is a continual process and humans have *certainly* evolved over approximately 200,000 that we’ve been on this planet (that figure refers to what we might call “modern humans). I personally believe (and so do many other theorists) that in the past 200 or so years the rapid evolution of technology has accelerated our evolution as well.
Also, the human species is in no danger of dying out and infant mortality in developed countries is at some of the lowest rates ever. Women don’t necessarily need “strong genes” to conceive children that will survive the rigours of early life without modern medical care and vaccinations. H3ll, women don’t actually “need” to have children at all. And despite the continued pay gap between men and women in the U.S., many women also don’t “need” a man to support them and their children.
Do I even need to say how this reductionist line of thought completely and utterly fails to take into account Queer people who don’t identify with the restrictive male/female binary?
Eldritch Gentleman, I don’t mean to insult you, but reductionist biology is frequently used by men as a way to justify all kinds of ill-treatment of women. For example:
“Men aren’t biologically supposed to be monogamous! We need to spread our seed around!”
“Men are biologically attracted to women with big b00bs and a big @$$ because they will be better breeders!”
“Men are biologically more aggressive than women so of course they are going to be violent sometimes!”
“Men’s biological role is that of the aggressor and the protector – thus men aren’t biologically “wired” for “domesticity” or traditional “women’s roles.”
“Men have an inescapable drive towards mating in the presence of a fertile and attractive women – we can’t control ourselves so it’s not really r@pe!”
This is a VERY slippery slope that I don’t think we want to follow all the way down.
I find the argument that “women prefer aggressive men because biology” as offensive to men as it is to women.
@Jamie
Quite, physical aggression is indeed no longer necessary for human success. But humans are still quite aggressive and compete all the time trying to outdo the competition, trying to beat others, show themselves as better and more competent. Even if they have to sabotage other people.
And let’s not forget the constant stream of Lies thrown at people to manipulate and control them. Commercials, propaganda, “post-truth”, electoral bullshit.
We no longer bash each other’s skulls in with a club (though even that is not true when you remember how various countries come up with bullshit excuses to invade and shoot at others).
Steve Jobs and Apple… yeesss. Buy the newest Apple product, it’s so cool, but also expensive, hard to fix because they just want you to get a New One instead of fixing the old one, they introduce planned obsolescence and let’s not forget the “Chinese will make it for a bowl of rice” part of the deal.
Methods have changed but humans stayed pretty much the same. We just Appear more civilized and nice but underneath all the mechanisms are the same.
I do not feel offended, I do not “excuse” shitty behaviour I just… have a very cynical view of the world and humans in general.
I’ve been called a “bleeding-heart liberal” so I expect I’m probably less cynical than you are. 😋
I do not disagree that competition has its place (although I also wonder to what extent that is a creation of the “Western” world’s worship of capitalism and the free market – we’re seeing a resurgance of that Ayn Randian kind of thought under Trump). However, we’re also entering a world-historical moment in which *cooperation* is more necessary than ever before.
The Higgs Boson wasn’t discovered by a single person. It was discovered by a TEAM of scientists working together for years on end. I’m currently watching the GORGEOUS documentary “Chasing Coral” on Netflix while I’m typing this (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! EVERYONE WATCH IT!) and one of the points the film makes is that *everyone* needs to join forces to combat climate change and preserve the coral reefs that are so important to our planet’s ecosystem.
H3ll, even the “rugged individualist” Donald Trump depends upon his family and friends. (Sometimes as scapegoats, but…)
You wrote “We just appear more civilized and nice but underneath all the mechanisms are the same.” Well, I grew up with a mom who is a doctor of psychology and tends towards Freudian theory (did I mention I’m a wee bit old-fashioned?) so I definitely agree about the persistance of the id in human nature. However, I honestly think that people are capable of evolving beyond our basic animalistic nature. It makes me tired to be cynical all the time.
I think we as humans have great potential for compassion and growth. Yes, we are never going to get rid of our id, or our biological drives, or whatever you want to call it. But that doesn’t mean we have to be bound by them – or that we have to buy into the propaganda, “fake news,” and social brainwashing.
Yup, it’s also based on complete inaccuracies about both the evolutionary biology as well as behaviors of early man. Like, early nomadic tribes were not nearly as gender segregated as modern society because they couldn’t afford to be. You needed to have all able hands on deck at all times to survive.
So sexism and gender segregation in roles was something that really more came into play with the invention of agriculture and permanent settlements where you could cut off half your work force without paying a permanent price for it and where hierarchies are harder to work around*.
*If someone tried to enforce an unfair hierarchy with a nomadic tribe, you could just leave with some mates and not be overly burdened compared to where you were. Leaving a more developed permanent settlement or being banished from it has more weight and you are less likely to have the tools or means of survival as someone leaving a nomadic group would.
As for evolution, being a dick and violent actually decreases evolutionary fitness. In evolution, mututalism and empathy is what is heavily selected for and we see it in the human species. We are a social species, we strive to come together and keep others alive and that’s for the benefit of the species.
It is only in large societies that being a dick can be something you can get away with, because now there’s the tension of society where a society can tolerate a certain amount of bad-faith dicks before it bursts apart and people are invested in keeping a system together.
Hell, our tendency to want to think best of each other and do right by each other on average as a species is what douchebags exploit. What businesses exploit when they expect their underpaid workers to save them from their terrible policies and practices. It’s the most enduring central part of the human animal. It’s how the human has become the dominant species that it has.
And as for the original assertion, women don’t go for jerks. Like oh I’m sure it feels that way when one is lonely or broken-hearted, but straight women don’t go “ooh, that man looks like he’s going to hurt me in ways that will cause enduring PTSD, sign me up”.
Like, I hang around a lot with poly and kinky and overtly sexual communities. The ones who have the most “success” and seem to be drowning in partners and standing offers? They tend to be quiet feminist men who are good at listening and have developed reputations for being sensitive lovers and overtly caring about their partners’ good times and orgasms.
When I thought I was a guy, I got a lot of stuff from women who thought I was top shit despite being nowhere close to conventionally attractive as a guy, simply because I was known to be feminist and deeply invested in deconstructing what I thought was my privilege*.
*Honestly, it was something that made me mad. I hated how low of a bar I was given to clear and how what I viewed as “no duh” shit was treated as some rare and wondrous thing. I hated how much benefit I got simply for doing the bare minimum.
So why do women sometimes still go for bad men? Because bad men are plentiful and many of them are good at seeming initially charming and kind and caring. And love and lust can provide blinders to red flags. Like in NRE, you become kind of stupid sometimes and so ignore stuff like them making offhand dismissive comments or being really aggressive in the bedroom and try to look past it.
And women are socialized a lot to look past things and assume bad faith on their partners’ part or overlook sexist treatment as just “part of a relationship”.
Plus, at the end of the day, a lot of what people assume from a distance are “jerks” is based on inaccurate stereotypes. A jock is not inherently more likely to be insensitive or dangerous in the bedroom. And a geek is not inherently more likely to be safe.
A lot of men who consider themselves “good guys” and despair over women falling for jerks are legitimately dangerous. These are the minefields that spawn MGTOWs, MRAs, and PUAs. These are the blighted lands that spawn the hate movement that ruined gaming or sexism in the comics/games/RPG industry and hobbies.
And a lot of women have learned the hard way how harmful that can be and how long the scars can linger.
And honestly, the onus is kind of on men as a collective whole, if they feel women are going for aggressive jerks, to improve the overall quality of men or at least themselves.
And based on what I’ve seen in my communities, it does wonders for one’s sex and love life as well.
I’ve been with my male partner for almost a decade. He is one of the best men – h3ll, one of the best PEOPLE – I’ve ever known. I know he took some sh!te for being a so-called “nice guy.” It’s sad when that is honestly used as an insult against a decent human being.
I never went for the “bad boy” stereotype but I had some bad experiences with men who came off as “good guys” at first but later turned out to be butts. And yes, those scars DO linger. (The man I dated before my current partner lied to me and stole money from me. I’m still in some debt because of what he did. I never EVER again want to have to call my landlord and my utility companies to beg for an extension because my partner stole all my money.)
Women who are attracted to men DO like “nice guys.” But that means HONESTLY nice guys – not “nice guys” who whine about being “friendzoned” (so making a friend is apparently the worst thing in the world?) or become aggressive when a woman isn’t attracted to them and/or won’t put up with misogyny and sexism.
This is a vicious cycle that we all REALLY need to break!
A very thoughtful and in depth response, thank you. I just want you to know, I wasn’t at all trying to say that the onus is on women to stop hooking up with jerks. Obviously no one can control who they are or are not attracted to. I’m just musing on the state of American culture as it is today, where aggressive and “masculine” men are held up as the ideal by a significant proportion of both men and women.
And for what it’s worth, there’s a response why I responded to EG instead of responding to you.
I do think we’re going to keep seeing more signs that Joe isn’t actually being rewarded for his jerky behavior, though. So far we’ve seen that the only women he’s actually slept with on screen (Penny and Roz) were not seduced by his nonsense, but were actively pursuing casual sex themselves — and recently he’s admitted that he’s never actually had a threesome.
I don’t think Joe admitting to Danny that he’s never had a threesome is some isolated data point. I think that when he admits that he “talks a good game”, he’s actually confessing that he doesn’t get laid nearly as often as he’s led Danny (and by extension the readers) to believe.
And I think that this is more often true for people like Joe than they want people like Danny to believe. (Lord knows that self-proclaimed “Pick-Up Artists” online seem to do an awful lot of lying about their sexual exploits and the success rate of their techniques.) (I mean, I can’t technically be sure about all of them, but some of the guys who have literally written books on the subject do occasionally admit in less guarded moments that those books are fluff and fantasy as much as reality.)
But yeah, I didn’t think your comment was trying to blame women as a group for toxic masculinity, and I don’t think Cerberus did either.
I also think we’ve got another problem when we’re talking about this idea of “women going for jerks”, and that’s that we’re conflating another two, arguably three, very different groups.
Group 1: The Bad Boy. He’s aloof and cool and might ride a motorcycle or have tattoos or smoke despite not being old enough to buy them legally himself. He might be in a band. Maybe he skips school a lot, or otherwise broadcasts ‘not the kind of boy my parents would want me dating’.
The Bad Boy is not necessarily a jerk. He can be perfectly sweet to his partners, and the fantasy version of him invariably is. If he’s in a band, he writes songs about you — if he’s not, maybe poetry. Nothing about a Bad Boy archetype actually suggests that he’s incapable of being sensitive and gentle.
Bad Boys have trouble with authority, not with partners. The typical Bad Boy story often has an element of Romeo & Juliet, as your main concern is usually that your parents won’t approve.
(A Bad Boy can also be a genuinely bad influence on his partners, getting them into trouble at school or introducing them to drugs/alcohol, but I’m just pointing out that nothing about the archetype actually requires this.)
Group 2: The Garden-Variety Jerk. Joe currently falls into this category more than any other. He’s capable of charm in short bursts, and he’s clearly fun enough in bed for some partners to come back for seconds, but he doesn’t have much of a filter and he views women as conquests.
Fortunately for people upset that women “always” choose jerks, the actual Garden-Variety Jerk doesn’t usually have a lot of success! Non-jerks don’t like being around jerks. (Mean people sometimes date each other, but they seem to reserve most of their real meanness for other targets which they then enjoy tormenting as a unit.)
And this brings us to…
Group 3: The Abuser. Abusive people, unlike Garden-Variety Jerks, are usually extremely charming in the beginning (called a ‘honeymoon’ period), and employ a wealth of psychological tricks and traps to erode their partner’s defenses and self-esteem until they no longer feel like they deserve better than this, or are capable of escaping.
What happens in an abusive relationship is very complicated. Much more complicated than I’m willing to go into here. But it is not fair at all to lump abuse victims into the general dating pool and then include them in part of an alleged pattern of “women dating jerks” — and I think that that happens a lot, unintentionally, when we start talking about this.
Like. Yes, there’s a bunch of sweet gentle people who are, right at this very moment, in a relationship with someone who’s actually mean to them (as opposed to being mean to outside parties, or being Generally Rebellious Against The System as the Bad Boy is), but those people are abuse victims, and it’s just… very odd that we as a society have decided to focus on how this trend is unfair to Nice Guys(tm) because they “finish last”.
Because in this scenario you’ve really only got 2-3 options. Either the jerk your would-be girlfriend is dating isn’t actually a jerk and you’re just projecting (because he’s a Bad Boy, because he’s a Jock, etc) — or he is a jerk to you, possibly because you’re making eyes at his girlfriend and glaring at him simultaneously, but he’s still nice to her — or he is in fact hurting her, in which case you should maybe stop making this situation all about you.
Those are the options. There’s no mythical fourth option where the girl of your dreams just needs to wake up and realize she should date a nice guy like you instead. If you’ve been a shoulder to cry on while bitterly fantasizing about her, you aren’t actually nice — you’re a selfish creep, and dating you would actually make her even more unhappy than whatever guy you’ve decided isn’t good enough for her.
Just for the record, chimpanzees are just as close to us as bonobos, since the two are closest to each other. So bonobo behavior does show that chimp behavior might not be ancestral to our common lineage, but chimp behavior also shows the same thing about bonobo behavior.
Either way, it’s probably a mistake to draw too many conclusions about Homo sapiens from them. We’re a really changed species, and that includes our behavior. It’s tempting to look at other animals, because people are so bad at looking at our own biology without bringing in cultural stereotypes, but in the end there’s no substitute for it.
The study behind this article is what I was talking about, FTR.
But of course it’s a mistake. Basically any time we look at the animal kingdom in an attempt to explain human behavior, we’re cherry-picking. I would much rather hold us to the standards of an animal society that’s generally harmonious and egalitarian, however, than shrug our shoulders and say we shouldn’t bother trying to be better than the most violent ancestor we can find — or than “alpha wolves”, something we literally made up.
I’d like to say that the current “geek culture” craze in the U.S. and elsewhere is a sign of society moving away from toxic masculinity, except that a bunch of male geeks I’ve known are even more toxic than their “jock” counterparts. I’ve been shamed for being a “fake geek girl” more times than I can count… 🙁
I don’t know. I think it’s important for male parents to show their children that there are ways to be a good man (a good egg?) beyond being aggressive and toxic. I think it’s important for female parents to show their children how to stand up to toxic masculinity and value and love people who don’t fall into that harmful ideology.
But I’m not a parent. I know it’s not that easy. To quote Cerberus’ words in one of their posts on this comic: “It’s not okay to be a dick.” Maybe we should all take that to heart.
“I’m not a parent. I know it’s not that easy.”
You are so right. I have three grown children, and my memories are pock-marked by craters where I heard my toxic-masculine father’s words coming out of my own mouth.
Even when you’re aware. Even when you try. And by definition it was worse for my kids than it was for me.
I am lucky enough to be the “cool aunt!” Even so, I find myself saying stereotypical and gender-normalizing things to my niece without meaning to: “Don’t you look like a pretty girl! That dress is so pretty on you!” (Right now my niece identifies as a girl – she has actually said “I am a girl.” But I don’t want to “brainwash” her into normative sex and gender roles.)
My mom grew up in an *incredibly* abusive household. She never ever EVER abused me or my two sisters and, as far as I’m concerned, she should be the model for mothers everywhere because she is perfect. But she has told me (like you said) that sometimes she heard her own mom and dad’s words coming out of her mouth when she was mad at us and felt terrible afterwards.
I can honestly say that I do not remember any times when my mom used the language of abuse to me or my sisters. While I don’t know you personally, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I suspect that you are harder on yourself than perhaps you need to be – and perhaps more than your children would be. 🙂
Mary isn’t a ‘sociopath’, she has empathy, chooses not to use it by justifying why people deserve her wrath (and there are people with low to no empathy that are still better people than her, I will never defend Mary but I will fight the stigma that someone being a bad person means they MUST be a psychopath/’sociopath’/have ASPD).
Rachel is flawed, being self-righteous is a flaw – particularly when you wield it against people that are already down and can’t defend themselves (Ruth) or aren’t expecting an aggressive response as they have only just introduced themselves which puts them immediately on the backstep (Danny). Joe deserved it though.
Being a know-it-all is also a flaw, particularly when you wield that as a weapon against people without the confidence to say you are wrong (Ruth, Amber as collateral damage) and because it inhibits your own growth to think you know everything or are always correct.
Genuinely I think the word Mary Sue has lost all meaning by this point though because I see people using it more against female characters that aren’t completely debilitated by their flaws than against characters that have no flaws or are overly stated as being perfect.
Wait, you think Danny doesn’t have flaws? He’s crawling in them. He’s insecure, he’s naive about his areas of privilege and has lots of growth in learning what to do to support and understand those he cares about. He’s prone to coming to the bro defense and is overly enabling of Joe, he can fall back on bad habits when stressed and has a tendency to define himself by his relationships.
Like, yes, his character arc is all about overcoming those flaws. And he’s starting to do so, but that’s the point of character growth. That’s what people who want to be better do, look to their flaws and seek to grow and improve. That’s what Danny is doing.
Doesn’t make him a Gary Stu, doesn’t make him flawless. Makes him the type of human that he is.
You have a way with words.
That there exists, somewhere, a Woman who is Right About Something, I fine eerily compelling.
The glitter-bedecked Mary Sue is of course her proper quarry.
While I have also thought of Mike, I am not sure this would be his thing. It doesn’t feel like he is personally involved with it enough.
Joe also isn’t violent even when hit in the face. He is not going to beat Mike senseless even if he did ‘hack’ his do list because he made it quite clear that he doesn’t support violence.
And Danny’s ‘I hadn’t considered’ remark may not mean he leaked it, but only that he hadn’t thought about that aspect of the list when he built it. Now he’s imagining Ryan’s Bro friends perusing that list, looking at all his friends. In an hour he may be logging into a computer to destroy the list, whether Joe wants him to or not.
It’s nice to imagine predators are only stuck with one another, but in reality there are enough people who would never do such things themselves yet manage to accommodate people who do.
I honestly really dislike how the comments somehow warp every character they disagree with into one-dimensional villains. It’s frustrating, because these are good characters! They aren’t just This One Trope (well, maybe Mary is).
Why does everyone keep saying Danny leaked the list? Don’t you remember that he sent out passwords to people in the early chapters? Including to Jacob? Which meant Ridah had access to it as his girlfriend? Freakin’ Joe leaked his own list.
That’s the problem though – if people like Joe only ever give that macho reaction, that becomes the norm, even if they might feel something different on the inside (which I’m not sure is the case, but for this point, doesn’t really matter either way).
Some days, I think to myself, “I’ll do it. I’ll betray them all! Every last one will wonder where the hell that came from, after so much time spent earning their trust through honest means!” And then I realise just how strange the comment I had planned was, and I have to mull it over some more.
Also, I recently paid the reparations I owed to someone descended from a slave owned by one of my ancestors. The exact amount is private, but rest assured it was the precise amount owed.
I’m starting to think Danny really is behind this, as many have guessed from the last panel…
Danny’s brain: Man, I wish Joe was not such a tool. If only I could show him the error of his ways! But if I told him he’s being misogynistic, he might get mad at me and end the friendship. I can’t risk that… besides, he doesn’t listen to me when I talk about how people would feel anyway. But maybe if the women he slept with complained about it to his face, he’d start to realize that he’s in the wrong.
So how could I get those women to confront him? Maybe I could just throw something in their faces that exemplifies what a tool he’s been. Like that list where he rates women… If I leaked the password to the girls on campus,
maybe they would realize how he objectifies women and they’d give him a piece of their mind… Yes…! This overly complicated passive-aggressive scheme definitely could not go wrong!
to the “Book of Mormon” tune: You’re Danning things up again, Danny…
Besides the whole “caught” “dead” thing, to me “caught” implies “taken in to custody” or something similar. Amazigirl might “catch” someone, but then what? Where would she put them? Plus, the police tape implied some sort of Law Enforcement involvement. Now, Joyce never reported the incident to any sort of authority, did she? Unless Ryan was also being sought in connection to additional incidents, how could he be “caught”?
Ack, I typed “caught” less-than greater-than “dead”, as a geeky way of writing “caught is not dead”, but of course those symbols were interpreted as HTML.
I’m really enjoying this arc, on a sitcom Joe would have had his epiphany, apologised, made amends and then gone on a date (with Joyce hopefully) and everything would be fine and dandy
But we all know change takes time, it takes time to absorb lessons, you can’t have a world view changed that easily and even if you do there’ll be steps backward so this is good
Showing it like it usually is not the unreal version Hollywood likes to pitch
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Joe: “if you hate other women, sure!”
Danny: “I AM SERIOUSLY RETHINKING THAT BEST FRIEND FOR LIFE REMARK”
Looks like Danny Danned it up again.
Is this implying that he was the one that leaked it?
It could be that Dan is suddenly thinking of reasons he can blame this on himself. Ie Dan previously would have considered the list as merely some foolishness on Joes parts. He did Joe some favours, and it was likely to backfire on Joe (cause he’s a fool), but really not Dan’s problem to worry about.
But now Dan’s mind will be saying “you made this! You risked the safety of all women around here! You should have taken care of security! Sexual Predators are your fault, as is anything bad that happens in the future!”
Which may lead to some highly inadvisable action…
Like what? Danny donning a cape and tights?
Pretty much. If you want to look good in tights, don’t skip leg day.
I’d think so.
Okay hold on, I don’t think you can blame Danny for this one? This is all on Joe, Danny was just the off-the-mark Watson to his off-the-mark Holmes.
Unless Danny WAS the one who leaked it.
That he might have done it … is possible. Maybe to get this very thing: that Joe spend more time with him; he has Danned things up before. But this would be epic-level Danning. :O
And “caught” implies our sexual predator was not outright murdered by Amber. I’m conflicted about that.
I’m not. Amber has enough psychological issues without putting a corpse in her personal history.
Makes his “Jacob wouldn’t do this with you” seem almost sinister if we look at it from a “Danny-leaked-it” perspective :/
If Danny created that rating thing when they were much younger, he had no idea it could be used that way. Just look at his reaction here.
He may have created the protections, but Joe was the one who created the content.
Not thinking about how it’d be used is the very definition of Danning it up. I’m not saying he’s at fault. Just that he definitely Danned this one up.
…What would be fun castration?
I think it’s more the “threat” of it that can be fun, to some people in some circumstances.
The closest I can think is somehow torn off in the heat of passion, but even that doesn’t seem like it would have a fun ending.
If you stretch the definition of castration beyond its breaking point, vasectomy? Some men have some masculine hangups about the procedure, but it significantly reduces the instances of unpleasant surprises.
To be perfectly blunt, my wife and I found vasectomy significantly increased the instance of spontaneous sex.
I assume most couples do.
Trying to get into Joe’s testosterone cloud I’d guess it would involve lots of oral sex.
Okay, but other people do know about the threat of castration as a kink, right?
…Damn I end up in weird parts of the internet…
Yes, some of us are aware of it.
Then again I may be the worst person to confirm that for you as I reliably spend at least part of every day in what would be considered “weird” parts of the internet ;D
*two men in unision* We’re familiar with it.
(It’s from Airplane)
I’ll give you a serach term: ball busting
It dosn’t seem like it’d be Joe’s *thing*, but on the other hand he does seem to be a kind of sexual jack of all trades, willing to take a dip in anything at least once
I saw that. ^_^
For a reasonably sized subset of submissive men both castration and the threat of castration are definitely a kinks.
With the persona Joe projects it seems unlikely that he’d be (openly) sub or switch, but there is also a subset of dominant men and women who enjoy the interpersonal byplay of a relationship with a dominant partner where both parties are trying to exert their individual dominance over the other person in the relationship and I could see Joe being into at least the idea of that with the idea of a threat of castration being an enjoyable part of that for him.
Oh, you sweet summer souls.
You are blessed with ignorance of the fucked-up fetish Willis was talking about. May that never change.
Wait, does panel 3 mean she was flattered to be an eleven?
Absolutely not.
Nah dude, think it just means “you thought you knew me well enough to rate me an eleven on a one to ten scale on a list of desired intimacy and you really didn’t need to know crap about me to do that.” Which is a quality of which I think Rachel would not be a fan.
Yes! And THIS is why so many women see these kinds of “ratings” as degrading rather than a compliment, even when rated highly, because it demonstrates that to the person making the judgement, how hot you look is literally all they need to know about you; that you’re a decoration, not a complex, sentient being with thoughts, passions, ambitions, values, virtues and flaws, desires and fears, and all of the other varied and sometimes contradictory features that make other humans worth interacting with.
“You’re pretty, so you’ll do” is actually not very flattering. But it’s pretty much impossible to explain to someone who thinks like Joe.
what makes you think that she was flattered?
No, she’s pointing out his complete bullshit.
Panel three means he named her Eleven.
Joe remarked he doesn’t know her too well and Rachel’s retort indicates he does too based on her high rating.
I took it as meaning that she was particularly threatened and endangered when the list was published, because Joe had designated her as an extremely desirable target for sexual predators.
oh. OHHHHH. Yeah, I can see that. Eesh.
It means Joe thought she was secretly Matt Smith this entire time.
//rimshot
I’m picturing a dramatic reveal like the one at the end of “World Enough and Time”, although I have no idea why Matt Smith would need to visit IU and dress up as Rachel.
You seem to have trouble reading facial expressions my friend
…did Danny do it?
Really seems like it, huh?
That’s exactly what I was thinking. His comment really makes a lot of sense that way.
Horrible, horrible sense.
Either that, or he’s starting to understand the implications of his best-friend-damage-control.
That’s what I thought.
I’m more leaning to him realizing what he created. Joe might’ve created the content, but Danny created the medium, and… yeah. It’s not terrible for Danny to be feeling guilt over this.
Yeah, I’m really torn on how this could go. That he leaked the list was my first thought, too, but at the same time I can’t really imagine Danny being bold enough to leak it himself.
So, this could be a realization of “Okay, I always thought these things Joe does were gross, but maybe they’re not as harmless as I always thought…”
I was thinking it’s more an analysis of his “motive, ability, and opportunity” deduction from yesterday’s panel.
He didn’t so much implicate Rachel himself, but didn’t exactly discourage Joe’s deduction, either, did he?
Exactly. He’s probably thinking now that he was too quick to assume it was Rachel, as he hadn’t taken the map aspect into consideration.
Yeah, it is beginning to look that way, isn’t it?
Did anybody theorize Danny?
And just when people start to like Danny, he goes and Dannys it up.
From the last panel of this comic, it seems likely… but from the previous comic’s last panel, probably not.
It would provide some context to his ‘Jacob wouldn’t have done this for you’ line from earlier if it turns out he engineered the situation. I had felt that line seemed somewhat odd.
Danny has his flaws, but I don’t think he’d try and scapegoat by accusing someone else, like he did in the previous strip.
He didn’t accuse anyone, he just didn’t object to Joe’s accusation.
I guess that shows that. Rachel is capable of being mean, but smart (to reuse the phrase).
Nothing she’s said here is remotely ‘mean.’
All things considered, she’s been exceedingly polite, much moreso than he deserves.
And notice that she actually shows concern for other women, in that she might be repulsed by what Joe did, but she wouldn’t risk the safety of other women to get him in trouble over it.
Reusing the phrase as in, doing what needs to be done when nobody else has.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/stringent/
So Ryan’s alive, which I figured.
Isn’t there a “no one dies in DoA” rule? But you’d be amazed at what you can survive.
What about “crippled”? If he IS alive I doubt he is in one piece.
He could have died in custody afterwards…
“You’d be amazed at what you can live through.” – Jafar
“Alive” is a broad category.
Joe is really sold on the idea that he is somehow important to people outside his circle.
Joe wants to be the Cool Guy every guy envies. It’s notable I don’t think ANY male in the cast gives a crap about him.
Nice, nice. Solid for Rachel.
Watch Joe have somehow accidentally done this to himself.
(Though last panel Danny is sparking…thoughts…)
Well that smacked Danny in the face like a freight truck.
This is something Joe (and Danny) desperately needed to hear. I don’t think either fully realized the implications of the list beyond its obvious misogyny.
Agreed. Well, Joe still isn’t comprehending, but it seems to be sinking in for Danny anyway. The list isn’t just a jerk move, it’s dangerous.
I think now that Danny gets it, there’s no way he’s gonna keep being Joe’s friend if Joe refuses to understand it. And Joe doesn’t want to lose Danny. He doesn’t understand here but he’s gonna or he’ll be in for a world of hurt
Yeah, that’s not going to happen. Danny is too attached to Joe to walk away from him.
Danny is attached to Joe, and I think he’ll try his absolute best to get Joe to see the error of his ways, and I would like to believe it’ll work!
But if Joe refuses to change, Danny will find new, less shitty friends and move on. He already started that process when Joe was ignoring him and generally being an asshole every time Danny was looking for support. I want to believe that since Joe has shown he doesn’t want to lose Danny, that threat will be enough to get him to listen.
IMHO, that’s something a lot of men don’t realize when they single out women by sl*t-shaming them, insulting/bullying them, spreading rumours about them, etc. (in person or online). Such accusations are reprehensible enough by themselves but can also *literally* put women’s safety, well-being, and lives in danger.
Maybe Danny meant well. While I have some issues with the current online phrase “intent is not magic,” I think it applies *100%* here. By trying to “teach Joe a lesson,” Danny may have put the safety of who knows how many women on this campus in serious danger.
Agreed, Jaime!
Ooooh, you think Danny leaked the list?? I thought his last line was just him realizing that this is a lot more than just women being pissed off about being rated by some douchebag on campus.
Thanks! I see this as a great example of privilege in action – when you are used to always being safe in a particular situation because of who you are, it doesn’t occur to you that someone else with a different identity might *not* be.
See below for my thoughts about Danny leaking the list; basically I could see him ill-advisedly doing it to “teach Joe a lesson” about how he treats women.
Anyone care to help out someone who still does not fully realize the implications? I don’t understand the “treasure map” thing.
The list gave pretty good descriptions (and sometimes even names) of women living in Joe’s building specifically. The implication is that this pretty much pointed Ryan right to their doorstep in his search for Dorothy, Amazi-Girl, Joyce, and Sal.
And if not Ryan, than any other creepy dude looking to score with someone they perceive as easy or whatever they’re looking for. Joe did all the “research” for them, they just need to get into the building.
Joe’s list can tell any scumbag who gets their hands on it who the attractive targets are, and possibly who the easy targets are (he considers Billie “desperate,” for example, and could possibly have referenced her drinking in the notes Joyce didn’t read aloud).
Even if he hadn’t seen Dorothy on his way to class, Joe’s list could have given Ryan a good idea of where to look for Joyce. Think about it; how many “Churchy blondes” who wear “sweatervests,” “won’t shut up about Jesus,” and have a “cranky black roommate”could there possibly be on campus?
Honestly – I’m a woman and that aspect of this hadn’t occurred to me (I went to an all-girls secondary school (aged 11-18) and fraternities aren’t really a thing in the UK and I was too ill to go out much so to my knowledge I have never been ‘rated’ or ranked compared to other girls) – now it has been said, yes – I can see why Rachel feels a bulls eye has been painted on her back, but before that explanation I wondered if they had danced the horizontal rango together and her performance sent her rating off the charts, and that’s why she pointed out her ranking in relation to how well he knows her…
I guess it also depends how detailed the descriptions are and how easy to locate/identify people from the list without any knowledge of them (e.g. somebody spotting Joyce would know she likes sweater vests and her hair colour but wouldn’t necessarily be able to immediately tell she’s a devout, practising Christian etc.) – I had assumed they could easily identify themselves and friends but not people they hadn’t had any interaction with, and it hadn’t occurred to me that their dorm/majors/any classes they have with Joe would be included. But it sounds like the boys messed up big here…
We don’t know how far-reaching the list is yet, but Mandy mentioned that it appears to cover everyone in their building. That would make it pretty easy to find anyone on the list, since they’re all together.
Ya find one ya find ’em all, as it were.
Yup. I’ve always gone to really huge schools. However, if someone had a physical description of and some details about a woman they were trying to find, they could ask around my friend group and/or the other students in my major (or my dorm that one year I lived in a really small dorm) and probably identify that person pretty quickly.
“Hey, dude, I’m looking for this girl who is majoring in Astrophysics. She is skinny and pretty with long red hair and freckles. I think she wears a lot of dresses. We were at the same party a while ago and she dropped her scarf there. I want to give it back to her but I didn’t catch her name or where she lives.”
“Sure! That’s *name redacted as this actually kind of describes someone with whom I went to school*”
With Joe’s list, Ryan or anyone else wouldn’t have much trouble locating most of the women on it. 🙁
The list isn’t misogynistic it’s objectifying and crude.
It’s absolutely all of the above. Objectifying women is inherently misogynistic, as well as a few other adjectives I can think of.
Okay, so first off, retracting my commentary on Rachel from yesterday’s strip, but more importantly: what? “The map thing was not an angle I’d considered”?
DANNY?!
Danny didn’t consider all the implications of Joe’s list being leaked.
Neither did most commenters. I think he’s just saying what we’re all probably thinking right now.
Did they really not? I thought I saw it in the comments at least a few times, and, well, it seems obvious as one of the problems with the list in the first place.
I don’t know about “most” commenters, but certainly *some*. Heck, some people are still insisting that it’s not misogynistic.
Danny had been aiding and abetting Joe with his list, providing the “data security” for it.
Wouldn’t that make him all the better to leak it if he wanted to?
Plus this whole thing works out great for him – his best friend can’t obsessively chase girls anymore and now has to spend time with him (and Danny also just lost HIS girlfriend). Maybe it was Danny’s way of chasing off the lonelies, with an added dash of short-sighted “I am totally helping Joe become a better person”.
Danny also knows that Joe has been handing out his treasure map like candy.
At least, I hope he’s just looking back and going ‘holy shit Joe has been putting people in danger this whole time.’
BECAUSE HE HAS.
Um. Why are we so fixated on the idea that anyone ‘leaked’ it? That anyone in particular would even need to?
Joe handed that thing out to eeeveryone. It may have gotten around in his sketchy circles. For all we know, maybe Ryan leaked it. I mean . . . He had to learn about the girls somehow. Right?
Ryan said he spotted Dorothy on his way to class and followed her. But you’re right; if he had it, he could have used the list to find her.
Do we have more than the one example of him offering the RSS feed to anyone? Because I still think that could have been a sarcastic offer.
Yeah, Joe hasn’t been “passing the list around”. What he DOES do is go around telling high-ranked girls their ranking number, as if they’re supposed to be flattered.
It’s skeevy, but a different type of skeeviness from running around sharing the list with other guys. (Not trying to defend him, just trying to be precise.)
Why the hell would you set up an RSS feed if not to let other people see it?
What I don’t think we’ve seen is anyone actually take him up on the offer.
I know he asked Danny if he was subscribed early on and he said he was remiss in not offering the password to Raidah. I suppose that could have been sarcasm, but it’s not clear at best. The most straightforward read is that it’s true. He even pulls out his phone as if sending it to her then and there.
It could just be part of the act, like talking about threesomes was, but I’m not sold on it yet. He at least goes around talking about the list and sarcastically offering it to people. If someone took him up on it, it’s hard for me to imagine him backing down.
Danny Danned it again? Dang.
Oh, is Danny not a good egg after all?
Maybe he was trying to be one, but didn’t think things all the way through. Guess he’s got egg on his face.
Yeah, this situation eggploded in his face
Maybe we had an eggaggerated idea of how good an eggample of a good egg Danny was …
Well, if he leaked the list, there’s no going back now. It’s all ova the place.
True the yolk would be on him white now.
That’ll do, everyone. Remember, one egg is un oeuf.
Keep shelling out the puns, tyersome.
(Yes, I’m egging you on.)
Thanks to your egghortations I shell chorion until I crack.
DANNY LEAKED THE LIST
DUH NUH NUH NAH?!?!
This doesn’t mean it was Danny, was it? When he says he hadn’t considered it, he means in terms of figuring out who did it, right? Or maybe in terms of helping Joe create it in the first place?
Danny, what did you do
WAIT YOU TRIED TO PIN THIS ON RACHEL
DANNY WHAT DID YOU DO
Honestly, yesterday’s comic is what has me questioning whether or not this was meant to implicate him. But also, I’m clicking with the idea that it was him because *insert Shyamalan meme here*
I don’t think Danny would throw someone else under the bus like that. If he was guilty, he’d probably have tried to come up with a reason it couldn’t be her without implicating himself.
He befriended a Joe. He didn’t know what he was doing
“I couldn’t help it. It just… popped in there.”
“Ray has gone bye-bye, Egon. What have you got left?”
“Sorry, Venkman. I’m terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.”
…. So Danny or Amber?
Why on Earth would Amber do it?
Because it’s gross and she has a tendency to lash out at people she thinks deserves it?
Given her recent absence an the point Rachel just made I don’t think she’d have motive OR opportunity.
I’m deeply saddened by this strip.
[beat]
Ryan is alive.
Rachel never said he was alive…
Most men very rarely consider these things…
This.
And an alarming number of men are dismissive of women when they explain why they do.
The system makes it easy for them not to consider it. It’s the blinders of privilege. All the life experiences of women tend to be hidden by a thick layer of harassment and censorship to those who try and talk about it, treated as something to dismiss. And so it’s easy to grow up not knowing the context that women live through and how all those “cool guy techniques” actually affect them.
For those who want to be better, it’s often a long slog of listening and undoing a lot of cultural messaging to get to a point where they do consider these things.
Getting real close to sexism up in this chain.
It really isn’t. An overwhelming number of women routinely have concerns for their safety dismissed by men. A lot of men don’t believe women when they tell them they feel threatended or unsafe. These are not sexist assumptions, these are facts. Also, nowhere did I – or anyone in this chain – say that all men do this. Cerberus even mentioned the people, many of them men, who try to unlearn these behaviours. Because those obviously exist. So. No sexism here, just a depiction of some real world experiences.
Hence why I said “close to sexism” and not “is sexist”
Just to point it out I’m a girl, and yes I have been dismissed by strangers who are guys when it comes to feeling threatened, but most of my guy friends gets why I don’t want to be in the middle of a booth surrounded by guys I don’t know. (And this is where I take issue, my guy friends know I don’t like being physically stuck/surrounded by guys I don’t know, and therefore make a point of sitting next to me, or giving me an escape route)
For any guy reading my this comment, being basically stuck next to a guy I don’t know who’s twice my size is really uncomfortable because I can’t “bash my way out” if it should be needed.
Your avatar is very fitting.
My avatar makes everything I say sound more “Mary” then it’s intended.
People are generally blind to their own privilege. This isn’t a guy thing, or a white thing, or a straight thing, or a christian thing, or a rich thing, it’s just a people thing. We see the injustices that we’re victimized by, but when things are tilted our way, that’s just how the world should be.
For example: A lesbian black Muslim woman living in Los Angeles has privileges that a straight white Christian man living in rural Montana does not, such as “Much better access to a variety of healthy food”, “Much easier to travel to other states” or “Larger variety of potential jobs”, and these are things that most people living in LA rarely think about because of course you can just book a direct flight to New York, don’t you have airports in Montana?
Men have a lot more advantages than women do, of course, that should go without saying. But it’s just how all people react to these sorts of things.
As usual, it seems the road to Dan is paved with good intentions.
And the road to Joe is paved with good eggs.
“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
― T.S. Eliot
well then, all she needed was the fist of logic. that joe’s more concerned about/focused on himself and threatens to take down his sexist rating about her, as though that would upset her (and not the presence of the rating itself, nooooo) still makes him a prick.
And when the radical Priest came and got ’em released
They was all on the cover of Newsweek!
I’m on my way, I don’t know where I’m going
Where am I goin’, I don’t know.
Where am I headed, I ain’t certain.
All I know is I am on my way.
(sigh)
Fuck.
Wait. going by that last panel, does that mean it was Danny that leaked the list?
I think it’s more likely that Danny just realized that as Joe’s amateur webmaster, he’s complicit in the road map. But it’s a possibility.
Like any good egg, Danny has trouble seeing, hearing, or smelling anything outside of his shell.
But crack that shell, and he’s still a good egg.
*scans up*
…. wait, everyone’s reading this as DANNY being the leak?
…..
…..
…. okay, I can see how you could read it that way, but what would be his motive?
I was wondering that too. My best guess would be based on this strip: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/indulging/
Basically that he did it to make Joe see his friendship as important. But that seems out of character for Danny to me? But then, who knows what this NEW Danny is capable of.
Maybe? But even leaving aside that it’s woefully out of character for him, I have trouble believing that he could execute an op like this and have it work this close to as intended without first seriously leveling up his planning skill.
Well then, maybe it didn’t work out as intended at all. That’d make it harder for us to guess what his motive might’ve been, if it wasn’t actually accomplished.
Probably for Joe to realize he’s a jackass? And for Joe to start treating women with respect?
I dunno, though, it really did seem like he was honestly theorizing with Joe. I find it hard to believe he’d say “[Rachel has] motive, ability, and opportunity” if he knew for a fact it wasn’t her. Danny doesn’t throw people under the bus.
This is a good point.
Wouldn’t that require him to actually try to help Joe learn from the experience rather than cop out when called out for not doing it? No, IF Danny was behind this, which I find unlikely, the only possible motive is to showcase his ‘friendship’ to Joe. If that were the case then the quotes around ‘friendship’ would apply.
I guess, unless he’s afraid that if he brings up the subject himself that Joe will stop being friends with him. In which case, he’s being sort of passive-agressive to try to fix the issue without risking the friendship.
I don’t think Danny’s so jealous of Joe that he would pull a stunt to get closer to him, but trying to do the right thing in an absolutely stupid way that’s probably going to blow up in his face… that’s the Danny we all know and love.
Now I’m starting to think he actually IS behind this.
(Did I say “love”? I meant “slap our foreheads and yell at”
It’s not really throwing someone under the bus if there are no consequences.
I suppose if he didn’t foresee Joe actually confronting her, that’s a fair point. Still seems awfully underhanded, though. But if he’s scared enough about what Joe thinks, he might do that to shift the spotlight (and potentially the blame) away from him.
Maybe I’m reading it wrong and being too influenced by other commenters. However, I could see Danny leaking the list in order to “teach Joe a lesson” – namely, to try to make him be a better person by having to face the direct effects of objectifying and “ranking” women.
See my comment above. IF Danny did this, he may have meant well, but ultimately his actions may have been far more directly damaging to these women than Joe’s objectification and misogyny.
For all that Danny is supposed to be a “good egg,” if he leaked the list and didn’t think what that might mean for the women on it, IMHO he’s nearly as narrow-minded and sexist as Joe.
It’s an obvious reading, and beyond making people here think so, I think Joe could take it that way.
But I agree, I think that it could be a misleading one. Danny hasn’t shown much sign of leaking the list; it reads just as well as him suddenly worried for some of the women he knows are vulnerable.
Aw crap. Rachel’s got a real good point here
You know, I have never much liked Rachel (here or in the Walkyverse).
During this conversation with Joe, I have agreed with every single one of her points – but I am still put-off by how she presents those points. Makes it very hard to actually enjoy Joe getting a verbal beatdown when I so dislike the person giving it to him. *sigh*
Maybe use that to reexamine why you dislike her in the first place. If it’s not that she’s actually saying anything wrong, what is it?
Who benefits? Who benefits? Who benefits? Who benefits? Who benefits? Who benefits?
WE DO
oh crap
i would argue ryan benefits right now, because everyone’s distracted from him
anyone who might hate joe and his sexism might benefit; but most of the people who hate his sexism are also aware enough not to do something like this
idk i guess the question i keep asking is how did it get leaked
I strongly doubt Ryan is in any position to benefit from that right now, one way or another.
-shrugs- idk
i mean i still haven’t heard anything about him so i have no way of knowing this for sure. being in the hospital isn’t the same thing as being in a coma, or being unable to text.
i still have no idea how joe’s list got leaked and it’s really bugging me
like i mean methodology: was it word-of-mouth? clearly not. was it social media? was it in the school paper? what happened??
i still find it somewhat weird that Ryan somehow managed to get a bunch of iinfo on where dotty and friends were.
exactly
it’s not like the party was at the dorm. it was at a completely different place – in a house, even. and Joyce didn’t get a whole lot of public attention after that, even as the girl who punched a college gunman in the face. i kind of highly doubt she gave interviews.
i mean it could have been amber’s phone, but that’s not the only way to do it
He saw Dorothy coming from class and followed her back to the dorm. He explained that.
oh ok so random chance
i gotcha
Funny, I was just thinking of how cheerful Mary has been the last few strips…
i mean like i feel like mary’s happiness has been well and truly covered by the power trip she’s on. like. that’s enough reason for her to be this…..gracious in victory. -chokes on her own words-
and i really do honestly believe that she would be stymied by joe’s password
For the people theorozing Danny he hasn’t ability and opportunity but not a motive. He is Joe’s friend so he actually has motive to do the opposite and help hide it.
I’m not entirely sure he’d have motive either, but it’s not like people have never screwed over their friends.
you can read being his friend as motive, tho. Joe’s not super likely to suffer long term backlash, tbh- if Danny thinks this might be a learning experience and opportunity for growth, that might be motive enough.
it’s kinda out of character tho.
If thats the case Danny isn’t wrong (about the growth) but damn if the implications arn’t…disturbing
He has the same non-shitty motive as most of the other suspects – causing Joe to suffer consequences for being a PUA-type and therefor learn not to be a PUA-type.
I am very forgetful of details in webcomics, I thought the list was using code names? Are they real names and room numbers??
And, if possible, could someone be so kind as to link me to the relevant page(s)? I’m on very limited data today otherwise I’d go on an archive dive
Here’s the most relevant link:
“Some have real names, some have nicknames”
If the girls can figure out who’s who, it can’t be that hard for someone else to do the same.
Ah very true!
I realize I was taking “treasure map” waaay too literally
It’s more like Joe didn’t bother to learn all the names, and assigned descriptive monikers upon seeing a potential target.
And at least some of them are real names, I believe.
Danny’s brain: Oh shit oh shit I just realized why Joe’s “list” is really really horrible and not just immature!!
Joe’s brain: Dur. Pretty Lady talk mean to Joe. Joe upset now. Now Joe talk mean back.
Yeah… it is kinda frickin’ dangerous
I think its more a reaction to being told that he may helped a sexual predator
yu-u-up
I think it might be both. Joe’s list is horrible and also it may have helped a sexual predator AND to top it off, Danny’s the one that helped him make it.
Not only that, but the sexual predator that is the reason that Amber is quite possibly in police custody.
Who is someone that he still cares quite a bit about.
Wait, didn’t they say Ryan got arrested? And they likely got his face.
Plus that’s not his MO either. He roofies girl at parties. Which he is likely not doing anymore, either, because he only did it as long as he could get away with it.
I think the girls are safe from Ryan, thankfully.
Exactly!
It’s the scripted response for a man in toxic masculinity. To get angry at the uppity she-creature who dared sass back and make you feel not in absolute control and power.
And yeah, it’s dangerous as fuck if allowed to go unchecked.
I didn’t realize the more horrifying implications of the leaked list – did Joe really put the women’s locations on them as well?! If so, that’s really dumb.
Possible, but either way it’s probably not terribly hard to find them. At the very least predators can probably locate their emails or run into them by chance; worst-case scenario, predators can just make a few calls to residence management and easily determine the room addresses of any women on the list.
Honestly I can’t even imagine they’d have to call someone. At least at my college, the directory is online now. Have a name? Here’s an address, and phone number, and email. You can of course have these things restricted for yourself, but at this point freshman year? I’d guess most students don’t even know about it, let alone taken care of it.
Oh, I forgot their real names aren’t on there. Which means there does have to be some prior knowledge on who these girls are.
…Or potentially the predator could just jump to conclusions and target girls who the predator views similar to Joe’s descriptions…
Actually, there are some real names on there: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/pissier/
Unpopular post warning:
I agree that the “do list” is disgusting. I get that it is indeed possible a sex predator could use it in some way. I don’t get why, in the age of facebook and online student directories, a sex predator would bother with an (up to now) password protected list that they would have to know about beforehand. Why would they bother?
That’s Rachel’s point; now that the list is hacked, a predator wouldn’t need to know the password to make use of the list.
Because the list tells them about the women, let’s them pick a target and gives an idea how to approach them.
Then you can use the directory or other means to find them.
And the predator wouldn’t have known about Joe’s list or how to access it before it was leaked – unless Joe told him and gave him the password, which we’ve seen him do. Not to predators specifically, but pretty freely.
Meant to add: That’s something Rachel probably doesn’t know – that Joe wasn’t keeping the list to himself.
Other than Joe’s opinions, what privileged info is there on the list? Assuming there is indeed a student directory available to other students and most of them use facebook. I am not disputing the possibility or the horribleness or anything, just surprised that people are treating it as the blueprints to a bank vault or something.
Because it’s a one-stop shop for all the statistics a sleazebag would want for selecting a target. Cross-referencing names with social media would take a lot of effort, Joe’s list practically distills that into a catalog.
Eh, I won’t argue the point further but you’re talking about sexual predators, not software pirates. They’re not going to give up because they need to type a name in two different websites. At the same time the ‘do list’, as far as we’ve been shown, is just a nickname or sometimes a name, a number and a creepy comment, not “all the statistics a sleazebag would want”.
Also, all in favour of officially deeming Joe’s disasterpiece the “Misogy-List,” say aye.
Massage a list
http://assignedmale.tumblr.com/post/160438595002/every-pun-is-the-worst-and-best-pun
reeeely looking forward to the character growth surely barreling towards Joe like a freight train right now. surely. just a whole train of grwoth right to the face..
Red herring, huh. This is like a murder mystery, except not murder. So just mystery.
Joe. Joe, please. Joey, my lad. My geezer. My top boy. I know you’re not a deliberately awful human being- like, you don’t wake up and think “I am going to be a right shit to the womenpeople today, because fuck it it’s tuesday”. You might be an complete pig, but I appreciate that there are several levels way below yours that you COULD sink to but don’t, and that is in itself a small victory. You have, at the bare minimum, SOME redeeming factors- somewhere deep, deep, deep down, burried under several bottles of Versace Blue Jeans Man and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
But please. Please, I am literally begging you, gain a sense of self awareness and understanding of your actions and general character in a wider context then simply “late night softcore special”. Learn to empathise with others for gods sake. Not only will your chances of forming meaningful connections with other people (INCLUDING them there wimmins you so frequently “quest” for) go up exponentionally- which given how obviously damaged you are, you quite clearly need- but you’ll ALSO stop being The Guy Who Is Still Can’t Understand Why Rating Women On A Scale Of One To Ten And Generally Being King Straw Misogynist The 92nd Even After An Actual Literal Rapist With A Knife Was Caught On The Campus Grounds Is Kind Of Not An Admirable Trait For A Gentlemen Of Leisure To Have, And Is Somehow Completely Unaware Of How You Might Be Coming Off Worse Then You Do Even On A Good Day As A Result Of Your Emotional Immaturity Becuase Of Said Incident With An Actual Literal Rapist With A Knife™, you absolute pissing canteloupe.
Signed,
A Deeply Concerned Commenter from Beyond the 4th Wall
Your comment wins the internet. Have a cookie. 😉
u are a darling
please have the cookie
I ordered Mexican tonight and I have FLAN for dessert! I haz no need of cookies! 😜
i appreciate you and your life choices 😀
“Absolute Pissing Cantelope” is EXCELLENT
Reckon it tastes less overripe than regular cantaloupe? I may Havre to look for it at the supermarket.
*have
I feel I’ve passed an initiation now, having to correct a typo in the doa comment section.
I once had an overripe watermelon spring a leak out the side and release a tiny pressurized jet of liquid, I bet a cantaloupe could do something similar under the right circumstances.
*slow clap*
So Rachel didn’t leak Joe’s do list then? Well that still leaves quite a large number of people that Joe told about his list who might have leaked it.
and now i’m kinda wondering if it was ryan in order to distract from his bad PR
…if he’s trying to target joe, this is a really good way to isolate him from people.
I did not see the map angle either, this can’t be good and to make things worse it does not seem like Joe learned anything of this
but also what is going with Amber!? I need to know
There’s the tie in I was looking for.
Seriously. The entire last week (in dumiverse) probably fills out the newspaper…and we’re discussing one man’s online stupidity? There must be a Willis angle.
Here it is!
It’s pretty gross stupidity. In both senses of the word. It’s worth talking about.
While I currently *hate* Joe, I have to applaud Willis for creating such a realistic character. It’s tempting to think that all male misogynists and sexists are greasy characters hiding in dark alleys or moustache-twirling, cackling villains. In real life they can be perfectly charming, seemingly-decent people in other areas who have mile-wide “blind spots” of sexism when it comes to women.
I generally have a lot of male friends (I’m a cis woman). Two of my most recent best friends were men (I say “were” because I’ve fallen out of touch with both of them and am not sure where our friendship stands at the moment). These were men who helped me when I needed it, took care of me when I got really drunk or upset, listened to me when I needed to talk to someone, and let me cry on their shoulders. They also both spouted some of the most *horrible* stuff about women and feminism. One of them basically told me that I didn’t understand what women need in a relationship with a man (short version: to be subservient to a strong man) because I wasn’t a “typical” woman. *rageface* After a while I just stopped bringing up any kinds of topics relating to sex, sexuality, and gender. (One of these men also claimed that women cannot ever have sex because only P-in-V is “real sex.” As a pansexual woman, I am SO happy to hear that I’ve never had sex with a woman! *sarcasm filter*)
These men’s attitudes towards women-other-than-me is not the primary reason I’ve fallen out of touch with them, but it’s a part of it. I’m tempted to say that they are “good people” except for their attitudes about women, but I’m not sure that’s fair. I can understand bigotry because of ignorance – I grew up in a very white part of the country (New England) and I wasn’t exactly the most racially conscious person until I left the area and actively started educating myself on multiculturalism. But I spent hours of my life trying to “educate” these two men about feminism and equal rights and I honestly don’t know if I changed their minds at all (except maybe to make them think I was “different” than the other women out there). And that in and of itself is dangerous. I started identifying with the oppressor because, to them, I was someone “special” who was better than other women. I wonder if that’s not what is going on with Danny’s relationship with Joe. Whether or not he leaked that list, he is complicit in Joe’s misogyny – just as I was with these two male friends.
tl;dr – People are complex and I appreciate that Willis creates complex characters.
oh god that’s so gross and i’m so sorry you had to deal with that
……i mean, yeah, at the point where a large part of your relationship with someone is educating them, it’s not a healthy friendship. mentorship, maybe, but that’s not the same thing
um. yes. i mean. people’s good and people’s evil and people’s neutral exist all at the same time, which is what makes it confusing. it’s fluid and weird and unexpected. it’s just – we’re all so freaking messy
Thank you. 🙂 The sad part is that this kind of experience doesn’t seem to be that uncommon…terms like “mansplaining” and “friendzone” (used by men about women) exist for a reason.
And I can’t claim that I haven’t said horrible things about individual people or collective groups of people that make me ashamed of myself to this day and sometimes keep me awake at 3 AM – yeah, I definitely agree that we’re all “messy.”
I just get SO tired of men dismissing women and women’s rights and concerns. This has always been a thing but IMHO it’s gotten worse since the U.S. Presidential campaign and election of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. I have professional colleagues with advanced graduate degrees who continue to insist that sexism played NO ROLE AT ALL in the election and we shouldn’t pay “so much attention” to you-know-who’s remarks about grabbing women by their ladyparts, the numerous accusations of assault and rape, and his ongoing dismissive and insulting remarks towards women.
Sidenote: Is Joe a No. 45-in-training? I live in NYC and have never met the PoTUS in person (nor do I want to!), but I know more than a few people who have. By all accounts, in person he can be incredibly charismatic and gracious. Life and people are confusing. 😕
ugh. that’s exhausting.
i don’t think joe’s quite that bad, but he’s pretty bad.
*appropriate gesture of support* for dealing with that.
But also, yeah, that’s the tragic part of things like sexism, racism, etc… Sometimes it’s the actions of mustache twirling villains cackling with glee at the idea of hurting the powerless and watching them die.
But far more often, it’s people one knows. One’s family members, one’s lovers, one’s friends or acquaintances. And often times the mustache-twirling villains, the rapists, the out-and-out abusive sexists turn out to be those same people. The people we work with, live with, see at holidays. Some of them are doing extensive harm behind closed doors.
And they don’t always mean too, but toxic masculinity makes a prison that makes justifying these actions easier and easier.
Exactly!
My personal jury is still out on whether or not I’m going to re-initiate contact with these two people. I fell out of touch mainly because of people moving and my lack of time/career stress. Plus I’m pretty lousy about keeping in touch with people in general.
I don’t know…I miss them both dearly. They have been two of the few people in my life who understand me more profoundly than most people do, and who haven’t shied away once I’ve revealed that “darker” side of myself to them. But as U.S. society changes and as I get older I find myself less and less tolerant of “toxic masculinity.”
*shrug* I’ve got a lot of plans for the rest of this summer so it probably isn’t the best time to re-forge connexions anyways. I guess I’ll wait and see how I feel in the fall and go from there.
Yess Danny, you have a chance to do the right thing.
Prove your good egg status, or you may have to forfeit your hat. And NO ONE wants you to forfeit your hat. Come on, you can do this!!
I think she’s implying that, being rated an 11 makes her the biggest target on the “treasure map.” If any predators really are using it to find their targets, SHE’S the one who needs to be afraid first. And because of this, she obviously can’t be the leaker.
Sure puts things in perspective, doesn’t it, Danny?
Sure puts things in perspective, doesn’t it, Joe? No? No life lessons learnt? No reconsiderations? OK….
“Caught.”
Interesting.
Thing that caught my attention? “Caught”
Usually one does not catch corpses…
That’s what I was thinking too. “Caught” as opposed to “found dead”.
However, “beaten within an inch of his life” is still in play…..
So, in recap, we know:
1) Amazi-Girl is either in the hospital or in jail.
2) Ryan took the fight inside.
3) The truth about Ryan came out.
4) Dorothy is okay.
I feel like Willis in intentionally telling us everything at least on a base level ended up okay, so he can do an incredibly dark storyline coming up.
What makes you say Ryan took the fight inside? Even Rachel says “a sexual predator” — who else but Ryan? — was found “outside our dorm”.
I think it’s because everything may have ended up reasonably okay on the surface, but I think the most extensive damage is going to be on Amber/AG’s psyche.
Or potentially Dorothy’s. We know she’s in therapy and doesn’t even want to talk to Walky about what happened.
Maybe I’m personalizing here, because Dorothy reminds me a wee bit of myself at that age. It seems like she came from a relatively good family, had a fairly privileged upbringing, and didn’t come into contact with a lot of the more sordid realities of life. The fact that she wants to go into politics shows that she believes in law and order and that the system works. From personal experience, I can say it’s really traumatic when you have that comfortable, sheltered world-view challenged.
And I never experienced anything *nearly* as violently traumatic as Dorothy did that night…
THERE’S A GOSH DARN MAP INCLUDED IN THE LIST??? YOU FRIGGING IDIOTS
I think she meant metaphorically?
Not a literal map, probably, but he especially focused on all the women *in his dormitory.*
The “map” is listed in detail here: Archive:
“Men are from Beck, Women are from Clark”
That’s all the “secret” detail of the “map”: Women live in the Clark wing of the building and that is common knowledge.
joe likes to keep digging his hole
Danny proceeds to be terrified for every female he knows.
Ha, I knew she didn’t do it.
i read this in mr green’s voice from clue
blame all the people talking about cluedo yesterday
🔥 FLAMES. FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE! 🔥
“You don’t need any help from me to look stupid.”
“That’s right!”
Comic Reactions:
One of my favorite parts of the strip is how it shifts in context to real-world events.
Like, Joe’s behavior is already fairly gross, but takes on an extra edge in the world of Trump, where gross “boys will be boys” sexism may very well have doomed our entire nation and possibly the world. It takes on an extra edge where there’s been a spike in sexual assaults of marginalized community members because they know involving the cops is even more of a danger than usual.
It resonates in stronger ways. And that applies to the personal as well. I’m trying not to overly slam on Joe, but well, still floating in the numb stage of recovering from yet another sexual assault, I feel Rachel here. I feel that righteous fury for the attitudes that prop up that sort of sexual entitlement and toxic masculinity that leads into shit like that. I feel being done with this sort of tired sexist crap we can’t seem to ever excise out of our collective culture, no matter how much harm it does.
But it’s the systems I hate most of all, and the reality of the situation is the systems poison the folks trapped in it almost as much as those who fall afoul of it. And we see it here with a lot of Joe’s responses and actions and how well they fit certain requirements of toxic masculinity for his worse.
Panel 1: But before getting into all that, I want to just take a second to applaud the lack of chill Rachel has here. Like, she’s been harassed outside her door, had an RA she viewed as a dangerous abuser get reinstated with no real explanation, and has now been stopped on her way to class to be given a litany of sexist bullshit about her major and her worth as a person on top of being objectified by a man who to her perspective seems to be actively refusing to introspect about what he did.
And she doesn’t take it. She storms in, gives her piece of mind and storms back out. No fear, no hesitation, no kowtowing to the social norms that ask women to be meek and deferential and air on the side of politely excusing themselves. And I love that. I wish I did that more often than I do (there’s times when I do the full Rachel (mostly defending friends from street harassment), but more often than not, I’m pleasant disengagement person).
I imagine I’d have fewer scars if I did.
I feel this so hard. There are people at the job I’m leaving who have actually stood up to management and I *wish* I could be them. But growing up in a cult really makes you afraid of authority figures, plus being socialised female and having bad social anxiety…
Anyway, I wanted to say I always love your comic reactions though I think this is the first time we’ve interacted and I, an internet stranger (and fellow trans person! Yay!), have come to care about you, so I wish you all the best in recovering from that horrible thing that happened.
Thanks.
And yeah, I’m proud that standing up for students is another area where I’m more Rachel-like and I’m proud of the fight I had this last year for the kids who needed it.
I just wish I could fight for my own safety and value as a human half as much as I fight for others.
Panel 2: There’s two huge pieces to this. First is Rachel’s content here. Joe’s list is a treasure map for every wannabe sexual abuser. Because it’s dripping in PUA culture with descriptions and enough identifying information to find people as well as maps of insecurities to exploit or regions where their options for escape are limited.
In the wrong hands, it’s a gold mine of information to harm women, in the neutral hands, it encourages the objectification of women and is meant to shame guys who date “low”. Joe should never have created the list in the first place, but if he was going to have this creepy habit, he really shouldn’t have spread it wide and far to anyone who would stand still in his vicinity with RSS feeds and subscription lists.
It’s something I’ve been wary about regarding his list for awhile. And the reason he’s spread it, the reason he’s kept it relates to the second piece.
Which is ego.
Joe’s whole worldview is predicated on him being at the center of everyone’s lives. His tastes must define the “objective standards” of beauty, his boner updates must be wanted and valuable rather than creepy and pathetic, people must care about their ranking in his system, people must want to be like him even though he’s a sad man who has only gotten laid in spite of his toxic personality not because of it.
And here, he still clings to this fantasy that someone hacked him. That someone actively did this just to mess with him and ruin his nonexistent “reputation” with the ladies. That it isn’t likely on him spreading his list around with little concern for security or spread around for a reason that had nothing to do with him.
That he might just be an unpleasant wasp on the days of these women rather than the lodestone they all orbit around.
And it’s what keeps him trapped in this toxic masculinity for now, and what he’s going to have to shred in painful fashion. He can’t bear to let go this mess that is hurting him and hurting others because to do so would be to admit that he can’t hide away from vulnerability, that he can’t devise a system to round off the sharp edges of asking people out or for sex, that he’s wasted his life on something juvenile and awful and genuinely hurtful and harmful for others.
To admit one’s wrong is unmanly in this culture, so even if you’re tumbling down, double down. Like Trump voters, doubling down in support for his fascist nightmare hellscape, because to do otherwise would be to admit fault like a “woman” in their eyes.
And it’s the thread that may very well doom us all. It certainly is dooming Joe.
Panel 3: And we see that confirmed here. Rather than admit even the smallest inaccuracy in his accusation even though it would literally harm him none to do so and would save a lot of social face, he doubles down simply to avoid admitting fault and gets defensive.
And it’s something he does every time he screws up or gets called out. Retreats into a spiky defensiveness and tries to turn it back on the other person. Trigger a PTSD episode in Joyce? Well, it’s her fault for over-reacting and now she owes him an apology. Make an ass of yourself walking in late on a depressing topic? Turn it into a victim complex about the teacher being out to get you. Harass Sarah to the point where she has to scream at you to get you to stop? Make like a victim and like she’s over-reacting.
It’s honestly a tragedy.
And I love Rachel here. Not just because she’s storming out, fully done with this shit, but because of how she turns Joe’s defensiveness back on him. Like, Joe in his defensiveness says he doesn’t know her very well, but that’s just the point. He doesn’t know any of the women he’s judging very well. He doesn’t know their characters, their hopes, their dreams, their struggles, their quirks, their personalities.
His rating system is solely based on his immediate boner reaction. It’s literally a boner update, updating the world about the state of his boner in the vicinity of various women. And that’s shitty. To be sized up as meat and rated with no care of who you are, simply what utility you could have for their cocks as a pleasing shape and nothing else. It makes one feel hunted, and it makes one unsafe. A world where we are viewed as in the moment objects holding the “sex” allows it to become easy to justify hurting us for that sex or taking it by force or coercion or simply by exploitation of the social contract.
And Rachel bares that down to its core. He doesn’t know her at all, but he still rated her an eleven, still refers to her by that number, based on nothing but ephemeral crap. And if it was just a private thought he kept to himself it would be one thing, but the fact that he’s instilled a sense of mystical power to this sad litany of boner feels, making it into a public spectacle, is where he dips into the sadder aspects of PUA culture.
The performance of horny, throwing “field reports” and “rankings” around to impress other sad sacks who are teetering on the edge of becoming rapists as they alienate any women who might have been willing to give them a chance and any men who would intervene to talk them down.
It’s a cage. And Joe needs to escape it for his own good. And it doesn’t even have to end in him seeking out romantic relationships. It’s okay to be aromantic.
But it’s not okay to be a dick.
Panel 4: And here is where the implication of what Danny has enabled hits Danny with full force.
Like, he always knew his friend was a bit sexist. He always knew the list was a bit off and insulting. He always knew that he shouldn’t get dragged into Joe’s view of how to interact with women. But I think like many men, he didn’t think about what impact aggressive sexism and sexual harassment have on the women around him. How much harm Joe and his list have done. How dangerous what he helped set up always was in the wrong hands.
And that’s a part of growing up for men who want to be “good eggs”. Realizing the full scope of the systems of oppression that surround you for others, how their lives are impacting by things the world has carefully worked to hide from you. And I think this is a major awakening in his growth as a feminist guy. Recognizing that Joe’s actions aren’t just harmless stupidity but have negative impacts on the women around him and that following and enabling him may actually be doing others harm.
I don’t know how he’ll react to it, but I think this is the first step on a long awakening that will lead him to being an even better egg going forward.
And Joe… oh Joe… *shakes head*. There’s so much to be said about him, but I feel there are two parts of this that deserve special consideration.
1) His violent anger when called out on his behavior. Like, whenever he feels cornered or put in a position where he doesn’t feel he can double-down on his actions, where a woman has made him feel awkward by outsmarting him or refusing to accept his reframing of an issue, he reacts with this violent anger.
And we’ve seen it a bunch. We saw it with him yelling at Joyce to tell the woman she was on the phone with that he never sexually assaulted her. We saw it with him when Joyce called him out on his list and how much it hurt her. We saw it when Danny didn’t make him feel better by filling out the panicking best friend role. We saw it when Joyce called him out for staring at Leslie’s tits. We saw it when Leslie revealed the fucked up context of his inappropriate lesbian joke given her current lesson. We’ve seen it multiple times when Danny hasn’t reacted the way he wanted.
Something doesn’t go his way, he doubles down with anger and it’s hard not to read a lot into that. Anger is after all, the only emotion men are allowed to feel under toxic masculinity. No sadness, no regret, no fear or indecision, only anger. And we see that with Joe. He’s either confident, neutral, or mad. And he doesn’t allow himself the space to be sad, to be introspective. Partly because he’s afraid of it, partly because that’s one of the prices of toxic masculinity.
2) He uses the list as a punishment for uppity women.
Like, its hard to ignore that for all his talk of it being a private list for him and his friends, he is really invested in the women he is surrounded about knowing that if they displease him by pushing back or resisting or calling him out, he will punish them in their rankings, dropping them down. And he expects this to hurt and for people to be willing to do him favors (like sleeping with him or letting him out of class early) to increase their overall ranking on his bullshit list.
We saw this with Joyce’s 0-minus, as punishment for that catastrophic date. We saw it with his shenanigans with Roz while she was subbing Leslie’s class. We see it here. He wants women to feel bad when they drop in ranking. He wants to punish women with his ratings. He wants it to hurt them, to chastise them, to show them up for making him feel vulnerable or foolish or self-conscious.
And that’s actually kind of terrifying. Like, that’s one of the more frightening things about toxic masculinity. That it encourages a state where one’s sexuality is seen as a weapon to wield against women, to put them in line, to keep them from revealing the gaping flaws in the toxic masculinity lifestyle, to make them regret being all feminist and resisting the “ironclad” systems and techniques.
It’s the fear that is put on those of us who are women or read as women. That if we fight back against that street harasser, that sexual assaulter, that toxic troll, that we’ll be made example of and hurt by this mixture of anger, resentment, and the feeling that sexuality can be used to hurt us.
It’s what gets us raped.
And that’s where Joe’s path will end if he doesn’t get off. I think he will get off this path. I think this might be the dramatic fall he needs to realize how toxic this is to his own life and others and how hiding away from vulnerability just makes him a worse person. But if he didn’t?
He’d become just another Ryan.
Well put! I agree with everything you said, Cerberus. This is what I’ve been insomniatically (is that a word?) trying to say, but you are far more eloquent than I. 😊
(Also, appropriate gesture of support for the assault you mentioned. And virtual cookies and milk if you like them. Favourite comfort food/activity of choice if not.)
I think Trump is a symptom of the institutionalized sexism and misogyny that has always existed in U.S. society. But he’s “legitimized” toxic masculinity and has served as an “escape valve” for all those men who hang out in the MRA forums on reddit and/or rant about feminazis and “uppity b*tches.” I am in no way surprised that there has been a spike in sexual assaults. When the PoTUS BRAGS about harrassing and assaulting women – and, just a few days ago, commented on the French First Lady’s body *during an internationally televised diplomatic meeting* – the clear message is that toxic masculinity is okay. It’s more than okay – it’s laudable.
In short, Trump’s U.S. is Joe’s oyster. Or the sh!t to Ryan’s pig.
Men who don’t support Trump are often too quick to dismiss his toxic masculinity to focus on “more important” issues. This is yet another example of men dismissing women and their concerns. According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) approximately 1 in 6 women in the U.S. have been a victim of attempted or completed rape. If you know 6 women, you know someone who has been raped. Those numbers get even higher if you specifically look at Trans*women or women of colour. Pretty much *every single woman* I know has been the victim of sexual assault or harassment. How is the fact that our (I’m from the U.S.) president is aiding and abetting this atrocity somehow not worth the attention paid to his other actions and ideologies?
Like you said, it’s terrifying. I have a 3-year old niece. Worrying about what kind of culture she’s growing up in keeps me awake at night. A big part of me wants her to grow up to be a woman (assuming that’s how she identifies – right now she does call herself a “girl”) who will fight back against sexism. Another big part of me just wants her to be safe. And the U.S. is a VERY unsafe place for girls and women right now.
I can’t remember if I’ve recommended this book before (I’ve been recommending it all over the place online so I’m losing track) but you MUST read “Dietland” by Sarai Walker. It’s very timely and, if nothing else, it’s wonderfully cathartic!
PS: You wrote “It’s not okay to be a dick.”
WHY can’t everyone just agree on and internalize that as a standard for behaviour towards each other?!?!
PLEASE????
From my observation, the answer to that is generally constructed along the lines of “lolol you dumb carebear welcome to the REAL WORLD” etc.
But beyond those assholes, the still-tiresome answer is “because we can’t agree on what that entails”. That’s why I don’t trust communities whose only rule is “don’t be a dick”. In many people’s opinions, pestering women about their gender and making bigoted comments isn’t “being a dick” at all. In fact, *objecting* to it is what counts as “being a dick”.
And so the world turns!
The inability to agree on what it means is pretty much the problem. Invariably communities with only that rule expect someone to be a doormat in order to avoid being a dick. Who that someone or group of someones is will vary depending on the flavor of the community’s views.
I guess I’m old-fashioned (and getting old – but that’s a whole other anxiety attack). When I say “Don’t be a dick” (I’ve actually started using the word “butt” as in “You’re being a butt” in order to avoid gendered slurs), this is what I mean.
Don’t insult or belittle people.
Don’t minimize someone else’s experience.
Don’t presume that you know better than someone else, especially if that other person is a member of a social/sexual/gendered/cultural/racial/etc. group of which you’re not a member.
Don’t be mean and don’t bully people.
Try not to use language or terminology that is insulting to other people.
If you upset someone, apologize.
Basically: try to *empathize* with other people and respect them, as you expect they will try to empathize with and respect you.
I don’t think that should be *too* much to ask…
Sure, that sounds reasonable enough, and I think a lot of people think they’re doing all this. Except they’re blind to their own subconscious exceptions. Or conscious exceptions that they believe to be righteous.
Fair enough. As I said in a post further down, I’ve been called a bleeding-heart liberal more than once…
My mom is a doctor and professor of psychology. One of the things she asks her Psych101 students is: “What do you think is the most important human emotion?” When she asked me that, I thought about it, and said, “Empathy.”
IMHO, that is the key here. Would Joe be such a butt if he actually realized how the women on his list felt? Would Ryan be such a horrible human being if he had a full understanding of how much he traumatized the women he assaulted?
I am not AT ALL saying that I’m always capable of truly understanding someone else’s perspective. I try and often (maybe usually) fail. But I think it’s an important first step towards leaving personal “blindness” and “righteousness” behind.
Yup, empathy isn’t the whole game, but it’s definitely a major point of the game and it’s why when we want to train soldiers, we put them through a brutal training regimen to get them a point where their natural empathy for others won’t make them hesitate to shoot when needed.
And it’s why hate groups work so hard to dehumanize and alienate the groups they hate. Make sure their followers are not forming friendships or hanging out with them and view them as something almost demonic and inhuman that one must destroy before they destroy them. Because otherwise empathy takes over.
It’s why coming out was such a powerful activist tool. Because it reminded so many haters that what they were hating wasn’t some illusive other but their own family members and friends. It’s why empathy-starved Republicans nonetheless tend to have dramatic changes of heart when someone close to them is affected by something terrible they enabled.
We are a social species, empathy is the glue that binds.
But it’s not always enough and there’s a lot out there to try and carve out exceptions or soft targets that one’s empathy should not extend out to.
I don’t think this behavior only exists on one side or the other of political lines. I get called both every day, and I think I’m only kind of a dick. Because yeah the first excuse about real life is a cop-out. Even if you do have to make decisions that you know will hurt people sometimes, you should actually be very aware of that instead of writing it off.
@Cerberus: This gets so messy and sad, doesn’t it? I mean, you can’t pass legislation ordering people to care about each other. But (and I am NOT trying to sound sappy here), I honestly believe that mutual understanding and consideration (i.e., empathy) is maybe the only thing that can save the human species and the world at this point.
Joe is scary. If I met him, I’d be terrified.
I’m waiting for the day some woman laughs in his face when he threatens to demote her on the List. It’s the only appropriate response to the sheer deluded pettiness of the threat.
This adds a creepy level to Rachel’s wrath… Joe basically plastered “Bang on sight” sign on her back.
While unimportant, it’s notable he IS friends with Joyce now but never updated her rating because he doesn’t consider personalities save in the negative.
‘Was’ may be the operative word after today.
That’s going too far though. His list considers all aspects of a person he knows, good or bad. All that matters is how it aligns with his preferences.
I don’t think Danny leaked it, I think like many others have said that he’d just realised how screwed up the list was and is really regretting his part in it.
As to who really ‘leaked’ it, the map aspect makes it less likely to have been any of the female characters.
Male character wise, none of the regulars would have any motive.
So, are there any less than popular side character guys around that Joe has belittled over his sexual prowess and their (assumed) virginity or such, especially IT types? Thinking along the lines of a MGTOW type wanted revenge on the PUA guy – any characters that could fit the bill?
Ah, Joe. Will you ever change? Magic 8 ball says no.
Calling it right now, Howie did it while looking for HBO.
This can mean only one thing. Danny is Amazi-girl.
A few thoughts. Aggressive, masculine men like Joe are held up by male culture as being the ideal. That’s the essence of toxic masculinity. But it is also true that many women find that stereotype attractive as well. There’s a reason Joe has hooked up with so many people after all. Our society has trained not only men to find that behavior attractive, but women as well. So what is the most effective way to stop male aggressiveness, when men are so often rewarded for such behavior?
It might go deeper than just social brainwashing. It might go into biology and how women look for strong, aggression males who will give them protection and resources necessary to conceive and support children.
Nope. That’s a very reductive understanding of biology based on the behavior of wolves in captivity that has been debunked for a long time. Bonobos are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, a social species, and what you’re describing is the opposite of how lady bonobos pick mates.
It is definitely social brainwashing.
Li is 100% right. But if you really want to get into reductionist Darwinism, in most developed countries in the world right now (like the U.S.), strength and aggression are not actually the best survival traits. We no longer have to hunt our food and physically fight off invading tribes. The “fittest” in modern developed countries are people who are intelligent, determined, and clever (and perhaps part of the ogliarchy as well). Conan (the Barbarian) doesn’t rule the developed world; instead we have the late Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Steven Hawking.
Darwin said that evolution is a continual process and humans have *certainly* evolved over approximately 200,000 that we’ve been on this planet (that figure refers to what we might call “modern humans). I personally believe (and so do many other theorists) that in the past 200 or so years the rapid evolution of technology has accelerated our evolution as well.
Also, the human species is in no danger of dying out and infant mortality in developed countries is at some of the lowest rates ever. Women don’t necessarily need “strong genes” to conceive children that will survive the rigours of early life without modern medical care and vaccinations. H3ll, women don’t actually “need” to have children at all. And despite the continued pay gap between men and women in the U.S., many women also don’t “need” a man to support them and their children.
Do I even need to say how this reductionist line of thought completely and utterly fails to take into account Queer people who don’t identify with the restrictive male/female binary?
Eldritch Gentleman, I don’t mean to insult you, but reductionist biology is frequently used by men as a way to justify all kinds of ill-treatment of women. For example:
“Men aren’t biologically supposed to be monogamous! We need to spread our seed around!”
“Men are biologically attracted to women with big b00bs and a big @$$ because they will be better breeders!”
“Men are biologically more aggressive than women so of course they are going to be violent sometimes!”
“Men’s biological role is that of the aggressor and the protector – thus men aren’t biologically “wired” for “domesticity” or traditional “women’s roles.”
“Men have an inescapable drive towards mating in the presence of a fertile and attractive women – we can’t control ourselves so it’s not really r@pe!”
This is a VERY slippery slope that I don’t think we want to follow all the way down.
I find the argument that “women prefer aggressive men because biology” as offensive to men as it is to women.
@Jamie
Quite, physical aggression is indeed no longer necessary for human success. But humans are still quite aggressive and compete all the time trying to outdo the competition, trying to beat others, show themselves as better and more competent. Even if they have to sabotage other people.
And let’s not forget the constant stream of Lies thrown at people to manipulate and control them. Commercials, propaganda, “post-truth”, electoral bullshit.
We no longer bash each other’s skulls in with a club (though even that is not true when you remember how various countries come up with bullshit excuses to invade and shoot at others).
Steve Jobs and Apple… yeesss. Buy the newest Apple product, it’s so cool, but also expensive, hard to fix because they just want you to get a New One instead of fixing the old one, they introduce planned obsolescence and let’s not forget the “Chinese will make it for a bowl of rice” part of the deal.
Methods have changed but humans stayed pretty much the same. We just Appear more civilized and nice but underneath all the mechanisms are the same.
I do not feel offended, I do not “excuse” shitty behaviour I just… have a very cynical view of the world and humans in general.
I’ve been called a “bleeding-heart liberal” so I expect I’m probably less cynical than you are. 😋
I do not disagree that competition has its place (although I also wonder to what extent that is a creation of the “Western” world’s worship of capitalism and the free market – we’re seeing a resurgance of that Ayn Randian kind of thought under Trump). However, we’re also entering a world-historical moment in which *cooperation* is more necessary than ever before.
The Higgs Boson wasn’t discovered by a single person. It was discovered by a TEAM of scientists working together for years on end. I’m currently watching the GORGEOUS documentary “Chasing Coral” on Netflix while I’m typing this (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! EVERYONE WATCH IT!) and one of the points the film makes is that *everyone* needs to join forces to combat climate change and preserve the coral reefs that are so important to our planet’s ecosystem.
H3ll, even the “rugged individualist” Donald Trump depends upon his family and friends. (Sometimes as scapegoats, but…)
You wrote “We just appear more civilized and nice but underneath all the mechanisms are the same.” Well, I grew up with a mom who is a doctor of psychology and tends towards Freudian theory (did I mention I’m a wee bit old-fashioned?) so I definitely agree about the persistance of the id in human nature. However, I honestly think that people are capable of evolving beyond our basic animalistic nature. It makes me tired to be cynical all the time.
I think we as humans have great potential for compassion and growth. Yes, we are never going to get rid of our id, or our biological drives, or whatever you want to call it. But that doesn’t mean we have to be bound by them – or that we have to buy into the propaganda, “fake news,” and social brainwashing.
We’re capable of being better than that.
Yup, it’s also based on complete inaccuracies about both the evolutionary biology as well as behaviors of early man. Like, early nomadic tribes were not nearly as gender segregated as modern society because they couldn’t afford to be. You needed to have all able hands on deck at all times to survive.
So sexism and gender segregation in roles was something that really more came into play with the invention of agriculture and permanent settlements where you could cut off half your work force without paying a permanent price for it and where hierarchies are harder to work around*.
*If someone tried to enforce an unfair hierarchy with a nomadic tribe, you could just leave with some mates and not be overly burdened compared to where you were. Leaving a more developed permanent settlement or being banished from it has more weight and you are less likely to have the tools or means of survival as someone leaving a nomadic group would.
As for evolution, being a dick and violent actually decreases evolutionary fitness. In evolution, mututalism and empathy is what is heavily selected for and we see it in the human species. We are a social species, we strive to come together and keep others alive and that’s for the benefit of the species.
It is only in large societies that being a dick can be something you can get away with, because now there’s the tension of society where a society can tolerate a certain amount of bad-faith dicks before it bursts apart and people are invested in keeping a system together.
Hell, our tendency to want to think best of each other and do right by each other on average as a species is what douchebags exploit. What businesses exploit when they expect their underpaid workers to save them from their terrible policies and practices. It’s the most enduring central part of the human animal. It’s how the human has become the dominant species that it has.
And as for the original assertion, women don’t go for jerks. Like oh I’m sure it feels that way when one is lonely or broken-hearted, but straight women don’t go “ooh, that man looks like he’s going to hurt me in ways that will cause enduring PTSD, sign me up”.
Like, I hang around a lot with poly and kinky and overtly sexual communities. The ones who have the most “success” and seem to be drowning in partners and standing offers? They tend to be quiet feminist men who are good at listening and have developed reputations for being sensitive lovers and overtly caring about their partners’ good times and orgasms.
When I thought I was a guy, I got a lot of stuff from women who thought I was top shit despite being nowhere close to conventionally attractive as a guy, simply because I was known to be feminist and deeply invested in deconstructing what I thought was my privilege*.
*Honestly, it was something that made me mad. I hated how low of a bar I was given to clear and how what I viewed as “no duh” shit was treated as some rare and wondrous thing. I hated how much benefit I got simply for doing the bare minimum.
So why do women sometimes still go for bad men? Because bad men are plentiful and many of them are good at seeming initially charming and kind and caring. And love and lust can provide blinders to red flags. Like in NRE, you become kind of stupid sometimes and so ignore stuff like them making offhand dismissive comments or being really aggressive in the bedroom and try to look past it.
And women are socialized a lot to look past things and assume bad faith on their partners’ part or overlook sexist treatment as just “part of a relationship”.
Plus, at the end of the day, a lot of what people assume from a distance are “jerks” is based on inaccurate stereotypes. A jock is not inherently more likely to be insensitive or dangerous in the bedroom. And a geek is not inherently more likely to be safe.
A lot of men who consider themselves “good guys” and despair over women falling for jerks are legitimately dangerous. These are the minefields that spawn MGTOWs, MRAs, and PUAs. These are the blighted lands that spawn the hate movement that ruined gaming or sexism in the comics/games/RPG industry and hobbies.
And a lot of women have learned the hard way how harmful that can be and how long the scars can linger.
And honestly, the onus is kind of on men as a collective whole, if they feel women are going for aggressive jerks, to improve the overall quality of men or at least themselves.
And based on what I’ve seen in my communities, it does wonders for one’s sex and love life as well.
*clapping*
I’ve been with my male partner for almost a decade. He is one of the best men – h3ll, one of the best PEOPLE – I’ve ever known. I know he took some sh!te for being a so-called “nice guy.” It’s sad when that is honestly used as an insult against a decent human being.
I never went for the “bad boy” stereotype but I had some bad experiences with men who came off as “good guys” at first but later turned out to be butts. And yes, those scars DO linger. (The man I dated before my current partner lied to me and stole money from me. I’m still in some debt because of what he did. I never EVER again want to have to call my landlord and my utility companies to beg for an extension because my partner stole all my money.)
Women who are attracted to men DO like “nice guys.” But that means HONESTLY nice guys – not “nice guys” who whine about being “friendzoned” (so making a friend is apparently the worst thing in the world?) or become aggressive when a woman isn’t attracted to them and/or won’t put up with misogyny and sexism.
This is a vicious cycle that we all REALLY need to break!
A very thoughtful and in depth response, thank you. I just want you to know, I wasn’t at all trying to say that the onus is on women to stop hooking up with jerks. Obviously no one can control who they are or are not attracted to. I’m just musing on the state of American culture as it is today, where aggressive and “masculine” men are held up as the ideal by a significant proportion of both men and women.
And for what it’s worth, there’s a response why I responded to EG instead of responding to you.
I do think we’re going to keep seeing more signs that Joe isn’t actually being rewarded for his jerky behavior, though. So far we’ve seen that the only women he’s actually slept with on screen (Penny and Roz) were not seduced by his nonsense, but were actively pursuing casual sex themselves — and recently he’s admitted that he’s never actually had a threesome.
I don’t think Joe admitting to Danny that he’s never had a threesome is some isolated data point. I think that when he admits that he “talks a good game”, he’s actually confessing that he doesn’t get laid nearly as often as he’s led Danny (and by extension the readers) to believe.
And I think that this is more often true for people like Joe than they want people like Danny to believe. (Lord knows that self-proclaimed “Pick-Up Artists” online seem to do an awful lot of lying about their sexual exploits and the success rate of their techniques.) (I mean, I can’t technically be sure about all of them, but some of the guys who have literally written books on the subject do occasionally admit in less guarded moments that those books are fluff and fantasy as much as reality.)
But yeah, I didn’t think your comment was trying to blame women as a group for toxic masculinity, and I don’t think Cerberus did either.
Yep.
I also think we’ve got another problem when we’re talking about this idea of “women going for jerks”, and that’s that we’re conflating another two, arguably three, very different groups.
Group 1: The Bad Boy. He’s aloof and cool and might ride a motorcycle or have tattoos or smoke despite not being old enough to buy them legally himself. He might be in a band. Maybe he skips school a lot, or otherwise broadcasts ‘not the kind of boy my parents would want me dating’.
The Bad Boy is not necessarily a jerk. He can be perfectly sweet to his partners, and the fantasy version of him invariably is. If he’s in a band, he writes songs about you — if he’s not, maybe poetry. Nothing about a Bad Boy archetype actually suggests that he’s incapable of being sensitive and gentle.
Bad Boys have trouble with authority, not with partners. The typical Bad Boy story often has an element of Romeo & Juliet, as your main concern is usually that your parents won’t approve.
(A Bad Boy can also be a genuinely bad influence on his partners, getting them into trouble at school or introducing them to drugs/alcohol, but I’m just pointing out that nothing about the archetype actually requires this.)
Group 2: The Garden-Variety Jerk. Joe currently falls into this category more than any other. He’s capable of charm in short bursts, and he’s clearly fun enough in bed for some partners to come back for seconds, but he doesn’t have much of a filter and he views women as conquests.
Fortunately for people upset that women “always” choose jerks, the actual Garden-Variety Jerk doesn’t usually have a lot of success! Non-jerks don’t like being around jerks. (Mean people sometimes date each other, but they seem to reserve most of their real meanness for other targets which they then enjoy tormenting as a unit.)
And this brings us to…
Group 3: The Abuser. Abusive people, unlike Garden-Variety Jerks, are usually extremely charming in the beginning (called a ‘honeymoon’ period), and employ a wealth of psychological tricks and traps to erode their partner’s defenses and self-esteem until they no longer feel like they deserve better than this, or are capable of escaping.
What happens in an abusive relationship is very complicated. Much more complicated than I’m willing to go into here. But it is not fair at all to lump abuse victims into the general dating pool and then include them in part of an alleged pattern of “women dating jerks” — and I think that that happens a lot, unintentionally, when we start talking about this.
Like. Yes, there’s a bunch of sweet gentle people who are, right at this very moment, in a relationship with someone who’s actually mean to them (as opposed to being mean to outside parties, or being Generally Rebellious Against The System as the Bad Boy is), but those people are abuse victims, and it’s just… very odd that we as a society have decided to focus on how this trend is unfair to Nice Guys(tm) because they “finish last”.
Because in this scenario you’ve really only got 2-3 options. Either the jerk your would-be girlfriend is dating isn’t actually a jerk and you’re just projecting (because he’s a Bad Boy, because he’s a Jock, etc) — or he is a jerk to you, possibly because you’re making eyes at his girlfriend and glaring at him simultaneously, but he’s still nice to her — or he is in fact hurting her, in which case you should maybe stop making this situation all about you.
Those are the options. There’s no mythical fourth option where the girl of your dreams just needs to wake up and realize she should date a nice guy like you instead. If you’ve been a shoulder to cry on while bitterly fantasizing about her, you aren’t actually nice — you’re a selfish creep, and dating you would actually make her even more unhappy than whatever guy you’ve decided isn’t good enough for her.
that self-absorption is the entire problem
Just for the record, chimpanzees are just as close to us as bonobos, since the two are closest to each other. So bonobo behavior does show that chimp behavior might not be ancestral to our common lineage, but chimp behavior also shows the same thing about bonobo behavior.
Either way, it’s probably a mistake to draw too many conclusions about Homo sapiens from them. We’re a really changed species, and that includes our behavior. It’s tempting to look at other animals, because people are so bad at looking at our own biology without bringing in cultural stereotypes, but in the end there’s no substitute for it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4463722/Bonobos-closely-related-humans-chimps.html
The study behind this article is what I was talking about, FTR.
But of course it’s a mistake. Basically any time we look at the animal kingdom in an attempt to explain human behavior, we’re cherry-picking. I would much rather hold us to the standards of an animal society that’s generally harmonious and egalitarian, however, than shrug our shoulders and say we shouldn’t bother trying to be better than the most violent ancestor we can find — or than “alpha wolves”, something we literally made up.
I honestly don’t know.
I’d like to say that the current “geek culture” craze in the U.S. and elsewhere is a sign of society moving away from toxic masculinity, except that a bunch of male geeks I’ve known are even more toxic than their “jock” counterparts. I’ve been shamed for being a “fake geek girl” more times than I can count… 🙁
I don’t know. I think it’s important for male parents to show their children that there are ways to be a good man (a good egg?) beyond being aggressive and toxic. I think it’s important for female parents to show their children how to stand up to toxic masculinity and value and love people who don’t fall into that harmful ideology.
But I’m not a parent. I know it’s not that easy. To quote Cerberus’ words in one of their posts on this comic: “It’s not okay to be a dick.” Maybe we should all take that to heart.
It’s like the Ferengi say, “They didn’t want to get rid of the exploitation. They wanted to become the exploitation.”
“I’m not a parent. I know it’s not that easy.”
You are so right. I have three grown children, and my memories are pock-marked by craters where I heard my toxic-masculine father’s words coming out of my own mouth.
Even when you’re aware. Even when you try. And by definition it was worse for my kids than it was for me.
I am lucky enough to be the “cool aunt!” Even so, I find myself saying stereotypical and gender-normalizing things to my niece without meaning to: “Don’t you look like a pretty girl! That dress is so pretty on you!” (Right now my niece identifies as a girl – she has actually said “I am a girl.” But I don’t want to “brainwash” her into normative sex and gender roles.)
My mom grew up in an *incredibly* abusive household. She never ever EVER abused me or my two sisters and, as far as I’m concerned, she should be the model for mothers everywhere because she is perfect. But she has told me (like you said) that sometimes she heard her own mom and dad’s words coming out of her mouth when she was mad at us and felt terrible afterwards.
I can honestly say that I do not remember any times when my mom used the language of abuse to me or my sisters. While I don’t know you personally, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I suspect that you are harder on yourself than perhaps you need to be – and perhaps more than your children would be. 🙂
Have you met his father?
Nuts, the Mary Sue almost had a flaw.
Your gravatar is also very fucking fitting.
I would like to see a self-righteous know-it-all have a flaw, ergo I’m a hateful fundamentalist sociopath? Sounds legit. 🙂
I’m pretty sure being a self-righteous know-it-all, by itself, counts as a flaw. Two of them, even.
I’m not saying I agree with impish, but your complaint makes no sense.
Mary isn’t a ‘sociopath’, she has empathy, chooses not to use it by justifying why people deserve her wrath (and there are people with low to no empathy that are still better people than her, I will never defend Mary but I will fight the stigma that someone being a bad person means they MUST be a psychopath/’sociopath’/have ASPD).
Rachel is flawed, being self-righteous is a flaw – particularly when you wield it against people that are already down and can’t defend themselves (Ruth) or aren’t expecting an aggressive response as they have only just introduced themselves which puts them immediately on the backstep (Danny). Joe deserved it though.
Being a know-it-all is also a flaw, particularly when you wield that as a weapon against people without the confidence to say you are wrong (Ruth, Amber as collateral damage) and because it inhibits your own growth to think you know everything or are always correct.
Genuinely I think the word Mary Sue has lost all meaning by this point though because I see people using it more against female characters that aren’t completely debilitated by their flaws than against characters that have no flaws or are overly stated as being perfect.
Not that I disagree that impish’s assessment of you is dumb, but that term has lost all meaning.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Wait, you think Danny doesn’t have flaws? He’s crawling in them. He’s insecure, he’s naive about his areas of privilege and has lots of growth in learning what to do to support and understand those he cares about. He’s prone to coming to the bro defense and is overly enabling of Joe, he can fall back on bad habits when stressed and has a tendency to define himself by his relationships.
Like, yes, his character arc is all about overcoming those flaws. And he’s starting to do so, but that’s the point of character growth. That’s what people who want to be better do, look to their flaws and seek to grow and improve. That’s what Danny is doing.
Doesn’t make him a Gary Stu, doesn’t make him flawless. Makes him the type of human that he is.
I think they’re talking about Rachel.
…Which is weird because the way she blew up at Ruth is DEFINITELY a flaw, at LEAST. Putting a suicidal person at risk for her own righteousness . . .
“Mary Sue” now applies to characters other than the protagonist that the author has admitted is based on themselves, huh?
…how in the world does Rachel not have any flaws? are you even reading the story?
Girls always have this weirdly high bar set for them. Everything using she/her is a Mary Sue, apparently . . .
Woman, exists: Is Right About Something
Somewhere a Person: Mary Sue. the glitter-stained daggers rattle in their nondescript holsters. the hunt is afoot.
You have a way with words.
That there exists, somewhere, a Woman who is Right About Something, I fine eerily compelling.
The glitter-bedecked Mary Sue is of course her proper quarry.
*find*, drat.
Pretty sure this was Mike.
The problem is, Joe could beat Mike senseless.
Joe is bigger and stronger than Mike, but which one probably has been in more fights?
While I have also thought of Mike, I am not sure this would be his thing. It doesn’t feel like he is personally involved with it enough.
Joe also isn’t violent even when hit in the face. He is not going to beat Mike senseless even if he did ‘hack’ his do list because he made it quite clear that he doesn’t support violence.
Ryan has friends. All of them are probably sexual predators in one way or another.
And Danny’s ‘I hadn’t considered’ remark may not mean he leaked it, but only that he hadn’t thought about that aspect of the list when he built it. Now he’s imagining Ryan’s Bro friends perusing that list, looking at all his friends. In an hour he may be logging into a computer to destroy the list, whether Joe wants him to or not.
That’s how I interpreted what Danny said, too! But I guess it remains to be seen if he actually did it
It’s nice to imagine predators are only stuck with one another, but in reality there are enough people who would never do such things themselves yet manage to accommodate people who do.
I honestly really dislike how the comments somehow warp every character they disagree with into one-dimensional villains. It’s frustrating, because these are good characters! They aren’t just This One Trope (well, maybe Mary is).
…didn’t actually want to post that as a reply to a comment, but oh well.
(Partly because RYAN is actually probably one of the exceptions.)
It was Danny!!! Danny danned it up!!! [/joking]
I wonder if a certain redhead is going to have her affairs with students exposed.
Why does everyone keep saying Danny leaked the list? Don’t you remember that he sent out passwords to people in the early chapters? Including to Jacob? Which meant Ridah had access to it as his girlfriend? Freakin’ Joe leaked his own list.
Maybe Joe was stupid enough to accidentally leave the list open?
Challenge map not accepted.
Pitch-perfect dudebro.
Woman: Rape is a thing! That happens! Also, you just impugned my personal honor!
Dudebro: Yeah whatever what’s most important in this conversation is how your self-worth must be affected by whether I want to do you or not.
I read it as macho-reaction, not his actual feelings. We know Joe rarely talks about those.
That’s the problem though – if people like Joe only ever give that macho reaction, that becomes the norm, even if they might feel something different on the inside (which I’m not sure is the case, but for this point, doesn’t really matter either way).
Some days, I think to myself, “I’ll do it. I’ll betray them all! Every last one will wonder where the hell that came from, after so much time spent earning their trust through honest means!” And then I realise just how strange the comment I had planned was, and I have to mull it over some more.
Also, I recently paid the reparations I owed to someone descended from a slave owned by one of my ancestors. The exact amount is private, but rest assured it was the precise amount owed.
In regards to your second paragraph: WOW. You have my admiration and respect for doing that.
Bad decisions follow bad hats.
I’m starting to think Danny really is behind this, as many have guessed from the last panel…
Danny’s brain: Man, I wish Joe was not such a tool. If only I could show him the error of his ways! But if I told him he’s being misogynistic, he might get mad at me and end the friendship. I can’t risk that… besides, he doesn’t listen to me when I talk about how people would feel anyway. But maybe if the women he slept with complained about it to his face, he’d start to realize that he’s in the wrong.
So how could I get those women to confront him? Maybe I could just throw something in their faces that exemplifies what a tool he’s been. Like that list where he rates women… If I leaked the password to the girls on campus,
maybe they would realize how he objectifies women and they’d give him a piece of their mind… Yes…! This overly complicated passive-aggressive scheme definitely could not go wrong!
to the “Book of Mormon” tune: You’re Danning things up again, Danny…
Besides the whole “caught” “dead” thing, to me “caught” implies “taken in to custody” or something similar. Amazigirl might “catch” someone, but then what? Where would she put them? Plus, the police tape implied some sort of Law Enforcement involvement. Now, Joyce never reported the incident to any sort of authority, did she? Unless Ryan was also being sought in connection to additional incidents, how could he be “caught”?
It’s possible he was only charged with attempted murder, but the dorm knows him as a sexual predator due to Dorothy’s photo.
Crap, remind me, what do the authorities have on him to date?
Most likely they only have his attempted murder of Dorothy and Amber.
Ack, I typed “caught” less-than greater-than “dead”, as a geeky way of writing “caught is not dead”, but of course those symbols were interpreted as HTML.
I’m really enjoying this arc, on a sitcom Joe would have had his epiphany, apologised, made amends and then gone on a date (with Joyce hopefully) and everything would be fine and dandy
But we all know change takes time, it takes time to absorb lessons, you can’t have a world view changed that easily and even if you do there’ll be steps backward so this is good
Showing it like it usually is not the unreal version Hollywood likes to pitch
oh god. so the 11’s are probably the most vulnerable right now
OH GOD
thank you joe for lowering joyce’s score