I too am noping out for the night for sleep-related reasons, but part of my brain is still trying to set the over/under odds for someone non-ironically invoking the horseshoe theory.
Roz is what you see if you rub your left eye really hard and make spots appear on that side. If you turn your head to look at her, she’s already gone further left.
It`s amazing how often knowing what the acronym stands for does not at all improve my understanding of a conversation. I had to google it and still not quite sure I understand the nuance. I think my country uses FPTP?? Maybe??? But we have a second round in elections, so even if you vote fro a small party in the first round, you have a go in the second round…
In New Zealand the Greens are part of the government coalition, voted Green since I was first able to, will vote Green so long as there’s a Green Party. Vote Green y’all.
Roz feels like she’s leftist ‘because it’s the right thing to do’ or ‘because it’ll annoy Robin’, not because she has any deep-rooted belief in what she’s actually saying.
I mean, I guess from a results-oriented point of view, hey, it works, but man, she’s aggravating about being ‘right’.
I mean, I feel like “because it’s the right thing to do” is a far better reason than annoying Robin. It’s still not great if Roz doesn’t know WHY it’s “the right thing to do,” but I’ve gotten the impression she at least has some idea.
Well, there’s a lot of nuance that Roz is missing. Like she’s got the base ideas down (‘what part of women should be treated as equals am I supposed to learn?’), but she’s stuck on the base level messages without taking in a lot of the wrinkles.
I mean, her message is, at the very least, in the right place, but ignorant preaching can be just as harmful.
Because you think higher wages will result in a higher cost of living that will increase the rate that people are automated out of their jobs simply because you prefer not to have to deal with people at the checkout lines.
Because you think that since sexual orientation is something you’re born with, it must have a genetic component, and therefore the simplest way to reduce the non-heterosexual population is to allow them to get married to each other to reduce the odds of that genetic component getting passed down.
Because you think that abortion is more prevalent in low income households, therefore you want abortion to be more socially and legally acceptable in order to reduce poverty by reducing the number of people born in impoverished conditions.
Those last two are only “bad” in the sense that the verbiage is antagonistic and has a strong “breed them out” slant.. and that those arguments are still better than what we have in a lot of states. It ignores humanity, a lot of other frame work and social safety nets that we could put in place to make those null… but as a person who has a strong history with 2/3 in my personal life, I’d accept those as stepping stones because it’s at least better then what I had to deal with.
I don’t agree. “Because it’s the right thing to do” is a religious belief. Many characters in DoA have operated or even still operate exactly on this, but with the Christian community telling them what’s that right thing, instead of the leftist community.
The juxtaposition is with “because it’s the PRINCIPLED thing to do”.
It feels like Roz heard the various right-wing lines about how leftists are all ‘virtue-signals’ and all that and took it all to heart and decided to somehow embody it.
None of the DoA kids are particularly married to their alleged worldview (which makes sense, they’re teenagers).
Joyce basically abandons any religious belief that hurts someone, there wasn’t even an arc of learning to accept Becky or whatever she just chucked that part of her worldview immediately.
Becky, as Roz notes, went from offscreen fundie to RAD LIBRUL overnight, which is mostly a persona. Becky switched “teams” so she aligns with the “correct” worldview but hasn’t really given those liberal ideas much thought and Roz is right to suspect that Becky’s liberalism might be a mile wide and an inch deep.
Roz, obviously, is a hipster more than anything. Robin’s not committed to any of her conservative positions. Even Mary is a bully first and foremost, and she only goes after LGBT kids specifically because she thinks people will support her.
The only DoA kid who has a moral code they’ve given thought to and strongly believe in is, of all people, Joe, who’s committed to the idea that he should be openly caddish instead of trying to pretend to be anything else.
“Joyce basically abandons any religious belief that hurts someone”
In fairness, if a Christian actually took the whole “Love thy neighbor” stuff to heart, that’s a pretty reasonable result. Reading through the bits that are supposed to be direct quotes from Jesus, it does rather give the impression that he placed human kindness as a pretty dang high priority.
That’s probably fudging the moral/ethical division come to think of it, but I’d still argue that Joyce has a pretty strong ethical worldview – even if she hasn’t articulated it in any way to anyone, including herself.
I’m pretty sure Dorothy has a well researched (of course) ideological platform with both practical and moral aspects reflected on and alphabetized.
But she has not discussed it very much, except a few times when she has tried to do damage control on Joyce’s worst outbursts of fundiness. Her main focus now is to get herself in a position where she actually can make a difference, not do activism (a great contrast to both Roz and Becky).
I think Mike has likely put a lot of thought into what passes for his morals. The fact that we don’t like the results doesn’t mean he hasn’t given them a lot of consideration.
I think there’s a difference between not holding anything strongly and not yet having figured out your belief systems.
The reason why Joyce abandons things that hurt her friends is that she can’t reconcile the belief that one should look after their friends’ wellbeing with the religious right beliefs she was raised in.
That isn’t Joyce not believing in anything, that’s Joyce critically examining her morals and politics and fixing self inconsistencies. And that is not the act of someone who only has shallow beliefs, it is the act of someone with deeply held beliefs they haven’t fully explored the implications of.
Joyce believes very strongly in principles of friendship, fairness, and justice. She values people and human happiness over perceived moral righteousness. She is discovering that her beliefs and values don’t align with how she was raised.
Which is totally a thing most teenagers and young adults go through but that does not mean most teenagers and young adults don’t have firm beliefs. It means university is for many the first time they have the freedom to critically examine the politics they were raised with.
I was raised hard right. I drifted left to social democratic at uni – not because I valued everything shallowly but because I valued my actual morals deeply enough to challenge beliefs that had at times been literally beaten into me.
This is why I didn’t understand the point of catholics at my catholic high school undergoing confirmation. You’re confirming? Yes. Why? Right of passage, parents want me to, it’s the right thing to do. So you’re sure, even though you haven’t looked into any thing else, had experiences on your own, or even been outside of the catholic school system to see what the rest of the world might be like, that this is the doctrine you believe to be truth and will uphold for the rest of your life? That’s not why I’m confirming… ITS CONFIRMATION – that is what it’s supposed to be about. Aaaaaaaah
Yeah, that seriously annoys me. I haven’t really been religious since elementary school, but even knowing that, my mom *still* wants me to get confirmed! Not as a “you may not want to be Catholic but I am making you Catholic” sort of thing, but because it’s “just what is done”. I would like to hold off on this so I can go through this important process only if I ever truly feel devoted to Catholicism, but it’s not my decision to make, unfortunately. It feels wrong to go up to the archbishop and basically lie about who I am, but most of Catholicism is tradition.
Of all the online political arguments I’ve seen, no one has ever bragged about how x-wing they are, or told people they couldn’t be as x-wing as them. I see more people taking pride in not blindly following a set of political views, but if they happen to be very x-wing, it’s because that wing happens to have the values they think are correct. People aren’t worried about others one-upping their political views, but rather they expect that everyone should have the same views, because those views are correct.
But this could just be an ironic joke and I’m an idiot for taking it so seriously. I dunno, I’m bored.
Libertarians, when gathered in sufficient numbers, often *do* try to one-up each other on how libertarian or even anarcho-capitalist they are compared to one another.
Source: I’ve been to Students For Liberty conventions. They were happening in D.C., where I was going to college, and I knew some kids who were going, doc it was basically a matter of, “hey, this looks interesting and I have this weekend free, I might as well check it out.” I learned a lot, but damn they can be pretentious as hell.
I’m not aware of anything specific with libertarians and bread.
Bread tends to be more associated with socialist groups – being an old Union concern. Recently I’ve seen “breadpill”, playing off the MRA/alt-right “redpill”.
No, they’re authoritarian communists (as opposed to anarcho-communists, which I’m more sympathetic to — it’s complicated) who spend all day trying to rehabilitate Stalin’s image (and Lenin’s, and Mao’s, and, for the really fringe nutcases, Pol Pot’s) and caping for Assad and any other imperialist dictator who isn’t too western. They got their name for supporting the Soviet Union sending in tanks to crush a rebellion in Hungary. They’re partying like it’s 1917, completely unable and unwilling to accept that the world has passed them by and the conversation on communism and how it might best be implemented has changed.
The only thing they’re good for is if you give them a fancy name and paint up the trucks real nice they’ll clean up the mess after the fash gets put up against the wall. Other than that they’re fairly useless and often vile.
Goddammit Roz, you started off with a reasonable point and then you go and pull this crap.
A little note on her character I made on Patreon and then I’m gonna try and not get entangled in comment arguments. We’ll see how well I do.
Roz is like Baby Activist 101 – she’s competitive, pushy, holier than thou, not the greatest listener, and egotistical and that can be incredibly frustrating. Hopefully she’ll mellow out, because I do think Roz cares and we know she’s willing to put the work into her causes (doing stuff like volunteering at the perennially under attack Planned Parenthood), but for now? Yeah, jesus fucking christ.
Roz cares in some ways – she handed Joyce the card for a therapist even though they fundamentally (ha) disagreed, but…. yeah.
She’s buoyed somewhat by her most direct interactions being, well, Mary and Robin (via Leslie), but stick her next to someone reasonable and her bleagh shinest through.
Yep, that’s exactly it to a T. Like you know she cares. She really does. But she doesn’t present an attitude that shows it well at all 90% of the time.
Yeah, like, Roz hits home for me because I definitely had that phase. Then I got some nuance and some chill and, I hope, became a fuller, better-rounded person. She’ll probably do the same.
I’m cutting Roz a bit of slack here because, despite wincing pretty hard, I probably wouldn’t trust Becky were I in her shoes either (especially not after rooming with Mary and meeting pre-development Joyce). Sure, she’s clearly come out and has probably accepted evolution because Dina and both those things are great, but that doesn’t automatically translate to being pro-reproductive rights, pro-latino rights, or any of the other issues that Roz cares a lot about.
Oh absolutely, but Roz also stands to gain a lot by approaching Becky as a potential political ally, especially given her past and the current state of Robin’s twitter, rather than immediately going on the offensive and casting aspersions. Helping educate Becky about issues she might not be well-versed in could do a lot of good.
Honestly, if I didn’t trust either of them but knew Becky also stood to get screwed over (which as an afab lesbian working minimum wage, she absolutely does), I’d probably start with ‘don’t do it, she’s not worth it’ too. Once Becky starts talking about changing policy, I’d like to think I might be more willing to team up and help, but I would also probably want some assurances first.
Roz has always been the shining example of everything wrong with the Left on the internet. It doesn’t matter what she believes because she’s such an asshole about it that you want her to be wrong.
Eh, just because her sisters moved on some LGBT stuff dosen’t mean she isn’t a republican at heart, and her issue with her sisters platform is probably wide ranging. I mean if all republicans woke up tomorrow and decided that they were cool gay/gender stuff, they would still be embracing a wide number of issues I consider monstrous. Of course she still wants her sister to lose.
Robin’s been tweeting some left economic stuff lately too – Basic Income, IIRC. (Or Becky has, in her name, but that’s retroactively official.)
Near as I can tell Robin isn’t really anything at heart. She’s not attached to any of those issues. She says stuff and votes for stuff to get elected. To be popular. That’s it. There are massive problems with that of course, but it does leave her easier to change than an actual ideologue.
Mind you, I wouldn’t trust her if I was Roz. She could always get convinced something nasty would make her more popular and switch back, but it’s not as simple as “republican at heart”.
Robin doesn’t seem to be a Republican at heart. She seems to be more of a “whatever will get me elected” at heart. Since she’s in a mostly right wing Republican district, that’s what she goes with.
Still full of all the bigotry she was raised with (and likely to go off like a Roman Candle if called on it) and more concerned with looking Leftier Than Thou than actually doing good.
(How is Performative Cis Straight Man Leftist different? Usually in addition to everything PSCWLs do, he uses his leftist image and loud advocacy of feminism to disguise being a sexual predator).
Simultaneously, because to her it’s the appearance rather than the substance that matters, I bet you she is the sort to exhort those less privileged on various axes to “compromise” their civil rights for “the greater good.”
I am not a fan of Roz. She’s her sister’s mirror image: every bit as shallow and self serving, just on the other side of the aisle.
I disagree with this – I think Roz does care. If she didn’t, I don’t think she’d actually put work into it or have offered Joyce a therapist’s number when things were serious (mostly because I don’t think she’d know any).
That said, yeah, she’s a self-righteous and holier than thou jerk sometimes.
I am not saying she doesn’t care at all. I am saying she doesn’t care half as much as she pretends to and her activism activities outside of causes that directly affect her are mostly performance. She doesn’t walk her talk on most of the issues she claims to care about.
It’s easy to stand on principle when it doesn’t cost you anything. For Becky, standing on principle would cost her job security, food security, housing, and potentially a lifetime of crushing debt.
For the LGBTQ For Trumpets, not supporting Trump would cost them nothing because most of them are volunteers and the remainder are affluent middle aged people with secure lifestyles and prior jobs.
Plus, the LGBTQ for Trump types have exactly no effect on Trump’s policies and know it. Becky’s not guaranteed to turn her around, but it’s a hell of a lot more likely.
She’s even more likely to keep her from winning re-election, despite her best efforts.
She’s got two left hands
And they love to roam in the bass
That girl’s got two left hands
And they make their home in the bass
She’s got the right amount of fingers
And the right amount of toes
She’s even got two eyes right over her nose
She’s got two left hands
And they love to roam in the bass
Roz is such a little shit. I would be more judgmental, but I’ve known a lot people who are really good folks now who were exactly like this in their late teens/early 20s.
Becky’s got Yakko Warner-style powers of flummoxing people, though, so I wouldn’t be shocked if she ends up giving Roz some lessons in humility, though.
Lesli hoisted Roz on her own petard by making her give a lesson on LGBT allyship and it doesn’t seem to have worked any.
Man I know Roz is straight, but I imagine that if she WERE bi/lesbian/ace, she’d be the most pretentious about it. ‘Oh no, you straights couldn’t possibly know how hard it is to be in our shoes!’
To be fair, that was like a week ago. Roz isn’t going to learn it quick, especially when she’s tripping over her pride, the same reason she fumed and left when Leslie pointed out that the straight girl was talking over the lesbian woman about allyship and not listening.
It’s funny that people keep on talking about Roz’s beliefs as be excusable since she is only 19/20. I’m thirty and I wish I had figured out as much shit as Roz has when I was her age.
If you wanna unlock the secret debug mode, it’s:
(While holding L3) Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, ✕, ✕, Square, O, Square, O, then the same thing in reverse.
And if you want one hit kills in transformers (ps2) it’s square, circle square circle, L1 L1 L2 L1. Personally, I’d turn it off in the boss fights, but during the actual levels it can be pretty fun.
Becky didn’t exactly get a choice in being a fundie shut-in… I mean… that was her parents’ decision… Also being a former fundie shut-in who was gay nearly got Becky shot? So Roz is definitely uh… not in a great moral place for me here.
Also hi! it’s been a long time since I last commented, it’s cause I got my first jerb~
when was the last time Roz was in a great moral position? She her politics are ok, even if they are self serving feeling, but she lords them over people even when they’re actively changing.
Yeah, I’m with Nono. Roz wasn’t exactly wrong when she pointed out ‘hey…it’s kinda fucked up to like my sister when she would throw you under the bus with her policies’ which is why Leslie agreed ‘yeah wow, I’m sad and ashamed’. I’m not saying she’s necessarily wrong here either, I’m not comfortable with Becky working for Robin, but she’s correct that as manager she controls the message Robin is broadcasting. I mean, it’s certainly better than her position before, right? …Also Robin could have bounced back from the photo with Leslie with great damage control, but Becky’s continued tweeting on her twitter account was what resulted in Robin’s own party pulling their support so…
On the other hand, considering that Roz actively tried to set Leslie and Robin up (including arranging Robin’s second visit to the class), in a way that uncomfortably suggests that she was trying to out Robin… Maybe only to herself, but even so, she must know her sister well enough to have a sense of where that could go. Which does suggest she was happy to throw Leslie under the bus, as Becky suggested.
Roz has already said her plan was to get Robin to realize she was gay, hopefully they would hook up and hopefully Robin would stop being a garbage person on LGBT+ rights. That said, Roz wasn’t exactly crying when someone did take that picture and gave it to the press either.
It’s still just… straight girl manipulating gay girls, which can’t help but be kinda icky, especially because it’s so hard to distinguish between Roz’s genuinely good intentions, sometimes over-the-top-for-the-sake-of-it activism (see Slipshine), and rebelliousness.
It’s not clear what the plan was actually and whether Leslie and Roz had the same plan.
There was a bit in that confrontation between Becky and Roz before class after Robin was outed that made me wonder if she’d basically written Leslie off as acceptable losses as soon as she found out about the crush.
And as much about her personal feud with her sister as any broader concern about her policies.
Roz said what her plan was when the photo came out. The photo wasn’t her plan, but she certainly wasn’t crying over it and didn’t even seem to think about Leslie.
Well, I mean she has a point. When Catholic or fundie parents change their views on gay marriage because their kid comes out, the large majority of the time they don’t suddenly turn leftist. They changed their mind on this stuff in the first place because their personal situation changed and taught them better–on that thing that changed. Sometimes that leads to a watershed of liberal ideas, and sure, that happens faster with young people experiencing it themselves, but it takes time for former-zealots to learn to empathize outside their own experience. Becky may do all she can for LGBTQ+ rights NOW, but Roz has no reason to think she’s magically supportive of reproductive health, minority rights, etc. now too.
And frankly, she’s being reasonable by demanding that Becky prove that she is wholly a leftist when Becky is the one telling her who to vote for.
The sad thing is that Roz works very hard to prove that she’s not like her sister in terms of politics, but she refuses to believe that people can be not like their family, or at least learn not to.
She hasn’t said Becky hasn’t changed – she’s saying that changing on one issue is not evidence of changing on other issues that will also impact Roz (Like sexual freedom, reproductive rights, and whatever fresh hell the GOP is cooking up for Latinas).
She hasn’t even given Becky 10 seconds to explain herself. She just immediately launched into “You suck and I’m better.” I get that Roz has her heart in the right place and could probably eventually be a really good ally, but Christ Almighty she’s awful right now.
I don’t think I had started reading regularly (definitely wasn’t a regular commenter) when the bongo filter was put into place, but I didn’t agree with the descriptor anyway. Even Roz’s worst moment before here (attacking Joyce, shouting over Leslie) was fueled by righteous if-misguided fury.
But panel 4? Brace yourselves, because the percussion section is about to blow down the wall at mach 18.
Becky hasn’t really tried to explain until this strip. She made a crack at Roz’s shirt and where she (Becky assumes) got the news Becky was a campaign manager. I’ll agree she immediately turns it into a competition when Becky says she’s been radicalized but no, that’s not what she immediately launched into.
Roz prejudges everything in the negative. She lets her prejudices rule her rather than guarding against them. She is, so far as I can see, a terrible person who happened to get swept up by the right cause.If she’d been born into Becky’s kind of family, she’d be universally reviled just like Mary. If she were a cop, she’d have shot an innocent person by now.
She never allows for the possibility that anyone in the world might know anything relevant to informing her world view beyond what she already thinks she knows. She doesn’t even seem to comprehend the principles and values behind her positions so much as they give her some imagined moral high ground upon which to tell everyone around her how terrible they are.
Oh, BULLSHIT. Roz is a self righteous asshole sometimes, but she’s nowhere near as bad as Mary or a murderous cop. When Roz gets to the point of driving someone to suicidality and then trying to stop that person from getting help so she can ‘use’ their suicidal state to get power AND THEN ASKS FOR PERMISSION TO DO IT TO SOMEONE ELSE THE NEXT FUCKING DAY, I will entertain Roz and Mary comparisons.
Fair on the Mary comparison. Roz doing what she did in Leslie’s class to Joyce carries all the most essential thought patterns, but Roz has never actually faced the kinds of facts Mary has. I stand by my statement that Roz as a cop would shoot an innocent. That’s the kind of negative prejudice she self-stokes even in a friendly environment, now fed in this hypothetical by facing criminals and potential criminals on a regular basis.
Also, Roz is a self-righteous asshole, so far as I can remember, *all* the time. It’s so bad that she doesn’t even seem to be in it for the cause so much as it’s a way to vomit her toxicity upon “acceptable” targets.
I have to disagree with the “vomiting her toxicity upon ‘acceptable’ targets” idea. That’s what Mary does, yes. But when Roz snapped at Joyce that one class, she was being enraged at what she saw as Joyce’s hypocrisy, not as Joyce’s evil. There’s a difference. Roz is closer to Rachel’s point of view — you don’t get to just wipe away everything bad you’ve done just because you’ve learnt better. Her point was ‘You’ve done terrible things’ more than ‘You’re a terrible person’, though that may have been poorly expressed.
As for Roz as a cop — OK, so I can’t imagine her becoming a cop in the first place, but if she did, I can’t see her shooting the innocent, specifically because she’s so self-righteous. Her partner would be insisting that they shoot, and she’d refuse not so much for the sake of the suspect as to prove that she’s better at being ethical than her partner.
Roz has not driven someone to suicide, as I already conceded. She has not faced a similar scenario. She is, however, definitely a toxic bigot. Dismissing her behavior to Joyce as shouty and mean masks the thought process of an adult human being who pounces on someone earnestly in university to learn and who decides to mouth off to the teacher before she’s even begun to learn anything.
Because Joyce was trying to pass the buck off on ‘the church’ as if she’d never participated in any of the church’s homophobic activities herself. Joyce even admitted later that Roz bluntly laying down that she was part of that was helpful, if mean. “Maybe sometimes I need someone to be mean”. She invited Roz to her party because she trusted her even though, yeah, Roz was not polite about it.
I agree with Fart Captor and BBCC here. Roz has her faults and is deeply grating to me but she’s not a toxic bigot on the level of Mary or Toedad or a killer cop.
I will grant arrogant, hypocrite, more concerned with image than substance outside of reproductive issues, and self-righteous ass. All of those are legitimate criticisms of Roz.
Toxic bigot? Nope. She’s just not on that level of asshattery yet.
It’s not even just that it’s based on assumptions that Roz would do awful things she hasn’t actually done, but the way it ends up downplaying the awfulness of what Mary actually has done.
Like, the biggest reason Roz hasn’t “faced a similar scenario” as Mary pushing someone towards suicide has that she has never actively sought to create such a scenario. Mary didn’t just stumble into that shit by chance. She saw vulnerability in people she hated and she exploited that to inflict as much harm as she could, and damn near caused one of their deaths.
Roz has faced a similar scenario. We’ve seen how she responds to seeing vulnerability in somebody she couldn’t stand, and Roz’s response was to track Joyce down and give her info for a support group.
Mary’s bigotry and willingness to harm those she considers less human are not comparable to Roz being an asshole sometimes
All the LGBT for Trump people are still pushing borrible toxic policy. Becky is very explicitly pushing progressive policies. I’m not seeing the comparison.
@BBCC Oh, Joyce definitely needed a course correction. No dispute there. But that’s the point of Leslie’s class. Roz decided, before seeing anything in the class at all, that she was more qualified than Leslie to lecture Joyce in the middle of Leslie’s class, when she had specifically promoted the exact opposite atmosphere for learning. Roz isn’t interested in respect. She isn’t interested in learning. She wants to be right about everything all the time without ever needing to admit she ever misjudged a situation.
Clearly Roz DIDN’T promote the ‘exact opposite atmosphere for learning’ because Joyce DID learn from it. She explicitly told Roz she’d needed someone to be mean that day. You’re right, Roz is often arrogant and confrontational, but even JOYCE agrees she needed the dressing down Roz gave her, even if Leslie disagrees.
Perhaps I was a little unclear. Roz promoted the exact opposite atmosphere that Leslie was trying to cultivate for her class. Like, I’m not saying acting like Roz will never educate anyone. But Roz isn’t some necessary evil. She does more harm than good.
I’m not sure where she’s done that? She’s not refusing to believe Becky can’t be different from her family here, she’s only expressing skepticism, and while she’s still convinced she’s MORE left than Becky, she seems to have accepted her word that she is somewhere on the lef
I’m not saying Becky is suddenly gonna say ‘hey guys let’s be socialist’ but I don’t know… I think being threatened at gun point by her massively fundie father probably puts a bad taste in her mouth? We’ve already seen her be fine with dating an Atheist and accepting science and evolution. Sure, Roz hasn’t seen that…
But again. I reiterate.
It only takes a fraction of human empathy to put together that maybe Becky, who again, was nearly shot by her own father, might be more open to learning about political viewpoints that don’t remind her of her dad. This kinda swings back around for me to when Roz was told to just let Joyce learn. Like, again. Becky’s never known anything else, sure. But… That’s why… You help teach her. Like Dina’s been doing! Roz would rather sit on a high horse and decide that Becky’s already tainted by fundie even though trying to escape her father nearly got her killed. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
She knew that Joyce was out of class because of Ross. Given that Ross’ last name was in the news and that Becky was known to be homeless (the dorm was keeping her out of sight while Ruth was patrolling), probably enough word’s spread around.
Billie herself was surprised that Ruth didn’t immediately cotton on why Becky needed a place to crash. I think it’s common knowledge.
I mean. Catholic or fundie parents changing their views because their kid came out and the kid changing the views they express when they *themself* come out are two really different situations. Chances are becky really wasn’t a “fundie shut-in until six minutes ago,” at least not in the manner Roz seems to be implying. I sure as shit had secret liberal leanings for fuckin ages before I had internet access or felt sufficiently comfortable with myself and my situation to come out to anyone, and I didn’t even make out with a girl, run away from home, and/or have my life threatened by my father.
That said apart from implying that a gay abuse victim is Probably Indifferentiable From someone who’s made her career out of fucking over gay abuse victims, yes “why should i trust your messaging” is a valid question to ask a campaign manager.
I mean, I explicitly said that young people who experience it themselves go full leftist much faster, so it’s not like I overlooked that. In any case, we’ve seen that, at the very least, Roz cares passionately about reproductive rights. WE don’t even know that Becky is pro-choice, and WE are privy to the knowledge that Becky is pro-science. Roz has zero reason to think that Becky’s opinions align with hers beyond LBGTQ issues, and in fact, has decent reason to think that Becky’s fundie background means that she is less “convinced” on issues that never affected her before and still don’t, like reproductive/Latina rights. It DOES make no difference what Becky’s been through in that regard; Roz isn’t saying she can’t trust Becky on the stuff she’s been through, but that she can’t trust her to have leftist opinions on stuff generally, because all she knows is that Becky is anti-people-hurting-people-like-her.
Don’t help my sister her beliefs are backwards.
I’m mostly here so I can control her views so they won’t be so backwards.
Like I trust your views, your parents views were backwards and you only broke free of them like few weeks ago.
Yea but I spent all that time forming my own opinion while taking for granted that most of what he taught me was bunk.
Yea but I’m so tribal that whatever your views are they are automatically too much like the opposing tribes. Idon’t really are if my views make sense at this point so long as they are more extreme as yours.
I honestly hope Robin ends up winning the election just for the amount of rage it’ll induce in Roz.
Since robin was abandoned by her party, is she still considered right wing even thou her Twitter is now full of leftist propaganda.
She’s probably still considered right wing: you can be centrist or center-left and still be called “right wing” so long as you talk about the wrong things nowadays.
Yup. Just like someone can be fairly economic right-wing and yet still get labelled as a “socialist” or “commie” (since, to the American political right, such words seem to have basically devolved to mean “not a Republican”).
American politics is friggin’ weird, and full of loaded words. =/
As promoting health insurance for everyone suffices to be labeled socialist or commie in the USA (while in European countries all political parties who have been in power sometime in the last 70 years consider it normal and just disagree about details in how to do it), the labels start to be meaningless.
BTW: Can someone explain why catholic Ireland nowadays has more liberal abortion laws than rather large parts of the USA?
In reality? Robin would be considered a crazy leftist traitor by her former supporters and a probably still rightist flip-flopping flake by her former opponents. A good chunk of the former (like Mary) going “I knew it all along. Unmarried at nearly 30 is suspicious. And she’s Catholic.” (and Latino, though Mary didn’t say that.)
The right would hate her and the left wouldn’t trust her. And her career would be sunk without a trace. In comic, who knows.
You can make a party switch as a politician and survive, but it’s generally a long time incumbent and a switch from moderate on one side to moderate on the other – often with a dose of “The party left me”. A sudden switch from regressive to radical, by a one term Congresscritter? Not likely.
“I mean first off, at thirty seconds in I almost got killed by my homophobic dad for being a lesbian so like while I don’t have your sick lefty cred, I am pretty invested in making sure that’s not allowed to happen again. So I feel like I’m off to a pretty solid start”
Sometimes I wish Roz would stop for a second and consider who she’s talking to. I also wish I’d done that a few more times at her age, truth be told.
I’ve never understood the term “perky” when it comes to boobs, and I don’t need to be hornswoggled into googling it again. I’ll assume for now that it generally means “They look like a low-poly video game character’s”.
Like, I can see where Roz is coming from. She doesn’t want her sister to win for very valid human rights reasons. But Becky has been offered a way out of homelessness and a future. Roz is asking Becky to give that up while not offering anything in return (though how much of Becky’s circumstances she knows is questionable). She might view her as an acceptable loss in making sure Robin isn’t elected and someone better is.
There’s a difference between “making a living” and getting out of homelessness.
All of those idiots had plenty of other options – maybe ones that wouldn’t have made them rich, but also wouldn’t leave them on the street.
That’s not what I asked. I asked if Roz, knowing what she does about Becky’s background, has any reason to believe Becky’s stances on those issues have changed (or for that matter, even exist).
I am asking if, based on what she knows about Becky and the way Becky’s expressed herself, she has reason to trust her. She knows Becky’s changed on LGBT+ issues (obviously) and probably knows she’s changed on evolution, but it’s not obvious Becky’s swerved on other issues that affect Roz.
I don’t think they are arguing that Roz shouldn’t trust Becky (initially). They are arguing about the antagonism level displayed that shuts down the chance. You can be skeptical without being in constant shut down mode. Between the starting at name calling with “fundie shut in” and then making it into a leftist dick measuring competition when Becky expresses those aren’t her views… she doesn’t even leave time for trust to be built. She even raises the bar – Becky doesn’t have to be trust worthy or even help her sister be a better candidate. She now needs to be 100% crystallized leftist y’all.
Reproductive rights, sure. Frankly, I doubt Becky’s thought about them beyond “Eew, God no I don’t want babies” at this point. (Not saying that she’s necessarily entirely anti-baby, just that right now the idea is probably still completely tied to the prospect of some “godly man” “claiming” her.) But do we have any sense that Roz has thought about Latino rights at all? All her activism that I can remember is tied to sexuality, one way or another.
Serious question; I may be forgetting a strip. Yes, she’s Latina, but so’s her sister. It’s not guaranteed she’ll be thinking of them. Privileged people (and Roz is privileged, if only by virtue of who her sister is, as I think her attitude tends to demonstrate) tend to pick the battles they want, and Roz seems to have subsumed her activism into her sex drive, as evidenced by her lecturing her 12-year-old sister when the latter just wanted to eat cereal.
Unlike Robin, Roz tends to give a shit about issues that affect her and we know her sister’s backed policies that tend to disproportionately affect Latino people (her immigration record in particular is why Sal doesn’t like her).
I swear I’m not trying to be an asshole, I just don’t have time to reread every one of Roz’s appearances right now — are there instances of Roz giving a shit about issues that don’t relate to sex? I can’t remember any.
She pretty much only cares about shit not related to sex when she can make her sister look bad or herself look good.
Like not saying that she’s irredeemable but am totally and completely saying she seems way more interested in using loud and very public adherence to left wing views to embarrass her family and prop up her radical rebel identity than in actually supporting marginalized people and advancing left wing goals.
And I am totally being harsher than normal on her because I have dealt with a lot of straight cis leftists of the performative variety this week and my patience is shot with their antics.
(Short version: No, reproductive health issues are not acceptable bargaining chips, no trans rights are also not acceptable bargaining chips, no supporting a bill that allows cops to breathalyzer and search people without reasonable cause is not acceptable, no it’s not an acceptable cost of safer roads to not have a legal alternative for those physically incapable of performing a breathalyzer test, no actually NO civil rights are acceptable bargaining chips I am not the unreasonable one you can’t compromise on shit that makes entire groups of people second class what the actual fuck is wrong with straight cis performative leftists?!)
And, of course, there’s that time she handed a therapist card to a distressed Joyce, no questions asked, a woman who not that long ago had told her she was spoiled goods, worthless, and bound to hell.
That had to do with reproductive rights (consent culture and care for sexual assault victims is squarely in the purview of that issue). Which is the only cause Roz seems to be genuine about.
Roz isn’t phony about everything. But if it doesn’t have to do with reproductive rights, she doesn’t act like she cares unless there is an opportunity to look good or tear her sister down.
Exactly in how many battlefields do you expect her to fight at the same time while also having getting an effective education? Of course, the answer doesn’t matter, because there’s no leftist battlefield she can fight in that wouldn’t make Robin look bad, which you just condemned her for doing.
It was a f ing business card they are worth less than a nickle.
I mean I assume she went through at least some effort to find a good resource for sexual assault victims, but by the time it was connected to Joyce the work was done. Not handing it to Joyce would mean admitting to herself that she thinks sheltered women who get sexually assaulted obviously deserve it. Also on the more cynical side she would presumable want Dorothy, the one writing about her tape, to not think she was some heartless monster, and five cents is a cheap way of saying of course if there was a bad actor at the party I am not affiliated with them and oppose them.
Dorothy wasn’t part of their interaction, and even if she were I’m not even seeing how she’d know Roz had the cards in the first place. Shit, Roz hadn’t even been told Joyce had been sexually assaulted in the first place. Your logic must be a flea, with all those leaps it’s making. Roz was the person who was provided with the least amount of information, the least connected to Joyce, and yet she was the LITERALLY the only one who pointed her to a useful resource on how to handle the situation. So that “the work was done” dismissal? Roz did more work than EVERYONE ELSE PUT TOGETHER (except Sarah, and sort of about on par with Billie).
What I expect her to do is good which isn’t staged for an audience.
What she did for Joyce was one such act. And it’s why I consider her not irredeemable.
My issue with her is that, unless it has to do with the one thing she appears to genuinely care about, she professes beliefs she doesn’t back up with her actions and attitudes.
She’s all for listening to LGBTQ people, amplifying their voices, and advocating for them unless said people disagree with her, for example.
It’s not the big battles I expect of her. It’s the quiet moments. And that’s where Joyce has by-and-large made consistent efforts to succeed where Roz typically hasn’t tried much if at all (that one case with Joyce excepted). Because Joyce generally tries to treat people as people and Roz to a large extent treats them as props.
Can Roz change? Yes. Do I think she will? Eventually. I do not think all of her beliefs are phony, I just don’t think she’s internalized her professed beliefs as much as she thinks she has and I do strongly think her persona is phony. I think her attachment to her radical maverick rebel persona is blocking her from learning from her mistakes and learning how to act like she believes what she says she believes.
Roz knew Joyce had a really bad experiance Dorothy was sort of mad at her for so she knows its not stupid like seeing someone kiss or something. She knew Joyce didn’t want to talk about it with anyone about it.
Yes Its worth something that Roz put real work to get a theoretical victim of sexual assault help it means she cares enough to put in real work and research, but the work part wasn’t for Joyce.
Yea its worth something that she handled it privately but its not like she couldn’t have thought expressing sympathy might effect how Joyce talks about me and…
The problem with that is that since we don’t have Roz POV arcs, everything she does is, by definition, for an audience. Joyce being the main (and most autobiographical) character, she gets the overwhelming majority of the quiet moments. You’re basically complaining that Wonder Woman didn’t have enough moments in the BvS movie*.
*Major apologies for comparing that jar of Granny’s Peach Tea of a movie to Dumbing of Age.
I am not complaining about that. Roz has had opportunity to be the quiet ally. On many occasions. Almost universally (with literally one exception) she has instead opted to loudly grandstand and talk over people.
I am not saying I think Roz is evil.
I do think she is immature, self centered, arrogant, unwilling to accept constructive criticism, more than a bit phony, and more concerned with having lefty cred than doing lefty deeds.
Hell even on things she believes in, she doesn’t consistently walk her talk. She didn’t ask Joe’s consent before she got him embroiled in her sex scandal (he knew she was taping. He didn’t know she was going to post it to a porn site and had even less idea of who she was and how much that would blow up. As it happened he didn’t mind but her actions weren’t the actions of someone who has internalized consent culture there).
She’s got a lot of growing up to do. And I find her particular brand of self-righteous hypocrisy deeply grating. I won’t apologize for that.
And I am not writing her off as a character. She has the potential to grow some compassion and to learn to be who she is instead of advertising who she thinks she should be. She shows seeds of those traits already.
One of the best things about this comic is every character is dynamic. They all change in response to new experience. That’s great.
Case in point: I used to get as annoyed with Joyce and Becky as I am now with Roz. Joyce and Becky grew into better people and show genuine desire to be better as soon as they understand how their actions were harmful.
I am not writing off the possibility that Roz will show similar growth. But as she is right now she is exactly the sort of activist that tells other people that they’re not important through her actions rather than her words whilst performing a politic she doesn’t live.
Roz DID get Joe’s permission to upload the tape to the internet. Joe’s exact words to Dorothy were ‘When you meet a chick who wants to friggin’ make a sex tape, you jump that no matter what’.
On the sex tape thing we knew Roz got Joe’s permission to shoot and upload a porn with him. We don’t know if Roz got Joe’s permission on the fact that the porn would be a political scandal.
Roz never explicitly said she got Joe’s permission on that little detail, and quite frankly I could see Joe not listening past shoot a sex tape.
– She’s a gender studies major, per the book, so presumably about other feminist issues like the pay gap. One that she explicitly brought up is pressure for women to appease men in the work place so that they’re non-threatening to larger power structures in play.
– Doesn’t go into details but she’s not a fan of Robin pandering to ‘captains of industry’ or ‘old scared homophobic white dudes’, nor Mary’s love for Reagen
– It got way out of line, but her commenting on Joyce’s trying to blame the church for their homophobic actions when she took part in them herself was helpful to Joyce
– Again, whatever you want to make of it, she says that her trying to hook Robin and Leslie up was about trying to get Robin to stop being a shithead about LGBT+ people (presumable thinking ‘she won’t be a shithead about LGBT+ people if she realizes SHE’S LGBT+’ ….presumably forgetting Robin is fine with being a shit head to Latino folks and women despite being one).
Sorry this is a reply to your comment about Roz getting consent from Joe. No reply button under it.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you but what troubles me about that interaction is Danny.
They stuck a camera on his foot while he was sleeping. Some one was present who was not consulted about his participation.
Just something that bugs me when the Roz & Joe incident get’s brought up.
Yeah, sticking the camera on Danny’s foot is a crappy thing to do. I’m only addressing the point that Roz didn’t ask Joe to upload it to internet – she did. That’s not to say she didn’t do anything wrong (Joe didn’t know she was a congresswoman’s sister when he said she could upload it) but yeah, she did tell Joe it was going online.
She also says, when the picture came out, that she’d planned to get Robin to out herself, with the implication at least that she wouldn’t get reelected, not that she’d be less of a shithead.
And here, she’s again focused on not getting Robin reelected, not whether she’s changed.
Which isn’t an unreasonable position, of course, but it kind of undercuts the idea that she was focused on wanting Robin to realize she was queer.
Roz emphasized Robin can be a good listener and wanting her to be less of a shithead. I think that was her ideal outcome, but you’re right, she’s hardly above celebrating her being tossed out of office instead.
Oh no – I’m not falling into that trap again!
It took me years of therapy and a philosophy degree to get past Zeno, Epimenides’s Paradox and that business of not being able to cross the same river twice…
Or was it that the B.A in Philosophy required the years of therapy?
And this is another reason why I hate Roz. She is obsessed with her self image of a leftist figure, and has the same contrarian behavior as Malaya. Even if you campaign for human rights, do activism and volunteer for humanitarian aid, instead of her seeing it as a good thing she would see you as a rival that she has to defeat.
Joyce learns to be a better person. Roz: She is still an hipocrite.
Becky is making Robin look like a leftist. Roz: you are a faker, you mongrel!
Dorothy tries to be nice. Roz: “I don’t need pitty. I would have rejected the job even if I won.”
Becky making Robin LOOK like a leftist is EXACTLY the problem, because Roz (and honestly, literally no-one) has any reason to believe that if elected Robin would actually ACT like one, instead of just continuing the course that would get her the most applause (and in INDIANA that’s not being leftist).
If it looks like a rabbit, moves like a rabbit, and it resides in a cave littered with human bones, it’s not a rabbit, it’s the fucking Beast of Caerbannog.
Except that Robin hired Becky to keep making her look leftist because that was getting her applause.
Which is as dumb in terms of getting her reelected as anything else Robin’s done.
Maybe it’s just Robin stories. I can’t take it seriously.
The fear here is that despite her currently losing badly, Becky’s going to make her popular by rallying the left to her side and then she’ll go back to her old policies because the left isn’t popular in Indiana. None of those steps make any sense outside of wacky Robin.
That’s… pretty much what I said? Well, except the “I can’t take it seriously part”. A cursory look at the last 3 years of US politics (on both sides, though on different things and to different degrees) has pretty much proven that nothing’s too incredibly stupid to be impossible over there.
The fear is what you said, but you skimmed over the part where it’s the lefty stuff Becky’s posting which is making her popular and will supposedly let her win again, but despite that she’d give it up because the only way to be popular in Indiana is to be right.
Those both can’t be true. She can’t both be swept back into office on a wave of leftist popularity and have to go back to the right to be popular.
And less cursory look at US politics over decades shows plenty of stupid stuff, but nothing at all like this. Long term incumbent politicians might change parties and survive, but not first term reps, weeks before the election with a swing from on extreme to another.
It’s an over-the-top parody of US politics and I can be amused by it, but I can’t take it seriously.
No, the only way she can WIN is with a leftist campaign, because Republicans vote for the party’s candidate come hell or high water. If she wants general approval ratings in Indiana, she’ll have to promote right-wing policies when elected.
I mean, a heretofore not involved in party politics dude just won the presidency over long-time partisans, so, y’know. It’s not THAT crazy.
Huh? She is the Republican candidate, if there is one. She’s on the ballot on the Republican party line. They withdrew their endorsement, but too late to change anything else.
Basically, I’m saying she can’t win – barring some extreme Manley scandal or Russian hacking or something. Or because wacky Robin trumps realism.
Trump or someone like him was pretty much inevitable given the track of the Republican party – though it took a lot of cheating and some really bad breaks to get him over the top in the general.
A former hard right incumbent winning with a sudden surge of last minute hard left votes due to a scandal in the last weeks of the campaign? While there is an apparently perfectly serviceable Democrat in the race? That really
us even crazier.
She didn’t say she would have rejected the job if she won. Just that for her it was more a means to an end (getting a room away from Mary). She was a jerk to Dorothy about it, then when she didn’t get it, was a jerk to Dorothy again for daring to be nice to her. Roz does not expect people to be nice or good or kind even when she has no reason to doubt them.
Leftist one upmanship aside, what’s really annoying about Roz’s behaviour is the pre judgement of Becky – the assumption that a gay woman who grew up in the fundamentalist Church wouldn’t actually be very receptive to radical politics
Roz’s negative pre-judgment is pretty much her central damning trait throughout this comic. She’s a perfect example of a toxic person fighting for what’s right, the person who sees a splinter in everyone’s eye but not the plank in her own, the ally who hurts the cause she purports to help.
Sometimes a vaxxer is someone with an anti-vaxxer outlook who happens to jump on the right bandwagon.
Thank you for having clarified what it meant, as a foreign speaker, I didn’t get what it meant (for me performative was when by sying you do, like “I ask you to open this window).
I think Roz does to some extent genuinely care since she wanted her sister to fail at being reelected. But she does a good job of coming across as performative because she is a huge jerk and looks down on people that don’t believe what she does.
Yeah that honestly sounds about right for the Twitter Left
Love ’em but they do basically trade Tumblr’s 16 year old whackadoodle “what the fuck is even coming out of your mouth” tendencies for 20-something hipster oneupmanship (both of which are endemic to the platforms, not just any specific group or set of groups)
Heh, I love how Roz heard the word “radicalized” and felt threatened in her leftie cred.
Just ask Becky spell or define ‘bourgeois’ and you can rest secure in your top position… unless she counters with being poorer than you and thus closer to the ‘common people’. If she does, get defensive and start flinging shit.
Yeah, that’s a thing here. Becky doesn’t have to be leftier than Roz to be in a good place here. Questioning whether she’s moved away from her fundie upbringing on anything except LGBQ issues is reasonable, but she doesn’t have to be a radical socialist.
The final panel is such a patented Becky deflection. Instead of raising the bait and defending her own leftieness she simply asks Roz how leftie she is, putting her on the defensive.
She also earlier did that “radicalized on twitter” joke to laugh away the whole matter, but sadly Roz didn’t go with it.
[eyeroll] I seriously doubt Roz even cares about any of the left’s ideals… aside from those that give her the right to do whatever she wants and those that piss off her family.
Like, if I see Roz actually volunteering herself to public service to help those she professes to ally with, I’ll happily eat my words and afford her some degree of respect. But so far she seems to have just happened to picked the right side out of convenience and committed her identity to it.
But even is she does she still does so in the most self righteous way that makes it little different to controlling charity volunteering of ‘fundies’ who want to keep other people as controllable shut ins.
Roz does a lot of volunteer work. I’m not sure about for those she “professes to ally with”. She’s focused on reproductive rights, where she counts as part of the marginalized group, not an ally.
That said, piss off and undermine Robin in particular is a good part of her motivation and that’s clearly not just about Robin’s policies. She wouldn’t be focused as much on that part if her Representative were anyone other than her sister. Because it’s personal and because she gets dragged into Robin’s campaigns.
She’s *not* entirely phony. She does seem genuine in her concern and advocacy for reproductive rights. But she sure isn’t entirely sincere either, nor does she walk most of her talk.
She already does. This comment thread is a massive example of protagonist-centered morality.
Y’all are backing up the “LGBT For Trump” character because we get to see things from their viewpoint, and slamming the person who is distrustful of them because she has *already* had to deal with constant shit from that party, and actually does activism/volunteer work, because…what, because she’s proud of her stances?
The reason I respect Becky more than Roz is Becky is has no pretense about being raised with Some Bullshit and because aside from her abuse survival mechanisms, Becky doesn’t have a whole lot of pretense about her. Furthermore, unlike Roz, Becky has a pattern of willingness to learn, openness to new experience, and acceptance of constructive criticism Roz does not.
Becky’s selling her soul here. And she knows it. What makes me have compassion for her is that she is in truly desperate straights and her other options are not good. What makes her different from “LGBTQ For Trump” is where most of them are affluent middle aged white people with secure jobs and lifestyles looking for a tax break, Becky is a traumatized and abused homeless teen in an extremely precious situation who is willing to accept dirty money because her other options are couch surfing (unsustainable and unreliable) or sleeping rough. Furthermore, despite those being her other options, she had the integrity to insist on still using the platform the dirty money gives her to amplify her honest and true beliefs.
She can be grating and obnoxious but she doesn’t profess beliefs she doesn’t back up with action. She was willing to risk continued homelessness to *not* amplify Robin’s party’s beliefs. Is she selfish? Yes, but she has yet to pretend otherwise.
Roz, OTOH, is so caught up in being Leftier Than Thou she’ll walk all over the people she claims to be advocating for if she thinks it will make her look good.
Also note that it would only be the equivalent of “LGBTQ for Trump”, if Trump had actually fired the rest of his campaign and turned everything over to the LGBTQ for Trump side – who did then actually campaign on real LGBTQ issues (not fucked up nonsense like “Democrats support Muslims who want to kill you. Trump will protect by banning Muslims.”)
Becky is the campaign here. Imagine if Trump had, in October 2016, turned over his campaign to a Latino* group and started advocating amnesty and open borders. He’d have lost in a landslide because his base wouldn’t trust him and neither would anyone else.
That’s the level of wacky we’re dealing with here.
Pretty sure we are. Roz always came off to some as a spiteful contrarian. She doesn’t really Care, she just wants to be on top of the pile, do whatever she wants and spite her family and anyone she doesn’t like.
She is the exact opposite of Joyce and Becky. Roz came from conservative background and jumped to the left but kept the holier-than-thou mentality and methodology, she just replaced Traditional Values TM with a different Ideology. Becky and Joyce on the other hand are actively trying to deconstruct and rebuild their mentalities to fit the new information they gained and how they understand the world now.
This is the same Roz who stated that Leslie was her favorite teacher because
(1) Roz learned things in Leslie’s gender studies class and wasn’t expecting to. In fact admitted to this from at the start of the year coming in and (loudly and scornfully) stating her obvious anticipation of knowing the entire curriculum already only to be shown the opposite.
(2) …because Leslie actually has called Roz on her bullshit at times when Roz needed it. And Roz appreciated this.
Actually, let me compound that – so far, the only person working for the University of Indiana that should retain their position is Asma (she should also be getting a raise, because whatever she’s being paid is sure as fuck not enough to make up for having to deal with these people).
I don’t like Roz, but she does show she cares. When she realized something was wrong, she did give Joyce the therapist card. She tried to out her sister in an awful way but also checked in with Leslie that she realized what she was doing and her sisters politics actively hurt her. She went to a party in JOYCE’S room (for a guy and left, but she tried to be in an uncomfortable place to get why she wants). She is always on defensive because she feels she has to be – her own sister campaigns against her rights and she rooms with Mary. The problem is that she alienates her allies or those she should want to be allies for due to this defensiveness and aggressiveness. She will learn and mellow with time, but she’s obnoxious now because she feels she has to be. Part of me wonders that if she had roomed with Sierra or Sal from the start if she’d be this “on” all the time or if she would have just relaxed at feeling able to be a validated and autonomous PERSON instead of slut-shamed constantly.
This does make a lot of sense. I think that Roz might also have the neophyte syndrome. How neophytes are always more eager about the ideology than the original “owners” of it.
Speaking as someone who’s voted for my country’s socialist party for the last 17 years (i.e. since I became an adult who could vote) and who doesn’t in reality actually ever get violent, I really just want to punch Roz.
But one thought lead to another, and now I kinda want a plush guillotine to throw at people. Not going into how I arrived there.
This feels really fucking weird coming from Roz, but hey, she’s said worse.
Like, not the gatekeeping bullshit, that’s par for the course, but coming from a girl who’s spent a good 45-65% of the comic spouting her leftist views loudly and obtrusively in front of any audience that will listen, suddenly being cagey about her beliefs in front of a fundamentalist that (unlike Joyce) is both open to criticism and open to learning feels downright bizarre.
Like, I’d believe it if she thought Becky’s fundamentalist upbringing and shiny new well-paid job would be a giant precursor to the use of anything Roz tells Becky now as future munitions for Robin to use in their sibling public-facing political war, but…no, apparently, this is just Roz being petty.
Which I’d believe! Except it’s a kind of petty that precludes Roz being able to show off in extremely verbose detail just how steeped in leftist ideology she is for (what she assumes is) a doe-eyed fundamentalist that Robin’s hoodwinked and that just feels like a missed opportunity all around.
Roz strikes me as the kind of person who is genuinely trying to be good but can’t empathize well with others, couple that with a self confidence that seems to be a family trait, andyou can almost sort of see how she ends up seeming gatekeeper-y.
At least that’s what I want this to be, her being distrusting of Becky’s motives because she can’t really understand what Becky’s gone through. I know that might sound kinda selfish, but people are hard sometimes.
If it’s not that, then yeah she is being a bit rude.
Oh, I didn’t mean people weren’t SAYING it (I have teh interwebz; I’m well aware people will say ANYTHING). It’s just that I can see how Sander’s campaign could be trying to court the party conservatives, but I can see it actually happening. I mean, if you want trash Dem policies, Biden is RIGHT THERE with a proven track record.
Lecturing someone on the receiving end of her sister’s ‘pander to the FOX News crowd’ policies on her own plight in which Roz is a sympathizer at best…I’m pretty sure Becky accepts they *both* want to use her for their own egoist agenda. That’s the adult world. Either build your career relationships on being able to meet eachother’s needs, which are only understood through *learning about* each other rather than *deciding for each other*, or get ready for a possible life of Carol Browns and Roz/Robin DeSantoses with all their little agendas inventing what will pass for the real world for God only knows how much of the only life you’ll get. Thank goodness Becky’s sharper than many….
Roz is on the receiving end of her sister’s policies too – not the ones targeting LGBT+ people, but then, Becky isn’t on the receiving end of her sister’s shitty Latino rights policies so it balances out.
I propose a problem of nomenclature: Roz is not a ‘lefty’ but a ‘leftist’.
Is she was truly a lefty why would she be gesturing with her right hand in panel four?
I on the other hand am a real lefty and even gave a speech about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mycmt7o0vQQ&t=32s
Roz is going to be terrible about this being for tuition and housing. Like, implying that this isn’t pretty much the only non-tens of thousands of dollars in student debt way, whilst her [Roz’s] parents are paying for her schooling.
If I’m wrong I’ll be shocked.
[Even if Roz is paying for her own schooling or using loans (which I again doubt), she had the opportunity to work in high school and have parents to help her get the loans etc.]
Roz is, like, the textbook example of talking the talk without walking the walk. We could all learn something from her. Specifically, we could learn how not to be.
A not-insignificant portion of the online “leftist” community has been obsessed with gatekeeping since 2016. If you don’t support the exact same politicians or list of slogans they do then you’re “basically a Republican” or a fake leftist, even if you support other policies that aim at the same goals, or politicians that have a much better track record of achieving those goals.
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“Any REAL–”
I’m just gonna NOPE all the way outta these comments
Smart move!
Willis’s moderation queue is going to be full tonight. Again.
Willis right now.
Yeah seriously.
I too am noping out for the night for sleep-related reasons, but part of my brain is still trying to set the over/under odds for someone non-ironically invoking the horseshoe theory.
I’m sure we’ll all be civil and talk things out in a very measured, respectful tone.
Commemorating the anniversary with your grav, I see.
What can I say? It’s a crowd favorite.
The Judean People’s Front will not stand for this!
Splitters!
I guess REAL lefties are kinda like hipsters. They are too afraid to share their viewpoints because they just might become mainstream.
Or rebutted, refuted, or otherwise have the flaws pointed out.
Oh boy here we go folks
It began not with a whimper, but with a bang
That was aimed more at hipsters than at any particular point on the political spectrum.
I’m gonna Yup it up in here!
Roz is what you see if you rub your left eye really hard and make spots appear on that side. If you turn your head to look at her, she’s already gone further left.
So, basically, you’re a hipster ?
Well she’s a college freshman, so duh.
I think she’s actually a sophomore? Not sure.
Nah, she’s a freshman. At least, Billie implied so in this strip.
If she was politically hipster, she’d vote Green.
*please don’t vote Green*
*in the US
Almost everywhere were you don’t have FPTP, voting Green is very much feasible. In Germany, it’d be feasible to vote Green even with FPTP.
What is this weird 4-letters F-word ?
“First Past the Post” voting system.
It`s amazing how often knowing what the acronym stands for does not at all improve my understanding of a conversation. I had to google it and still not quite sure I understand the nuance. I think my country uses FPTP?? Maybe??? But we have a second round in elections, so even if you vote fro a small party in the first round, you have a go in the second round…
In New Zealand the Greens are part of the government coalition, voted Green since I was first able to, will vote Green so long as there’s a Green Party. Vote Green y’all.
Vote Green y’all, if you’re in New Zealand*
Roz is so left she’s already _left_ the conversation!
… 🙂
Ah, so she is a pretentious Lefty.
like on a scale from one to Khmer Rouge, how hard should we be on the rich
I would suggest eating the rich, but science class taught me that the top of the food chain is full of toxins.
Toxins? More like silicone.
Doesn’t cannibalism make you prone to prion diseases?
That’s also a concern, although we could avoid that by only eating right people who don’t have a family history of diseases like that
Don’t eat the brain and you should be fine. Although parasites are still a problem, so make sure whoever you’re eating is cooked thoroughly.
I don’t think cooking them is gonna solve the problem. The rich aren’t just full of parasites, they are parasites.
There’s also the fact that they were all into that ‘raw water’ fad a couple years ago so who knows what kind of fucked up parasites they’ve got now.
Look, food is just fuel. Fuel is more diverse than food.
What I’m saying is that you can burn them for energy.
No, we should be switching to clean energy.
Not very practical. The human body is mostly water, so burning one consumes more energy than it produces.
So you’re saying we could turn sun-dried corpses into a viable energy source?
Water is a valid fuel source for nuclear fusion generators.
You folks have all missed the obvious solution. We feed them to our cats and dogs.
I swear to g*sh, I’ll report you all for animal abuse if you feed your pets rich people.
Damn it, I forgot to put that in quotation marks.
Roz feels like she’s leftist ‘because it’s the right thing to do’ or ‘because it’ll annoy Robin’, not because she has any deep-rooted belief in what she’s actually saying.
I mean, I guess from a results-oriented point of view, hey, it works, but man, she’s aggravating about being ‘right’.
I mean, I feel like “because it’s the right thing to do” is a far better reason than annoying Robin. It’s still not great if Roz doesn’t know WHY it’s “the right thing to do,” but I’ve gotten the impression she at least has some idea.
Well, there’s a lot of nuance that Roz is missing. Like she’s got the base ideas down (‘what part of women should be treated as equals am I supposed to learn?’), but she’s stuck on the base level messages without taking in a lot of the wrinkles.
I mean, her message is, at the very least, in the right place, but ignorant preaching can be just as harmful.
Frankly, any fucking reason not to be conservative is fine with me. Being a leftist for bad or just dumb reasons is still better than not being one
Is there a bad reason to be a lefty?
Challenge Accepted. (Opinions stated for comedic effect. Please don’t kill me.)
Because you think higher wages will result in a higher cost of living that will increase the rate that people are automated out of their jobs simply because you prefer not to have to deal with people at the checkout lines.
Because you think that since sexual orientation is something you’re born with, it must have a genetic component, and therefore the simplest way to reduce the non-heterosexual population is to allow them to get married to each other to reduce the odds of that genetic component getting passed down.
Because you think that abortion is more prevalent in low income households, therefore you want abortion to be more socially and legally acceptable in order to reduce poverty by reducing the number of people born in impoverished conditions.
Those last two are only “bad” in the sense that the verbiage is antagonistic and has a strong “breed them out” slant.. and that those arguments are still better than what we have in a lot of states. It ignores humanity, a lot of other frame work and social safety nets that we could put in place to make those null… but as a person who has a strong history with 2/3 in my personal life, I’d accept those as stepping stones because it’s at least better then what I had to deal with.
I don’t agree. “Because it’s the right thing to do” is a religious belief. Many characters in DoA have operated or even still operate exactly on this, but with the Christian community telling them what’s that right thing, instead of the leftist community.
The juxtaposition is with “because it’s the PRINCIPLED thing to do”.
It feels like Roz heard the various right-wing lines about how leftists are all ‘virtue-signals’ and all that and took it all to heart and decided to somehow embody it.
I’m not a fan.
I though she was just veing facetious, from panel 4 onwards.
She’s still the most moral and least sociopathic regular character, possibly tied with Sal.
eeeh, Ethan is the chillest
Dorothy.
None of the DoA kids are particularly married to their alleged worldview (which makes sense, they’re teenagers).
Joyce basically abandons any religious belief that hurts someone, there wasn’t even an arc of learning to accept Becky or whatever she just chucked that part of her worldview immediately.
Becky, as Roz notes, went from offscreen fundie to RAD LIBRUL overnight, which is mostly a persona. Becky switched “teams” so she aligns with the “correct” worldview but hasn’t really given those liberal ideas much thought and Roz is right to suspect that Becky’s liberalism might be a mile wide and an inch deep.
Roz, obviously, is a hipster more than anything. Robin’s not committed to any of her conservative positions. Even Mary is a bully first and foremost, and she only goes after LGBT kids specifically because she thinks people will support her.
The only DoA kid who has a moral code they’ve given thought to and strongly believe in is, of all people, Joe, who’s committed to the idea that he should be openly caddish instead of trying to pretend to be anything else.
“Joyce basically abandons any religious belief that hurts someone”
In fairness, if a Christian actually took the whole “Love thy neighbor” stuff to heart, that’s a pretty reasonable result. Reading through the bits that are supposed to be direct quotes from Jesus, it does rather give the impression that he placed human kindness as a pretty dang high priority.
At this point I’m of the opinion that nothing in the Bible is worth using as a religion or life philosophy except if the text is in red.
“Skims quickly through my old Bible. Finds no red text. Throws Bible out.”
Better safe than sorry, to be sure.
So you’re saying that witches are real and Battler is incompetent?
And not all of that. “I come not to bring peace but a sword.” And the whole cursing-the-fig-tree thing.
“Joyce basically abandons any religious belief that hurts someone”
This sounds like she has a pretty strong moral code.
That’s probably fudging the moral/ethical division come to think of it, but I’d still argue that Joyce has a pretty strong ethical worldview – even if she hasn’t articulated it in any way to anyone, including herself.
“The only DoA kid who has a moral code”
Dorothy? Amber?
I’m pretty sure Dorothy has a well researched (of course) ideological platform with both practical and moral aspects reflected on and alphabetized.
But she has not discussed it very much, except a few times when she has tried to do damage control on Joyce’s worst outbursts of fundiness. Her main focus now is to get herself in a position where she actually can make a difference, not do activism (a great contrast to both Roz and Becky).
I think Mike has likely put a lot of thought into what passes for his morals. The fact that we don’t like the results doesn’t mean he hasn’t given them a lot of consideration.
I think you’re skipping one or two, at least. Jacob, for instance, is quite thoughtful about his beliefs and how he interacts with the world.
I think there’s a difference between not holding anything strongly and not yet having figured out your belief systems.
The reason why Joyce abandons things that hurt her friends is that she can’t reconcile the belief that one should look after their friends’ wellbeing with the religious right beliefs she was raised in.
That isn’t Joyce not believing in anything, that’s Joyce critically examining her morals and politics and fixing self inconsistencies. And that is not the act of someone who only has shallow beliefs, it is the act of someone with deeply held beliefs they haven’t fully explored the implications of.
Joyce believes very strongly in principles of friendship, fairness, and justice. She values people and human happiness over perceived moral righteousness. She is discovering that her beliefs and values don’t align with how she was raised.
Which is totally a thing most teenagers and young adults go through but that does not mean most teenagers and young adults don’t have firm beliefs. It means university is for many the first time they have the freedom to critically examine the politics they were raised with.
I was raised hard right. I drifted left to social democratic at uni – not because I valued everything shallowly but because I valued my actual morals deeply enough to challenge beliefs that had at times been literally beaten into me.
This is why I didn’t understand the point of catholics at my catholic high school undergoing confirmation. You’re confirming? Yes. Why? Right of passage, parents want me to, it’s the right thing to do. So you’re sure, even though you haven’t looked into any thing else, had experiences on your own, or even been outside of the catholic school system to see what the rest of the world might be like, that this is the doctrine you believe to be truth and will uphold for the rest of your life? That’s not why I’m confirming… ITS CONFIRMATION – that is what it’s supposed to be about. Aaaaaaaah
Yeah, that seriously annoys me. I haven’t really been religious since elementary school, but even knowing that, my mom *still* wants me to get confirmed! Not as a “you may not want to be Catholic but I am making you Catholic” sort of thing, but because it’s “just what is done”. I would like to hold off on this so I can go through this important process only if I ever truly feel devoted to Catholicism, but it’s not my decision to make, unfortunately. It feels wrong to go up to the archbishop and basically lie about who I am, but most of Catholicism is tradition.
Nobody talks like this
Welcome to
the X-Menwebcomics, hope you survive the experience.Do you expect an hour of back and forth discussion in which she uses no true Scotsman fallacies and belittles Becky for failing to ‘prove’ herself?
Have you honestly never spoken to someone online who argued in bad faith?(to prove their superiority, not particularly to discuss anything)
I believe you have.
David Willis can’t spend a year on this discussion, you get the summary.
Of all the online political arguments I’ve seen, no one has ever bragged about how x-wing they are, or told people they couldn’t be as x-wing as them. I see more people taking pride in not blindly following a set of political views, but if they happen to be very x-wing, it’s because that wing happens to have the values they think are correct. People aren’t worried about others one-upping their political views, but rather they expect that everyone should have the same views, because those views are correct.
But this could just be an ironic joke and I’m an idiot for taking it so seriously. I dunno, I’m bored.
Bah, x-wing. I’m totally A-wing.
I’m more of a y-wing myself.
I’m b-wing, but I try harder.
Libertarians, when gathered in sufficient numbers, often *do* try to one-up each other on how libertarian or even anarcho-capitalist they are compared to one another.
Source: I’ve been to Students For Liberty conventions. They were happening in D.C., where I was going to college, and I knew some kids who were going, doc it was basically a matter of, “hey, this looks interesting and I have this weekend free, I might as well check it out.” I learned a lot, but damn they can be pretentious as hell.
Did any of them explain the obsession with bread, or is that a more recent thing?
the conquest of it, you mean?
How do you conquer bread?
I’m not aware of anything specific with libertarians and bread.
Bread tends to be more associated with socialist groups – being an old Union concern. Recently I’ve seen “breadpill”, playing off the MRA/alt-right “redpill”.
Maybe not in so many words, but they totally do and such people are insufferable
I dunno, Roz kinda looks like she’s playing it up on purpose.
My neighbor talks like this.
Not unironically, no.
Well, there was one or two cases on Facebook that I’m not sure about, but they were tankies so they don’t matter.
I see a lot of anti-tankie comments online, so I’m going to assume they have views involving the non-military use of tanks.
No, they’re authoritarian communists (as opposed to anarcho-communists, which I’m more sympathetic to — it’s complicated) who spend all day trying to rehabilitate Stalin’s image (and Lenin’s, and Mao’s, and, for the really fringe nutcases, Pol Pot’s) and caping for Assad and any other imperialist dictator who isn’t too western. They got their name for supporting the Soviet Union sending in tanks to crush a rebellion in Hungary. They’re partying like it’s 1917, completely unable and unwilling to accept that the world has passed them by and the conversation on communism and how it might best be implemented has changed.
The only thing they’re good for is if you give them a fancy name and paint up the trucks real nice they’ll clean up the mess after the fash gets put up against the wall. Other than that they’re fairly useless and often vile.
I talk like this.
Goddammit Roz, you started off with a reasonable point and then you go and pull this crap.
A little note on her character I made on Patreon and then I’m gonna try and not get entangled in comment arguments. We’ll see how well I do.
Roz is like Baby Activist 101 – she’s competitive, pushy, holier than thou, not the greatest listener, and egotistical and that can be incredibly frustrating. Hopefully she’ll mellow out, because I do think Roz cares and we know she’s willing to put the work into her causes (doing stuff like volunteering at the perennially under attack Planned Parenthood), but for now? Yeah, jesus fucking christ.
Which isn’t exactly uncommon for college-aged activists.
And older ones too :/
Roz cares in some ways – she handed Joyce the card for a therapist even though they fundamentally (ha) disagreed, but…. yeah.
She’s buoyed somewhat by her most direct interactions being, well, Mary and Robin (via Leslie), but stick her next to someone reasonable and her bleagh shinest through.
All accurate points. Oh, Roz.
Yep, that’s exactly it to a T. Like you know she cares. She really does. But she doesn’t present an attitude that shows it well at all 90% of the time.
Yeah, like, Roz hits home for me because I definitely had that phase. Then I got some nuance and some chill and, I hope, became a fuller, better-rounded person. She’ll probably do the same.
I’m cutting Roz a bit of slack here because, despite wincing pretty hard, I probably wouldn’t trust Becky were I in her shoes either (especially not after rooming with Mary and meeting pre-development Joyce). Sure, she’s clearly come out and has probably accepted evolution because Dina and both those things are great, but that doesn’t automatically translate to being pro-reproductive rights, pro-latino rights, or any of the other issues that Roz cares a lot about.
Oh absolutely, but Roz also stands to gain a lot by approaching Becky as a potential political ally, especially given her past and the current state of Robin’s twitter, rather than immediately going on the offensive and casting aspersions. Helping educate Becky about issues she might not be well-versed in could do a lot of good.
Honestly, if I didn’t trust either of them but knew Becky also stood to get screwed over (which as an afab lesbian working minimum wage, she absolutely does), I’d probably start with ‘don’t do it, she’s not worth it’ too. Once Becky starts talking about changing policy, I’d like to think I might be more willing to team up and help, but I would also probably want some assurances first.
Roz has always been the shining example of everything wrong with the Left on the internet. It doesn’t matter what she believes because she’s such an asshole about it that you want her to be wrong.
Well, it’s internet. The very thing that gave us shittons of assholes.
Eh, just because her sisters moved on some LGBT stuff dosen’t mean she isn’t a republican at heart, and her issue with her sisters platform is probably wide ranging. I mean if all republicans woke up tomorrow and decided that they were cool gay/gender stuff, they would still be embracing a wide number of issues I consider monstrous. Of course she still wants her sister to lose.
Robin’s been tweeting some left economic stuff lately too – Basic Income, IIRC. (Or Becky has, in her name, but that’s retroactively official.)
Near as I can tell Robin isn’t really anything at heart. She’s not attached to any of those issues. She says stuff and votes for stuff to get elected. To be popular. That’s it. There are massive problems with that of course, but it does leave her easier to change than an actual ideologue.
Mind you, I wouldn’t trust her if I was Roz. She could always get convinced something nasty would make her more popular and switch back, but it’s not as simple as “republican at heart”.
Robin doesn’t seem to be a Republican at heart. She seems to be more of a “whatever will get me elected” at heart. Since she’s in a mostly right wing Republican district, that’s what she goes with.
Roz is Performative Straight Cis Woman Leftist.
Still full of all the bigotry she was raised with (and likely to go off like a Roman Candle if called on it) and more concerned with looking Leftier Than Thou than actually doing good.
(How is Performative Cis Straight Man Leftist different? Usually in addition to everything PSCWLs do, he uses his leftist image and loud advocacy of feminism to disguise being a sexual predator).
Simultaneously, because to her it’s the appearance rather than the substance that matters, I bet you she is the sort to exhort those less privileged on various axes to “compromise” their civil rights for “the greater good.”
I am not a fan of Roz. She’s her sister’s mirror image: every bit as shallow and self serving, just on the other side of the aisle.
I disagree with this – I think Roz does care. If she didn’t, I don’t think she’d actually put work into it or have offered Joyce a therapist’s number when things were serious (mostly because I don’t think she’d know any).
That said, yeah, she’s a self-righteous and holier than thou jerk sometimes.
I am not saying she doesn’t care at all. I am saying she doesn’t care half as much as she pretends to and her activism activities outside of causes that directly affect her are mostly performance. She doesn’t walk her talk on most of the issues she claims to care about.
Plus she has a tendency to treat others as props that I strongly and deeply dislike.
And Becky is still worse because Becky is still being “LGBT For Trump” right now.
Disagree.
It’s easy to stand on principle when it doesn’t cost you anything. For Becky, standing on principle would cost her job security, food security, housing, and potentially a lifetime of crushing debt.
For the LGBTQ For Trumpets, not supporting Trump would cost them nothing because most of them are volunteers and the remainder are affluent middle aged people with secure lifestyles and prior jobs.
To be clear, she is totally selling her soul and she knows it. But she isn’t even close to the level of the Trumpers
Plus, the LGBTQ for Trump types have exactly no effect on Trump’s policies and know it. Becky’s not guaranteed to turn her around, but it’s a hell of a lot more likely.
She’s even more likely to keep her from winning re-election, despite her best efforts.
Oh, by the Crawling Chaos, she’s one of THOSE.
*plays “All Right Now” on the hacked Muzak*
A request for the hacked Muzak: “Please Let Me Be your Third World Country” by The Bobs.
Everything you did, was
Everything I did, I
Always was one step behind
In my personal growth
She’s got two left hands
And they love to roam in the bass
That girl’s got two left hands
And they make their home in the bass
She’s got the right amount of fingers
And the right amount of toes
She’s even got two eyes right over her nose
She’s got two left hands
And they love to roam in the bass
Sometimes I really don’t like Roz.
**groans** Oh lord Roz. Why. . .Why. Why are you like this?
She’s 17/18.
I mean, not the best excuse, but she’s got a lot of growing up to do.
Roz is such a little shit. I would be more judgmental, but I’ve known a lot people who are really good folks now who were exactly like this in their late teens/early 20s.
Becky’s got Yakko Warner-style powers of flummoxing people, though, so I wouldn’t be shocked if she ends up giving Roz some lessons in humility, though.
Lesli hoisted Roz on her own petard by making her give a lesson on LGBT allyship and it doesn’t seem to have worked any.
Man I know Roz is straight, but I imagine that if she WERE bi/lesbian/ace, she’d be the most pretentious about it. ‘Oh no, you straights couldn’t possibly know how hard it is to be in our shoes!’
To be fair, that was like a week ago. Roz isn’t going to learn it quick, especially when she’s tripping over her pride, the same reason she fumed and left when Leslie pointed out that the straight girl was talking over the lesbian woman about allyship and not listening.
It’s funny that people keep on talking about Roz’s beliefs as be excusable since she is only 19/20. I’m thirty and I wish I had figured out as much shit as Roz has when I was her age.
Today’s kids are much more mature/informed about lot of things that we were, so that may explain the point of view.
Roz, you aren’t the worst by a long shot, but you are making an ass of yourself for no good reason.
Yup.
On the other hand, it’s a great mirror of Becky’s one-sided feud with Dorothy so there is plenty of comedic material
Becky doesn’t use lefty maneuvers, she uses up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, start.
She has 30 lives and full power-ups?
And all the levels are unlocked.
She’s playing the right game, finally!
If you wanna unlock the secret debug mode, it’s:
(While holding L3) Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, ✕, ✕, Square, O, Square, O, then the same thing in reverse.
We’re talking about the Jak games, right?
And if you want one hit kills in transformers (ps2) it’s square, circle square circle, L1 L1 L2 L1. Personally, I’d turn it off in the boss fights, but during the actual levels it can be pretty fun.
Becky didn’t exactly get a choice in being a fundie shut-in… I mean… that was her parents’ decision… Also being a former fundie shut-in who was gay nearly got Becky shot? So Roz is definitely uh… not in a great moral place for me here.
Also hi! it’s been a long time since I last commented, it’s cause I got my first jerb~
when was the last time Roz was in a great moral position? She her politics are ok, even if they are self serving feeling, but she lords them over people even when they’re actively changing.
Probably the last time Robin was in the classroom and Roz had to remind Leslie, ‘hey, uh, you KNOW her politics right’.
Yeah, I’m with Nono. Roz wasn’t exactly wrong when she pointed out ‘hey…it’s kinda fucked up to like my sister when she would throw you under the bus with her policies’ which is why Leslie agreed ‘yeah wow, I’m sad and ashamed’. I’m not saying she’s necessarily wrong here either, I’m not comfortable with Becky working for Robin, but she’s correct that as manager she controls the message Robin is broadcasting. I mean, it’s certainly better than her position before, right? …Also Robin could have bounced back from the photo with Leslie with great damage control, but Becky’s continued tweeting on her twitter account was what resulted in Robin’s own party pulling their support so…
On the other hand, considering that Roz actively tried to set Leslie and Robin up (including arranging Robin’s second visit to the class), in a way that uncomfortably suggests that she was trying to out Robin… Maybe only to herself, but even so, she must know her sister well enough to have a sense of where that could go. Which does suggest she was happy to throw Leslie under the bus, as Becky suggested.
Roz’s moral high road is TUMBLING DOWN TUMBLING DOWN TUMBLING DOOOOWN…
Roz has already said her plan was to get Robin to realize she was gay, hopefully they would hook up and hopefully Robin would stop being a garbage person on LGBT+ rights. That said, Roz wasn’t exactly crying when someone did take that picture and gave it to the press either.
It’s still just… straight girl manipulating gay girls, which can’t help but be kinda icky, especially because it’s so hard to distinguish between Roz’s genuinely good intentions, sometimes over-the-top-for-the-sake-of-it activism (see Slipshine), and rebelliousness.
Is it manipulation when she told Leslie about her plan up front and Leslie agreed to it? Again, the picture wasn’t part of her plan.
It’s not clear what the plan was actually and whether Leslie and Roz had the same plan.
There was a bit in that confrontation between Becky and Roz before class after Robin was outed that made me wonder if she’d basically written Leslie off as acceptable losses as soon as she found out about the crush.
And as much about her personal feud with her sister as any broader concern about her policies.
Roz said what her plan was when the photo came out. The photo wasn’t her plan, but she certainly wasn’t crying over it and didn’t even seem to think about Leslie.
Well, I mean she has a point. When Catholic or fundie parents change their views on gay marriage because their kid comes out, the large majority of the time they don’t suddenly turn leftist. They changed their mind on this stuff in the first place because their personal situation changed and taught them better–on that thing that changed. Sometimes that leads to a watershed of liberal ideas, and sure, that happens faster with young people experiencing it themselves, but it takes time for former-zealots to learn to empathize outside their own experience. Becky may do all she can for LGBTQ+ rights NOW, but Roz has no reason to think she’s magically supportive of reproductive health, minority rights, etc. now too.
And frankly, she’s being reasonable by demanding that Becky prove that she is wholly a leftist when Becky is the one telling her who to vote for.
The sad thing is that Roz works very hard to prove that she’s not like her sister in terms of politics, but she refuses to believe that people can be not like their family, or at least learn not to.
Roz and Rachel would almost get on well.
‘Redemption is a story.’
She hasn’t said Becky hasn’t changed – she’s saying that changing on one issue is not evidence of changing on other issues that will also impact Roz (Like sexual freedom, reproductive rights, and whatever fresh hell the GOP is cooking up for Latinas).
But that’s still part of why Roz is so aggravating – she doesn’t accept the process of change, she only cares that you get to the end.
Roz would be a terrible teacher, in that regard.
Roz hasn’t volunteered to be Becky’s teacher. And when it comes to setting policy, it does matter where you’re at on those things.
She hasn’t even given Becky 10 seconds to explain herself. She just immediately launched into “You suck and I’m better.” I get that Roz has her heart in the right place and could probably eventually be a really good ally, but Christ Almighty she’s awful right now.
I don’t think I had started reading regularly (definitely wasn’t a regular commenter) when the bongo filter was put into place, but I didn’t agree with the descriptor anyway. Even Roz’s worst moment before here (attacking Joyce, shouting over Leslie) was fueled by righteous if-misguided fury.
But panel 4? Brace yourselves, because the percussion section is about to blow down the wall at mach 18.
Becky hasn’t really tried to explain until this strip. She made a crack at Roz’s shirt and where she (Becky assumes) got the news Becky was a campaign manager. I’ll agree she immediately turns it into a competition when Becky says she’s been radicalized but no, that’s not what she immediately launched into.
Roz prejudges everything in the negative. She lets her prejudices rule her rather than guarding against them. She is, so far as I can see, a terrible person who happened to get swept up by the right cause.If she’d been born into Becky’s kind of family, she’d be universally reviled just like Mary. If she were a cop, she’d have shot an innocent person by now.
She never allows for the possibility that anyone in the world might know anything relevant to informing her world view beyond what she already thinks she knows. She doesn’t even seem to comprehend the principles and values behind her positions so much as they give her some imagined moral high ground upon which to tell everyone around her how terrible they are.
Oh, BULLSHIT. Roz is a self righteous asshole sometimes, but she’s nowhere near as bad as Mary or a murderous cop. When Roz gets to the point of driving someone to suicidality and then trying to stop that person from getting help so she can ‘use’ their suicidal state to get power AND THEN ASKS FOR PERMISSION TO DO IT TO SOMEONE ELSE THE NEXT FUCKING DAY, I will entertain Roz and Mary comparisons.
Fair on the Mary comparison. Roz doing what she did in Leslie’s class to Joyce carries all the most essential thought patterns, but Roz has never actually faced the kinds of facts Mary has. I stand by my statement that Roz as a cop would shoot an innocent. That’s the kind of negative prejudice she self-stokes even in a friendly environment, now fed in this hypothetical by facing criminals and potential criminals on a regular basis.
Also, Roz is a self-righteous asshole, so far as I can remember, *all* the time. It’s so bad that she doesn’t even seem to be in it for the cause so much as it’s a way to vomit her toxicity upon “acceptable” targets.
Comparing Roz to Mary is fucking gross. She may be a jerk at times but Mary is a fucking toxic bigot who has tried to drive someone to suicide.
Roz was shouty and mean to Joyce.
The difference is exponential, ffs
@Falcon:
I don’t especially like Roz, but http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/03-the-first-step-towards-recovery/card-2/
I have to disagree with the “vomiting her toxicity upon ‘acceptable’ targets” idea. That’s what Mary does, yes. But when Roz snapped at Joyce that one class, she was being enraged at what she saw as Joyce’s hypocrisy, not as Joyce’s evil. There’s a difference. Roz is closer to Rachel’s point of view — you don’t get to just wipe away everything bad you’ve done just because you’ve learnt better. Her point was ‘You’ve done terrible things’ more than ‘You’re a terrible person’, though that may have been poorly expressed.
As for Roz as a cop — OK, so I can’t imagine her becoming a cop in the first place, but if she did, I can’t see her shooting the innocent, specifically because she’s so self-righteous. Her partner would be insisting that they shoot, and she’d refuse not so much for the sake of the suspect as to prove that she’s better at being ethical than her partner.
Roz has not driven someone to suicide, as I already conceded. She has not faced a similar scenario. She is, however, definitely a toxic bigot. Dismissing her behavior to Joyce as shouty and mean masks the thought process of an adult human being who pounces on someone earnestly in university to learn and who decides to mouth off to the teacher before she’s even begun to learn anything.
Because Joyce was trying to pass the buck off on ‘the church’ as if she’d never participated in any of the church’s homophobic activities herself. Joyce even admitted later that Roz bluntly laying down that she was part of that was helpful, if mean. “Maybe sometimes I need someone to be mean”. She invited Roz to her party because she trusted her even though, yeah, Roz was not polite about it.
I agree with Fart Captor and BBCC here. Roz has her faults and is deeply grating to me but she’s not a toxic bigot on the level of Mary or Toedad or a killer cop.
I will grant arrogant, hypocrite, more concerned with image than substance outside of reproductive issues, and self-righteous ass. All of those are legitimate criticisms of Roz.
Toxic bigot? Nope. She’s just not on that level of asshattery yet.
It’s not even just that it’s based on assumptions that Roz would do awful things she hasn’t actually done, but the way it ends up downplaying the awfulness of what Mary actually has done.
Like, the biggest reason Roz hasn’t “faced a similar scenario” as Mary pushing someone towards suicide has that she has never actively sought to create such a scenario. Mary didn’t just stumble into that shit by chance. She saw vulnerability in people she hated and she exploited that to inflict as much harm as she could, and damn near caused one of their deaths.
Roz has faced a similar scenario. We’ve seen how she responds to seeing vulnerability in somebody she couldn’t stand, and Roz’s response was to track Joyce down and give her info for a support group.
Mary’s bigotry and willingness to harm those she considers less human are not comparable to Roz being an asshole sometimes
“She just immediately launched into”…because Becky is being LGBT for Trump right now.
All the LGBT for Trump people are still pushing borrible toxic policy. Becky is very explicitly pushing progressive policies. I’m not seeing the comparison.
@BBCC Oh, Joyce definitely needed a course correction. No dispute there. But that’s the point of Leslie’s class. Roz decided, before seeing anything in the class at all, that she was more qualified than Leslie to lecture Joyce in the middle of Leslie’s class, when she had specifically promoted the exact opposite atmosphere for learning. Roz isn’t interested in respect. She isn’t interested in learning. She wants to be right about everything all the time without ever needing to admit she ever misjudged a situation.
Clearly Roz DIDN’T promote the ‘exact opposite atmosphere for learning’ because Joyce DID learn from it. She explicitly told Roz she’d needed someone to be mean that day. You’re right, Roz is often arrogant and confrontational, but even JOYCE agrees she needed the dressing down Roz gave her, even if Leslie disagrees.
Perhaps I was a little unclear. Roz promoted the exact opposite atmosphere that Leslie was trying to cultivate for her class. Like, I’m not saying acting like Roz will never educate anyone. But Roz isn’t some necessary evil. She does more harm than good.
I’m not sure where she’s done that? She’s not refusing to believe Becky can’t be different from her family here, she’s only expressing skepticism, and while she’s still convinced she’s MORE left than Becky, she seems to have accepted her word that she is somewhere on the lef
I’m not saying Becky is suddenly gonna say ‘hey guys let’s be socialist’ but I don’t know… I think being threatened at gun point by her massively fundie father probably puts a bad taste in her mouth? We’ve already seen her be fine with dating an Atheist and accepting science and evolution. Sure, Roz hasn’t seen that…
But again. I reiterate.
It only takes a fraction of human empathy to put together that maybe Becky, who again, was nearly shot by her own father, might be more open to learning about political viewpoints that don’t remind her of her dad. This kinda swings back around for me to when Roz was told to just let Joyce learn. Like, again. Becky’s never known anything else, sure. But… That’s why… You help teach her. Like Dina’s been doing! Roz would rather sit on a high horse and decide that Becky’s already tainted by fundie even though trying to escape her father nearly got her killed. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
But does Roz know Becky was menaced by her father? Her name wasn’t in the paper, and her friends were keeping it under their hats.
She knew that Joyce was out of class because of Ross. Given that Ross’ last name was in the news and that Becky was known to be homeless (the dorm was keeping her out of sight while Ruth was patrolling), probably enough word’s spread around.
Billie herself was surprised that Ruth didn’t immediately cotton on why Becky needed a place to crash. I think it’s common knowledge.
I mean. Catholic or fundie parents changing their views because their kid came out and the kid changing the views they express when they *themself* come out are two really different situations. Chances are becky really wasn’t a “fundie shut-in until six minutes ago,” at least not in the manner Roz seems to be implying. I sure as shit had secret liberal leanings for fuckin ages before I had internet access or felt sufficiently comfortable with myself and my situation to come out to anyone, and I didn’t even make out with a girl, run away from home, and/or have my life threatened by my father.
That said apart from implying that a gay abuse victim is Probably Indifferentiable From someone who’s made her career out of fucking over gay abuse victims, yes “why should i trust your messaging” is a valid question to ask a campaign manager.
I mean, I explicitly said that young people who experience it themselves go full leftist much faster, so it’s not like I overlooked that. In any case, we’ve seen that, at the very least, Roz cares passionately about reproductive rights. WE don’t even know that Becky is pro-choice, and WE are privy to the knowledge that Becky is pro-science. Roz has zero reason to think that Becky’s opinions align with hers beyond LBGTQ issues, and in fact, has decent reason to think that Becky’s fundie background means that she is less “convinced” on issues that never affected her before and still don’t, like reproductive/Latina rights. It DOES make no difference what Becky’s been through in that regard; Roz isn’t saying she can’t trust Becky on the stuff she’s been through, but that she can’t trust her to have leftist opinions on stuff generally, because all she knows is that Becky is anti-people-hurting-people-like-her.
Congratulations on the jerb.
Thank you very much! ^^
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it
Roz’s picture would fit nicely in the dictionary under “smug”.
Also she really needs to cut Becky some slack. She’s a homeless (or was) lesbian escaping from her strict fundie upbringing.
Roz hasn’t been well known for cutting people slack or expecting them to have good intentions/the desire to do good.
Yeah I know. But maybe this storyline could see Roz ease off her harshness if things end horribly in some way.
The day Roz learns a lesson and it sticks will be a good day.
“Performative allyship and the de-amplifying of marginalized voices.”
+1 Nice callback.
Instead of asking why not read her message thus far and decide for yourself how you feel about it and how much you trust it?
Don’t help my sister her beliefs are backwards.
I’m mostly here so I can control her views so they won’t be so backwards.
Like I trust your views, your parents views were backwards and you only broke free of them like few weeks ago.
Yea but I spent all that time forming my own opinion while taking for granted that most of what he taught me was bunk.
Yea but I’m so tribal that whatever your views are they are automatically too much like the opposing tribes. Idon’t really are if my views make sense at this point so long as they are more extreme as yours.
I honestly hope Robin ends up winning the election just for the amount of rage it’ll induce in Roz.
Since robin was abandoned by her party, is she still considered right wing even thou her Twitter is now full of leftist propaganda.
She’s probably still considered right wing: you can be centrist or center-left and still be called “right wing” so long as you talk about the wrong things nowadays.
Yup. Just like someone can be fairly economic right-wing and yet still get labelled as a “socialist” or “commie” (since, to the American political right, such words seem to have basically devolved to mean “not a Republican”).
American politics is friggin’ weird, and full of loaded words. =/
As promoting health insurance for everyone suffices to be labeled socialist or commie in the USA (while in European countries all political parties who have been in power sometime in the last 70 years consider it normal and just disagree about details in how to do it), the labels start to be meaningless.
BTW: Can someone explain why catholic Ireland nowadays has more liberal abortion laws than rather large parts of the USA?
Yeah, here’s a quick rundown on the “why”. U.S. Republicans are a nightmarish death cult who despise any and all forms of joy and freedom.
Slander! U.S. Republicans are ALL about their own joy and freedom. It’s just everybody else’s joy and freedom they tend to frown upon.
In reality? Robin would be considered a crazy leftist traitor by her former supporters and a probably still rightist flip-flopping flake by her former opponents. A good chunk of the former (like Mary) going “I knew it all along. Unmarried at nearly 30 is suspicious. And she’s Catholic.” (and Latino, though Mary didn’t say that.)
The right would hate her and the left wouldn’t trust her. And her career would be sunk without a trace. In comic, who knows.
You can make a party switch as a politician and survive, but it’s generally a long time incumbent and a switch from moderate on one side to moderate on the other – often with a dose of “The party left me”. A sudden switch from regressive to radical, by a one term Congresscritter? Not likely.
“I mean first off, at thirty seconds in I almost got killed by my homophobic dad for being a lesbian so like while I don’t have your sick lefty cred, I am pretty invested in making sure that’s not allowed to happen again. So I feel like I’m off to a pretty solid start”
Sometimes I wish Roz would stop for a second and consider who she’s talking to. I also wish I’d done that a few more times at her age, truth be told.
oof that’s too real
Alt-text: Nah, this ain’t peak Roz. Her peaks are covered. (By peaks I mean her breasts.)
Panel 4: Roz, you genuinely have no idea that outside of the US, you’d be mildly left of center at best, do you?
Peaks? What, does she have PS1 polygon tits or something? I haven’t seen the Slipshines yet, so for all I know, she might have.
They’re… perky. So you know, particularly suitable to being compared to the tip of a mountain.
I’ve never understood the term “perky” when it comes to boobs, and I don’t need to be hornswoggled into googling it again. I’ll assume for now that it generally means “They look like a low-poly video game character’s”.
Maybe? Do we really know much about Roz’s politics, other than she’s focused on women’s rights?
For all I know, she’s a Trotskyite or something. More likely you’re right of course.
Ahh, to be eighteen and mean well but also be a dingus~
Like, I can see where Roz is coming from. She doesn’t want her sister to win for very valid human rights reasons. But Becky has been offered a way out of homelessness and a future. Roz is asking Becky to give that up while not offering anything in return (though how much of Becky’s circumstances she knows is questionable). She might view her as an acceptable loss in making sure Robin isn’t elected and someone better is.
“But Becky has been offered a way out of homelessness and a future.”
Right, that’s why we shouldn’t get pissed at people like Milo, Shapiro, or Tucker, right? They’re just doing something to make a living.
/s
Becky is being fully LGBT For Trump right now.
There’s a difference between “making a living” and getting out of homelessness.
All of those idiots had plenty of other options – maybe ones that wouldn’t have made them rich, but also wouldn’t leave them on the street.
Fuck off, Roz.
Roz, aren’t you a rich Republican politician’s family member? Then again, all the progressive counter-culture people I know have Becky’s background.
Can you offer any reason at all Roz should trust Becky’s judgement on reproductive rights or latino rights?
Roz should ask Becky her stance on those issues first.
That’s not what I asked. I asked if Roz, knowing what she does about Becky’s background, has any reason to believe Becky’s stances on those issues have changed (or for that matter, even exist).
She’s made no attempt to find out what those opinions are, though. That’s the point–she’s jumping to a conclusion based on her own biases.
I am asking if, based on what she knows about Becky and the way Becky’s expressed herself, she has reason to trust her. She knows Becky’s changed on LGBT+ issues (obviously) and probably knows she’s changed on evolution, but it’s not obvious Becky’s swerved on other issues that affect Roz.
Well, she did just ask Becky a question about why she was trustworthy, and only got an answer about twitter, so…
Yes, actually.
Roz has no idea what Becky’s judgement on them are. So, if she knew them, then she very likely would support them.
Or what Schoonman said.
Not knowing Becky’s views at all doesn’t make Becky automatically trustworthy on those scores.
I don’t think they are arguing that Roz shouldn’t trust Becky (initially). They are arguing about the antagonism level displayed that shuts down the chance. You can be skeptical without being in constant shut down mode. Between the starting at name calling with “fundie shut in” and then making it into a leftist dick measuring competition when Becky expresses those aren’t her views… she doesn’t even leave time for trust to be built. She even raises the bar – Becky doesn’t have to be trust worthy or even help her sister be a better candidate. She now needs to be 100% crystallized leftist y’all.
Reproductive rights, sure. Frankly, I doubt Becky’s thought about them beyond “Eew, God no I don’t want babies” at this point. (Not saying that she’s necessarily entirely anti-baby, just that right now the idea is probably still completely tied to the prospect of some “godly man” “claiming” her.) But do we have any sense that Roz has thought about Latino rights at all? All her activism that I can remember is tied to sexuality, one way or another.
Serious question; I may be forgetting a strip. Yes, she’s Latina, but so’s her sister. It’s not guaranteed she’ll be thinking of them. Privileged people (and Roz is privileged, if only by virtue of who her sister is, as I think her attitude tends to demonstrate) tend to pick the battles they want, and Roz seems to have subsumed her activism into her sex drive, as evidenced by her lecturing her 12-year-old sister when the latter just wanted to eat cereal.
Unlike Robin, Roz tends to give a shit about issues that affect her and we know her sister’s backed policies that tend to disproportionately affect Latino people (her immigration record in particular is why Sal doesn’t like her).
I swear I’m not trying to be an asshole, I just don’t have time to reread every one of Roz’s appearances right now — are there instances of Roz giving a shit about issues that don’t relate to sex? I can’t remember any.
She pretty much only cares about shit not related to sex when she can make her sister look bad or herself look good.
Like not saying that she’s irredeemable but am totally and completely saying she seems way more interested in using loud and very public adherence to left wing views to embarrass her family and prop up her radical rebel identity than in actually supporting marginalized people and advancing left wing goals.
And I am totally being harsher than normal on her because I have dealt with a lot of straight cis leftists of the performative variety this week and my patience is shot with their antics.
(Short version: No, reproductive health issues are not acceptable bargaining chips, no trans rights are also not acceptable bargaining chips, no supporting a bill that allows cops to breathalyzer and search people without reasonable cause is not acceptable, no it’s not an acceptable cost of safer roads to not have a legal alternative for those physically incapable of performing a breathalyzer test, no actually NO civil rights are acceptable bargaining chips I am not the unreasonable one you can’t compromise on shit that makes entire groups of people second class what the actual fuck is wrong with straight cis performative leftists?!)
And, of course, there’s that time she handed a therapist card to a distressed Joyce, no questions asked, a woman who not that long ago had told her she was spoiled goods, worthless, and bound to hell.
That had to do with reproductive rights (consent culture and care for sexual assault victims is squarely in the purview of that issue). Which is the only cause Roz seems to be genuine about.
Roz isn’t phony about everything. But if it doesn’t have to do with reproductive rights, she doesn’t act like she cares unless there is an opportunity to look good or tear her sister down.
Exactly in how many battlefields do you expect her to fight at the same time while also having getting an effective education? Of course, the answer doesn’t matter, because there’s no leftist battlefield she can fight in that wouldn’t make Robin look bad, which you just condemned her for doing.
It was a f ing business card they are worth less than a nickle.
I mean I assume she went through at least some effort to find a good resource for sexual assault victims, but by the time it was connected to Joyce the work was done. Not handing it to Joyce would mean admitting to herself that she thinks sheltered women who get sexually assaulted obviously deserve it. Also on the more cynical side she would presumable want Dorothy, the one writing about her tape, to not think she was some heartless monster, and five cents is a cheap way of saying of course if there was a bad actor at the party I am not affiliated with them and oppose them.
Dorothy wasn’t part of their interaction, and even if she were I’m not even seeing how she’d know Roz had the cards in the first place. Shit, Roz hadn’t even been told Joyce had been sexually assaulted in the first place. Your logic must be a flea, with all those leaps it’s making. Roz was the person who was provided with the least amount of information, the least connected to Joyce, and yet she was the LITERALLY the only one who pointed her to a useful resource on how to handle the situation. So that “the work was done” dismissal? Roz did more work than EVERYONE ELSE PUT TOGETHER (except Sarah, and sort of about on par with Billie).
What I expect her to do is good which isn’t staged for an audience.
What she did for Joyce was one such act. And it’s why I consider her not irredeemable.
My issue with her is that, unless it has to do with the one thing she appears to genuinely care about, she professes beliefs she doesn’t back up with her actions and attitudes.
She’s all for listening to LGBTQ people, amplifying their voices, and advocating for them unless said people disagree with her, for example.
It’s not the big battles I expect of her. It’s the quiet moments. And that’s where Joyce has by-and-large made consistent efforts to succeed where Roz typically hasn’t tried much if at all (that one case with Joyce excepted). Because Joyce generally tries to treat people as people and Roz to a large extent treats them as props.
Can Roz change? Yes. Do I think she will? Eventually. I do not think all of her beliefs are phony, I just don’t think she’s internalized her professed beliefs as much as she thinks she has and I do strongly think her persona is phony. I think her attachment to her radical maverick rebel persona is blocking her from learning from her mistakes and learning how to act like she believes what she says she believes.
Roz knew Joyce had a really bad experiance Dorothy was sort of mad at her for so she knows its not stupid like seeing someone kiss or something. She knew Joyce didn’t want to talk about it with anyone about it.
Yes Its worth something that Roz put real work to get a theoretical victim of sexual assault help it means she cares enough to put in real work and research, but the work part wasn’t for Joyce.
Yea its worth something that she handled it privately but its not like she couldn’t have thought expressing sympathy might effect how Joyce talks about me and…
The problem with that is that since we don’t have Roz POV arcs, everything she does is, by definition, for an audience. Joyce being the main (and most autobiographical) character, she gets the overwhelming majority of the quiet moments. You’re basically complaining that Wonder Woman didn’t have enough moments in the BvS movie*.
*Major apologies for comparing that jar of Granny’s Peach Tea of a movie to Dumbing of Age.
I am not complaining about that. Roz has had opportunity to be the quiet ally. On many occasions. Almost universally (with literally one exception) she has instead opted to loudly grandstand and talk over people.
I am not saying I think Roz is evil.
I do think she is immature, self centered, arrogant, unwilling to accept constructive criticism, more than a bit phony, and more concerned with having lefty cred than doing lefty deeds.
Hell even on things she believes in, she doesn’t consistently walk her talk. She didn’t ask Joe’s consent before she got him embroiled in her sex scandal (he knew she was taping. He didn’t know she was going to post it to a porn site and had even less idea of who she was and how much that would blow up. As it happened he didn’t mind but her actions weren’t the actions of someone who has internalized consent culture there).
She’s got a lot of growing up to do. And I find her particular brand of self-righteous hypocrisy deeply grating. I won’t apologize for that.
And I am not writing her off as a character. She has the potential to grow some compassion and to learn to be who she is instead of advertising who she thinks she should be. She shows seeds of those traits already.
One of the best things about this comic is every character is dynamic. They all change in response to new experience. That’s great.
Case in point: I used to get as annoyed with Joyce and Becky as I am now with Roz. Joyce and Becky grew into better people and show genuine desire to be better as soon as they understand how their actions were harmful.
I am not writing off the possibility that Roz will show similar growth. But as she is right now she is exactly the sort of activist that tells other people that they’re not important through her actions rather than her words whilst performing a politic she doesn’t live.
Roz DID get Joe’s permission to upload the tape to the internet. Joe’s exact words to Dorothy were ‘When you meet a chick who wants to friggin’ make a sex tape, you jump that no matter what’.
On the sex tape thing we knew Roz got Joe’s permission to shoot and upload a porn with him. We don’t know if Roz got Joe’s permission on the fact that the porn would be a political scandal.
Roz never explicitly said she got Joe’s permission on that little detail, and quite frankly I could see Joe not listening past shoot a sex tape.
I’d only argue that Roz told Joe she was uploading it to the Internet. I don’t think she did tell him how likely it was to blow up.
– She’s a gender studies major, per the book, so presumably about other feminist issues like the pay gap. One that she explicitly brought up is pressure for women to appease men in the work place so that they’re non-threatening to larger power structures in play.
– Doesn’t go into details but she’s not a fan of Robin pandering to ‘captains of industry’ or ‘old scared homophobic white dudes’, nor Mary’s love for Reagen
– It got way out of line, but her commenting on Joyce’s trying to blame the church for their homophobic actions when she took part in them herself was helpful to Joyce
– Again, whatever you want to make of it, she says that her trying to hook Robin and Leslie up was about trying to get Robin to stop being a shithead about LGBT+ people (presumable thinking ‘she won’t be a shithead about LGBT+ people if she realizes SHE’S LGBT+’ ….presumably forgetting Robin is fine with being a shit head to Latino folks and women despite being one).
Sorry this is a reply to your comment about Roz getting consent from Joe. No reply button under it.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you but what troubles me about that interaction is Danny.
They stuck a camera on his foot while he was sleeping. Some one was present who was not consulted about his participation.
Just something that bugs me when the Roz & Joe incident get’s brought up.
Yeah, sticking the camera on Danny’s foot is a crappy thing to do. I’m only addressing the point that Roz didn’t ask Joe to upload it to internet – she did. That’s not to say she didn’t do anything wrong (Joe didn’t know she was a congresswoman’s sister when he said she could upload it) but yeah, she did tell Joe it was going online.
She also says, when the picture came out, that she’d planned to get Robin to out herself, with the implication at least that she wouldn’t get reelected, not that she’d be less of a shithead.
And here, she’s again focused on not getting Robin reelected, not whether she’s changed.
Which isn’t an unreasonable position, of course, but it kind of undercuts the idea that she was focused on wanting Robin to realize she was queer.
I mean, Robin’s not coming out (which is what ‘outing yourself’ means) if she doesn’t realize it.
True, but the point when she celebrated her being outed and again here, seems to be getting her out of office, not hoping she’ll change.
Roz emphasized Robin can be a good listener and wanting her to be less of a shithead. I think that was her ideal outcome, but you’re right, she’s hardly above celebrating her being tossed out of office instead.
all the comments are wrong roz is great
But if all the comments are wrong, that means this one is wrong, to…
Oh no – I’m not falling into that trap again!
It took me years of therapy and a philosophy degree to get past Zeno, Epimenides’s Paradox and that business of not being able to cross the same river twice…
Or was it that the B.A in Philosophy required the years of therapy?
Like.
I really really like that fourth panel. I’m not sure why. Just great composition. All of these panels are very pretty. I love lamp.
Roz is every Leftbooker that ever irritated me out of Leftbook. There’s a reason my leftist group is explicitly not Leftbook.
Any REAL leftist would know better than to be in Facebook.
Well excuse me for wanting to stay in touch with friends and family, comrade.
I don’t really know how to reply to that without making myself look like a jerk or making you look silly for not getting the joke.
I mean, I used Roz’s exact phrase…
I’m a lefty and I find Roz’s behavior annoying at times.
Same.
Ditto.
Schrodinger’s Ideology: doesn’t exist until observed
And this is another reason why I hate Roz. She is obsessed with her self image of a leftist figure, and has the same contrarian behavior as Malaya. Even if you campaign for human rights, do activism and volunteer for humanitarian aid, instead of her seeing it as a good thing she would see you as a rival that she has to defeat.
Joyce learns to be a better person. Roz: She is still an hipocrite.
Becky is making Robin look like a leftist. Roz: you are a faker, you mongrel!
Dorothy tries to be nice. Roz: “I don’t need pitty. I would have rejected the job even if I won.”
? On that last one, do you mean the RA job?
Because Roz absolutely would have taken the job if it had offered, or rather had ever been open to either of them. Roz wanted out of living with Mary.
Becky making Robin LOOK like a leftist is EXACTLY the problem, because Roz (and honestly, literally no-one) has any reason to believe that if elected Robin would actually ACT like one, instead of just continuing the course that would get her the most applause (and in INDIANA that’s not being leftist).
If it looks like a rabbit, moves like a rabbit, and it resides in a cave littered with human bones, it’s not a rabbit, it’s the fucking Beast of Caerbannog.
Except that Robin hired Becky to keep making her look leftist because that was getting her applause.
Which is as dumb in terms of getting her reelected as anything else Robin’s done.
Maybe it’s just Robin stories. I can’t take it seriously.
The fear here is that despite her currently losing badly, Becky’s going to make her popular by rallying the left to her side and then she’ll go back to her old policies because the left isn’t popular in Indiana. None of those steps make any sense outside of wacky Robin.
That’s… pretty much what I said? Well, except the “I can’t take it seriously part”. A cursory look at the last 3 years of US politics (on both sides, though on different things and to different degrees) has pretty much proven that nothing’s too incredibly stupid to be impossible over there.
The fear is what you said, but you skimmed over the part where it’s the lefty stuff Becky’s posting which is making her popular and will supposedly let her win again, but despite that she’d give it up because the only way to be popular in Indiana is to be right.
Those both can’t be true. She can’t both be swept back into office on a wave of leftist popularity and have to go back to the right to be popular.
And less cursory look at US politics over decades shows plenty of stupid stuff, but nothing at all like this. Long term incumbent politicians might change parties and survive, but not first term reps, weeks before the election with a swing from on extreme to another.
It’s an over-the-top parody of US politics and I can be amused by it, but I can’t take it seriously.
No, the only way she can WIN is with a leftist campaign, because Republicans vote for the party’s candidate come hell or high water. If she wants general approval ratings in Indiana, she’ll have to promote right-wing policies when elected.
I mean, a heretofore not involved in party politics dude just won the presidency over long-time partisans, so, y’know. It’s not THAT crazy.
Huh? She is the Republican candidate, if there is one. She’s on the ballot on the Republican party line. They withdrew their endorsement, but too late to change anything else.
Basically, I’m saying she can’t win – barring some extreme Manley scandal or Russian hacking or something. Or because wacky Robin trumps realism.
Trump or someone like him was pretty much inevitable given the track of the Republican party – though it took a lot of cheating and some really bad breaks to get him over the top in the general.
A former hard right incumbent winning with a sudden surge of last minute hard left votes due to a scandal in the last weeks of the campaign? While there is an apparently perfectly serviceable Democrat in the race? That really
us even crazier.
She didn’t say she would have rejected the job if she won. Just that for her it was more a means to an end (getting a room away from Mary). She was a jerk to Dorothy about it, then when she didn’t get it, was a jerk to Dorothy again for daring to be nice to her. Roz does not expect people to be nice or good or kind even when she has no reason to doubt them.
As annoying Roz is at times her skepticism here is fair.
Leftist one upmanship aside, what’s really annoying about Roz’s behaviour is the pre judgement of Becky – the assumption that a gay woman who grew up in the fundamentalist Church wouldn’t actually be very receptive to radical politics
Roz’s negative pre-judgment is pretty much her central damning trait throughout this comic. She’s a perfect example of a toxic person fighting for what’s right, the person who sees a splinter in everyone’s eye but not the plank in her own, the ally who hurts the cause she purports to help.
Sometimes a vaxxer is someone with an anti-vaxxer outlook who happens to jump on the right bandwagon.
I believe that the appropriate term here is ‘performative’. Basically, this is simply about Roz’s own self-image, nothing else.
Thank you for having clarified what it meant, as a foreign speaker, I didn’t get what it meant (for me performative was when by sying you do, like “I ask you to open this window).
I think Roz does to some extent genuinely care since she wanted her sister to fail at being reelected. But she does a good job of coming across as performative because she is a huge jerk and looks down on people that don’t believe what she does.
To a large extent wanting her sister to lose is personal. Understandably so. She’s complained about being used as a campaign prop.
Yeah that honestly sounds about right for the Twitter Left
Love ’em but they do basically trade Tumblr’s 16 year old whackadoodle “what the fuck is even coming out of your mouth” tendencies for 20-something hipster oneupmanship (both of which are endemic to the platforms, not just any specific group or set of groups)
Still better than Facebook
Heh, I love how Roz heard the word “radicalized” and felt threatened in her leftie cred.
Just ask Becky spell or define ‘bourgeois’ and you can rest secure in your top position… unless she counters with being poorer than you and thus closer to the ‘common people’. If she does, get defensive and start flinging shit.
Being able to spell bourgeois is the epitome of bourgeoisie decadence! 😛
Oh no, my petard!
Yeah, that’s a thing here. Becky doesn’t have to be leftier than Roz to be in a good place here. Questioning whether she’s moved away from her fundie upbringing on anything except LGBQ issues is reasonable, but she doesn’t have to be a radical socialist.
The final panel is such a patented Becky deflection. Instead of raising the bait and defending her own leftieness she simply asks Roz how leftie she is, putting her on the defensive.
She also earlier did that “radicalized on twitter” joke to laugh away the whole matter, but sadly Roz didn’t go with it.
She did something similar with Billie
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/booze/
[eyeroll] I seriously doubt Roz even cares about any of the left’s ideals… aside from those that give her the right to do whatever she wants and those that piss off her family.
And be holier than thou at everyone she can.
Like, if I see Roz actually volunteering herself to public service to help those she professes to ally with, I’ll happily eat my words and afford her some degree of respect. But so far she seems to have just happened to picked the right side out of convenience and committed her identity to it.
But even is she does she still does so in the most self righteous way that makes it little different to controlling charity volunteering of ‘fundies’ who want to keep other people as controllable shut ins.
Roz does a lot of volunteer work. I’m not sure about for those she “professes to ally with”. She’s focused on reproductive rights, where she counts as part of the marginalized group, not an ally.
That said, piss off and undermine Robin in particular is a good part of her motivation and that’s clearly not just about Robin’s policies. She wouldn’t be focused as much on that part if her Representative were anyone other than her sister. Because it’s personal and because she gets dragged into Robin’s campaigns.
This aligns with my own opinion of Roz.
She’s *not* entirely phony. She does seem genuine in her concern and advocacy for reproductive rights. But she sure isn’t entirely sincere either, nor does she walk most of her talk.
She already does. This comment thread is a massive example of protagonist-centered morality.
Y’all are backing up the “LGBT For Trump” character because we get to see things from their viewpoint, and slamming the person who is distrustful of them because she has *already* had to deal with constant shit from that party, and actually does activism/volunteer work, because…what, because she’s proud of her stances?
The reason I respect Becky more than Roz is Becky is has no pretense about being raised with Some Bullshit and because aside from her abuse survival mechanisms, Becky doesn’t have a whole lot of pretense about her. Furthermore, unlike Roz, Becky has a pattern of willingness to learn, openness to new experience, and acceptance of constructive criticism Roz does not.
Becky’s selling her soul here. And she knows it. What makes me have compassion for her is that she is in truly desperate straights and her other options are not good. What makes her different from “LGBTQ For Trump” is where most of them are affluent middle aged white people with secure jobs and lifestyles looking for a tax break, Becky is a traumatized and abused homeless teen in an extremely precious situation who is willing to accept dirty money because her other options are couch surfing (unsustainable and unreliable) or sleeping rough. Furthermore, despite those being her other options, she had the integrity to insist on still using the platform the dirty money gives her to amplify her honest and true beliefs.
She can be grating and obnoxious but she doesn’t profess beliefs she doesn’t back up with action. She was willing to risk continued homelessness to *not* amplify Robin’s party’s beliefs. Is she selfish? Yes, but she has yet to pretend otherwise.
Roz, OTOH, is so caught up in being Leftier Than Thou she’ll walk all over the people she claims to be advocating for if she thinks it will make her look good.
Also note that it would only be the equivalent of “LGBTQ for Trump”, if Trump had actually fired the rest of his campaign and turned everything over to the LGBTQ for Trump side – who did then actually campaign on real LGBTQ issues (not fucked up nonsense like “Democrats support Muslims who want to kill you. Trump will protect by banning Muslims.”)
Becky is the campaign here. Imagine if Trump had, in October 2016, turned over his campaign to a Latino* group and started advocating amnesty and open borders. He’d have lost in a landslide because his base wouldn’t trust him and neither would anyone else.
That’s the level of wacky we’re dealing with here.
are we reading the same comic
Pretty sure we are. Roz always came off to some as a spiteful contrarian. She doesn’t really Care, she just wants to be on top of the pile, do whatever she wants and spite her family and anyone she doesn’t like.
She is the exact opposite of Joyce and Becky. Roz came from conservative background and jumped to the left but kept the holier-than-thou mentality and methodology, she just replaced Traditional Values TM with a different Ideology. Becky and Joyce on the other hand are actively trying to deconstruct and rebuild their mentalities to fit the new information they gained and how they understand the world now.
This is the same Roz who stated that Leslie was her favorite teacher because
(1) Roz learned things in Leslie’s gender studies class and wasn’t expecting to. In fact admitted to this from at the start of the year coming in and (loudly and scornfully) stating her obvious anticipation of knowing the entire curriculum already only to be shown the opposite.
(2) …because Leslie actually has called Roz on her bullshit at times when Roz needed it. And Roz appreciated this.
And then she kept talking over Leslie when Leslie told her to shut up about Joyce. Sorry but I just don’t like Roz.
Leslie
is
a
bad
teacher
!
Good teachers don’t put their students on the spot so they can use homeless girls in an attempt to make their crush more palatable for banging.
Actually, let me compound that – so far, the only person working for the University of Indiana that should retain their position is Asma (she should also be getting a raise, because whatever she’s being paid is sure as fuck not enough to make up for having to deal with these people).
You’ve forgotten Alex, haven’t you.
At least the Alex who replaced the Alex who had to flee to Bulmeria.
Oh shit, I did. Alex is the new IT teacher, right? That replaced Alex, the old IT teacher?
I’ve forgotten about BBCC, and I am ashamed! 8(
I’m a teacher now? Ah, shit! i didn’t make any lesson plans! Fuck. I need to pick out textbooks too.
….What am I teaching and how much time do I have?
Canadian money. As for time, I’d say as long as you need, but what with the heat death of the universe and all…
Okay, Canadian money is easy. It’s called a dollar.
Coins: 1 cent penny (discontinued but still legal), 5 cent nickels, 10 cent dimes, 25 cent quarters, 50 cent pieces (exist but super rare), $1 loonies, and $2 toonies.
Paper: $5 (blue), $10 (purple), $20 (green), $50 (red), and $100 (yellow).
Loony and Toony, eh? Does Warner Bros. own Canada or something?
They pay royalties on the trademark name. It’s our leading source of revenue. 😛
I don’t like Roz, but she does show she cares. When she realized something was wrong, she did give Joyce the therapist card. She tried to out her sister in an awful way but also checked in with Leslie that she realized what she was doing and her sisters politics actively hurt her. She went to a party in JOYCE’S room (for a guy and left, but she tried to be in an uncomfortable place to get why she wants). She is always on defensive because she feels she has to be – her own sister campaigns against her rights and she rooms with Mary. The problem is that she alienates her allies or those she should want to be allies for due to this defensiveness and aggressiveness. She will learn and mellow with time, but she’s obnoxious now because she feels she has to be. Part of me wonders that if she had roomed with Sierra or Sal from the start if she’d be this “on” all the time or if she would have just relaxed at feeling able to be a validated and autonomous PERSON instead of slut-shamed constantly.
This does make a lot of sense. I think that Roz might also have the neophyte syndrome. How neophytes are always more eager about the ideology than the original “owners” of it.
…When Leslie called Roz out for this exact thing, Roz in fact shut up and left as Leslie had instructed her to do.
Speaking as someone who’s voted for my country’s socialist party for the last 17 years (i.e. since I became an adult who could vote) and who doesn’t in reality actually ever get violent, I really just want to punch Roz.
But one thought lead to another, and now I kinda want a plush guillotine to throw at people. Not going into how I arrived there.
You could chuck it at a politician and watch it dissolve into a sobbing heap of impotent fear.
The… The guillotine?
The politician.
I think I know how you got there…
I don’t know were you live, but there are many places where socialists parties are.. not left
This feels really fucking weird coming from Roz, but hey, she’s said worse.
Like, not the gatekeeping bullshit, that’s par for the course, but coming from a girl who’s spent a good 45-65% of the comic spouting her leftist views loudly and obtrusively in front of any audience that will listen, suddenly being cagey about her beliefs in front of a fundamentalist that (unlike Joyce) is both open to criticism and open to learning feels downright bizarre.
Like, I’d believe it if she thought Becky’s fundamentalist upbringing and shiny new well-paid job would be a giant precursor to the use of anything Roz tells Becky now as future munitions for Robin to use in their sibling public-facing political war, but…no, apparently, this is just Roz being petty.
Which I’d believe! Except it’s a kind of petty that precludes Roz being able to show off in extremely verbose detail just how steeped in leftist ideology she is for (what she assumes is) a doe-eyed fundamentalist that Robin’s hoodwinked and that just feels like a missed opportunity all around.
I’m fairly certain Roz is joking in the last panel.
Roz’s shirt looks nice. It looks like it belongs on a real clothing store rack, and is disproportionately difficult to draw.
I appreciate that level of detail.
it’s from meijer. which works cause they live in indiana.
Roz strikes me as the kind of person who is genuinely trying to be good but can’t empathize well with others, couple that with a self confidence that seems to be a family trait, andyou can almost sort of see how she ends up seeming gatekeeper-y.
At least that’s what I want this to be, her being distrusting of Becky’s motives because she can’t really understand what Becky’s gone through. I know that might sound kinda selfish, but people are hard sometimes.
If it’s not that, then yeah she is being a bit rude.
“Oh yeah? Well, a real leftist wouldn’t gatekeep being leftist!”
“…Wait.”
*EXPLODES*
“But you just…”
“NOPE, ONLY WORKS ONCE FOR EACH CONVERSATION!”
‘I’m SO lefty I advocate forced castration of conservative Christians and incarcerating them in forced-labor camps!
“Wait… I went so far left i popped out on the far right.”
“WELCOME TO THE LIBERAL LODGE, HOW LEFTY ARE YOU?”
Roz is a Bernie Sanders supporter: Confirmed
“Bah. Sanders isn’t a real leftist. Keeps sucking up the conservatives in the Democratic party.”
I’d guess this time around she’d be backing Warren. Sanders doesn’t really stand out on women’s issues.
Did you mean “sucking up TO”? Otherwise, I’m not seeing it.
Yeah, that makes more sense. 🙂
I mean, it doesn’t make sense anyway, but I’ve heard the equivalent.
Oh, I didn’t mean people weren’t SAYING it (I have teh interwebz; I’m well aware people will say ANYTHING). It’s just that I can see how Sander’s campaign could be trying to court the party conservatives, but I can see it actually happening. I mean, if you want trash Dem policies, Biden is RIGHT THERE with a proven track record.
*CAN’T SEE IT ACTUALLY HAPPENING, damn it
Roz has just transformed into an anime character.
There MUST be a magical girl anime about seizing the means of production.
Ignoring all of the dialogue- both of these ladies were drawn smashingly today. The face off of faces is on point.
Roz always dresses in style.
And Becky simply looks smashing.
I’M SO LEFTIST MY RIGHT HAND COULD BE CONSIDERED CENTRIST
I’M SO LEFTIST IF I WATCH A MOVIE WITH THE MARX BROTHERS IT’S ABOUT THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION!
I’M SO LEFTIST I COULDN’T BE ORDAINED A KNIGHT!
I’M SO LEFTIST INSTEAD OF HIGH-FIVING ANGELS I’M HIGH-FIVING ENGELS.
I’M SO LEFTIST THAT WHEN I GO TO GERMANY, I STILL PAY FOR THINGS IN MARKS.
(Heh, good one)
(puns are the highest form of art)
“I’m so leftist i’m Antivax Because Big Pharma!”
Lecturing someone on the receiving end of her sister’s ‘pander to the FOX News crowd’ policies on her own plight in which Roz is a sympathizer at best…I’m pretty sure Becky accepts they *both* want to use her for their own egoist agenda. That’s the adult world. Either build your career relationships on being able to meet eachother’s needs, which are only understood through *learning about* each other rather than *deciding for each other*, or get ready for a possible life of Carol Browns and Roz/Robin DeSantoses with all their little agendas inventing what will pass for the real world for God only knows how much of the only life you’ll get. Thank goodness Becky’s sharper than many….
Roz is on the receiving end of her sister’s policies too – not the ones targeting LGBT+ people, but then, Becky isn’t on the receiving end of her sister’s shitty Latino rights policies so it balances out.
Damnit, Roz, that’s awful praxis.
I propose a problem of nomenclature: Roz is not a ‘lefty’ but a ‘leftist’.
Is she was truly a lefty why would she be gesturing with her right hand in panel four?
I on the other hand am a real lefty and even gave a speech about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mycmt7o0vQQ&t=32s
Almost forgot.
Happy 2nd Phoniversary, y’all.
🙂
Oh boy… Those sisters are more alike than Roz would like to admit.
Roz is going to be terrible about this being for tuition and housing. Like, implying that this isn’t pretty much the only non-tens of thousands of dollars in student debt way, whilst her [Roz’s] parents are paying for her schooling.
If I’m wrong I’ll be shocked.
[Even if Roz is paying for her own schooling or using loans (which I again doubt), she had the opportunity to work in high school and have parents to help her get the loans etc.]
I love that this is a real hoodie at meijer that I’ve seen and almost bought.
Roz is, like, the textbook example of talking the talk without walking the walk. We could all learn something from her. Specifically, we could learn how not to be.
I want more discussion between Roz and Becky. It would help both of them clarify what they really believe in.
Nice gatekeeping, Roz.
Roz is so far lefty that she’s planning to vote for Trump to “send a message” to the Democrats, I’m betting
I don’t remember “leftism” being very appreciative of gatekeeping and elitism.
A not-insignificant portion of the online “leftist” community has been obsessed with gatekeeping since 2016. If you don’t support the exact same politicians or list of slogans they do then you’re “basically a Republican” or a fake leftist, even if you support other policies that aim at the same goals, or politicians that have a much better track record of achieving those goals.
I actually MISSED this strip and discourse? Damn it!