You’re assuming said Indiana senators are in something resembling their right minds, and not suffering from the prolonged aftermath of hormonal imbalances themselves.
I’m actually not sure that’s even close to an accurate assessment. Reasoning is impacted by your biochemistry, and think about the level of irrational insecurity behind a lot of those attitudes-it could be that the real problem is a deficiency in testosterone precursors among the political population influencing their decision making abilities (or that of their chief supporters.)
Mind you, it could also be an aftermath of having a government run by people who make their entire adult career about pursuing power over others, and the local expression of it just happens to be degrading god by mixing him with politics.
I’m hoping that the Dumbiverse supreme court is less dumb than thisiverse’s one. I don’t think I could take several months of the main cast just screaming in anger all the time.
Whether she actually helps or not remains to be seen, the last few times she tried to help ( setting walky and lucky up, getting her boss a date) it didn’t end well for her because she was more concerned about being a problem solver then stopping to think if it was a good idea.
Yep Lucy sorry spell check. It turned out okey but only because of Dorothy, Jennifer’s advice to did not work for Lucy and she seemed kind of bitter towards Dorothy afterwards.
No. Joyce made her realize that ages ago, though I can’t find the specific strip. Or, rather, Joyce’s expression made her realize it, and then Joyce confirmed it by explaining that Dorothy was describing Walky in terms of food within a week.
Aren’t they? I mean, unless her opinion has changed due to the atheism, something she’d been hiding, what could they realistically do to make her get and take medicine she would be dead-set against taking?
I mean, should they have tried more? Yeah, I think so, but she’s not their stepkid or anything. Joyce doesn’t get blamed when she isn’t proactive about fixing things for them. I’m glad Jennifer’s stepping up to the plate here, but if Joyce is going to be obstinate, she also needs to take care of herself more than not at all.
It’s not about them not taking initiative it’s that their justfication is based on assuming the worst of Joyce which is mildly effed up. Like if they just said “Didn’t think of it, my bad.” That’s a weak excuse but it’s fair. Instead they said “Joyce will explode if we mention birth control exists!”
How is it effed up to assume the worst of Joyce when they literally jump saw the worst of Joyce, like, a week ago? She was an absolute pain about the glasses—and I’m kinda eyerolling at this comments section blaming Dorothy and Becky for hand-waving this when so many people thought Dorothy was way overstepping on the glasses issue—and if I were them, I wouldn’t be standing in line do redo that one except with vaginas (a word that iirc Joyce refuses to say) instead of eyeballs. Dorothy all but says her unwillingness to step up now is because she barely got the glasses to fly and that was a heavy lift on its own.
Actually, my new head canon is that Dorothy did run into Joyce once when she dealt with her first college period in September, Dorothy suggested she go see a doctor, and Joyce said she wouldn’t because periods are women’s punishment for the apple and we have to live with the pain of something.
Not to mention that they are college students with their own work and personal lives aside from Joyce. Like, it’s great to want to help a friend (and they clearly did before) but it’s also not their job to solve every one of her problems for her, Especially when they have already seen that doing so is gonna be a pretty large commitment of both time and energy.
Like you can be fussy, overbearing and outright emotionally manipulative, but at least be consistent about this instead of leaving it to “when it’s not that hard.”
You all get that it’s not about assigning them responsibility for Joyce’s health right? Neither Becky or Dorothy said anything close to “Joyce is a big girl. She can figure this out on her own. I don’t have the time or energy to care.” They’re actually implying Joyce is too immature or rigid or sensitive or whatever to have a conversation about birth control. Becky even making comparisons to feeding dogs medication which is just real nice.
I guess cause Joyce didn’t like getting glasses that one time (which she is having no obvious problem with now by the way) and is a picky eater she’s incapable of taking pills! Which is a completely different experience from coming to terms with low vision.
In a way Jennifer just showed she respects Joyce as an adult in a way Dorothy and Becky don’t.
Becky’s making a joke, which Dorothy responded to with another joke, that hyperbolized how difficult it would be to get Joyce to take birth control. It’s like when a kid is running around being loud and annoying and you mutter “Jesus someone put a leash on them.” It’s not a literal desire that someone should treat the child like a dog (for most people, at least) so much as a humorous way to remove some frustration at the situation and joke about the behavior.
Likewise, they’re joking here because until VERY recently they knew that Joyce was heavily entrenched in Christian fundamentalist ways of thinking. Believing sex to be a sin to the point that she didn’t like showing off any leg, even below the knee, or shoulder. Wearing shorts under a dress. Believing it was her duty to date a gay Jewish guy in order to make him stop being either of those things. Joyce’s relationship to fundamentalism has, for the most part, been unwavering adherence.
And then we add on the way that she reacts to things and people that try to pull her out of her comfort zones and preconceived notions, which has generally been way over the top. She honestly thought it was a good idea to hire Mike to punch her date in the face if he did anything that hinted of sexuality. Even when she’s not involving other people or physical pain, “Kablooey” is a fair assessment of her reactions in those circumstances.
So putting it all together, we have a person who has historically strongly adhered to Christian fundamentalism and its views on sex (which usually carry over to birth control being a sin) and who doesn’t take suggestions that she should change part of her worldview or habits very well, and it’s very easy to see why her friends would decide it’s safest, best, and easiest to just let this one slide.
And for the record, I agree with them that up until Joyce became an atheist, she likely was too immature, rigid, sensitive, and whatever else to have a conversation about birth control. Because, as I said before, she’s repeatedly shown that she’s immature, rigid, sensitive, and whatever else when something challenges her views and habits.
Joke? I really don’t buy that argument. Maybe it was a joke but it was at Joyce’s expense since I doubt either would say that while Joyce was in earshot which actually makes it mocking. And hey! Didn’t Becky just get offended and argue with Joyce for mocking her religion with a new friend behind her back? Even Dorothy said she was disappointed in Joyce for that! Except if I wanted to be a pedantic, dick I could argue this is worse since at least Joyce didn’t directly mock Becky!
So saying it’s a joke kind of make Becks and Dotty jerks. I’d prefer to believe they just didn’t care over that.
You never actually know how someone will react. Becky’s head didn’t explode at the knowledge of birth control at the least she could expect the same from her best friend. What are they scared of? The subject of birth control hasn’t been brought up before as far as I know. Is Joyce gonna turn into the Hulk? This barely even has anything to do with Joyce’s past faith or upbringing. They just didn’t trust their friend.
1: Yes, I’m actually fairly sure they WOULD say that in Joyce’s hearing, as the very first thing Becky did when waiting on Joyce was not ask her for her order and wrote down the exact thing she wanted. Teasing friends about their flaws generally isn’t a big deal.
2: Joyce DID directly mock Becky. Saying that everyone who believes X when your best friend believes X is mocking them. There’s no real wiggle room there. Moreover, it’s still pretty insulting because it’s not poking fun at the things Becky does. It was directly insulting her intelligence and was meant to be an insult on the intelligence of people who believe the things she does. The fact that Joyce didn’t really mean it to include Becky doesn’t change the fact that she made a sweeping and insulting generalization about a group that includes Becky. If I say “Man I hate children with their snotty noses and constantly asking questions” I can’t be surprised when my kids feel hurt by it.
3. Becky has been well-established to adhere much less strictly to the fundamentalism they were both raised in. She accepts evolution and homosexuality, two points that Joyce has been seen on-screen to have massive issues around until her deconversion. Why wouldn’t she have issues with birth control as a means to aid with bad periods? There’s never been anything to even suggest that except for Joyce apparently always assuming that Becky believed the exact same things JOyce herself does.
4. What are they scared of? Gee, I don’t know, maybe an exponentially more difficult fight than they had when Dorothy took Joyce to get glasses, just like they say in the strip? If they already know Joyce was extremely upset over such a minor medical issue that doesn’t intersect with her religious beliefs in any way, why wouldn’t they assume that she’d be much more upset over one that does? That’s not a lack of trust. It’s taking established information and extrapolating from it to understand the most likely scenario. Something that Becky and Dorothy have, generally, shown they’re not particularly bad at.
Look, if you’re just looking for reasons to hate on Becky and Dorothy, go off I guess. But I don’t see any flaw in how they expect Joyce to respond because it’s 100% in line with the ways we’ve seen her respond to things up to this point.
@Andy. I’m not looking for reasons to hate Becky and Dorothy. I stand by my original comment that this is just a disappointing moment for them. They can both do better and should trust Joyce to be capable of responding like an adult.
1. This isn’t really friendly teasing. That implies an active role between all parties. Joyce is assumedly out of earshot. If they wanted to tease Joyce they could have when Joyce was right next to them. Even in your example they were actively playing off their shared knowledge.
2. I don’t actually want to rehash the whole toxic argument of who was in the wrong for the Joyce and Becky religion debate. Shouldn’t have brought it up in my comparison. For the record I think they were both assholes but Joyce was the slightly bigger one. Fair enough. My mistake.
3. I disagree here. Not with Becky being more flexible with her faith and more receptive of science and knowledge ect. That’s all true. It’s just not a justification. They’re just freely making assumptions here. They didn’t bother to bring it up because they were assuming the worst of Joyce. It’s a topic that’s never been brought up, there’s no baggage here. Humans are incredibly nuanced beings. You can hate chocolate but love chocolate icecream.
4. I can respect them making a call based on Joyce’s past behavior, but it really reads as them avoiding a interaction out of selfishness. They made a risk assessment and decided this cold negatively impact me so nevermind except I think I’d respect that more than them assuming Joyce is incapable. Not to mention getting glasses is completely different from getting birth control. The two subjects have no real relation to each other beyond being under the umbrella of general health.
Joyce was willing to tolerate visual impairment over the perception of losing her identity and becoming a bespectacled dork like the rest of us glasses wearers. That doesn’t mean she would fight against not being in crippling pain every month if the option presented itself. This is two different things.
This doesn’t condemn Becks and Dotty in anyway. People can be jerks sometimes. They’re dtill cool. I just wanted to point out a character flaw here not battle for their souls.
It was good writing on Willis’ part to have this be shortly after they did all that heavy lifting to get Joyce to get glasses. I feel like it’d be less in character for them, Dorothy especially, to sit this out if they hadn’t already gone through a recent healthcare provision adventure.
I mean, they don’t *know* if her opinion has changed due to atheism. It’s possible she has some sort of drug-related anxiety and would rather suffer through her periods than take a new medication. It’s also possible she had a religious objection to birth control that’s no longer relevant and simply hasn’t thought about it. Or maybe she has an ethical objection that’s a holdover from her religious objections and is open to persuasion.
What I’m saying is that they could just ask her. Or at least not object to *Jenny* asking her.
I was thinking about this too. I think that they’re doing that thing Joyce complained to Sal about everyone doing to her (back when she borrowed Sal’s leather jacket after apologizing to Sal for doing the same thing to her) – taking who she definitely used to be and making assumptions about her without believing she’s capable of changing.
Nah, Birth Control+Joyce does not seem like a winning combination. Like, yes, new Joyce is atheist, but she still has the Christian hangups and also I doubt either of the other two have reevaluated things since learning that. It’s probably possible to get Joyce on BC now, but after how she reacted to glasses, do you blame them for considering it unlikely?
Hmmm. I was a super religious Adventist in middle school and got on birth control because I had periods that lasted like 2 weeks and didn’t think much of it. My mom freaked out, lied and told me what they were giving me “wasn’t the real thing” but I was an autistic little weirdo who still liked to play with toys and was obsessed with the Ninja Turtles so I had no idea what she was talking about and never even made the connection that birth control was for sex -_-;
Dunno why I’m telling this story except that I don’t think being super religious necessarily means you’ll freak out over the use of BC for medical reasons
I was put on BC for painful, long, frequent periods (24-26 day cycles, 10-12 days of bleeding, 3 weeks of cramping; at its worst this was sometimes literally so bad I couldn’t straighten up or move) at 15. I was not sexually active at 15. My mum telling me “reassuringly” that after I had kids it should settle down was not enough motivation to get over my squicks over the idea of sex, and I was aware “don’t want to deal with menstruation” was a really bad reason to have a teenage pregnancy. Taking birth control seemed a much less extreme option. (It made me put on a stone a year til I was taken off the pill coz my weight meant there was a risk of blood clots, and switched to the implant which also triggered me to start getting migraines. This year, I had one which lasted 10-11 weeks straight so that’s really not fun… But having 3 kids, I still think it was a less extreme option. They’re amazing, but I was 30 when I had the first one…)
More importantly, taking a birth control medication is so closely tied to having sex that some women freak out at the thought of taking it even when it’s not for sex.
“She would be opposed to it on a fundamental level (at least, until very recently she would have been) and freak the hell out at even the suggestion” isn’t a good justification?
Their assessments aren’t necessarily inaccurate, but they’re still not reasons to not try. And yeah, it’s become more than a little apparent that those two kinda put Joyce in a little box.
Like, even if there’s very little chance Joyce will take the option (fundie hangups and all– plus I wouldn’t be surprised if she has trouble swallowing pills), she at least deserves to know that she has the option.
Actually, I’m guessing that Joyce is, in this moment, the more receptive to the possibility of end-the-suffering pills (which might also be birth-control pills, but who cares) than she’s ever been.
It wouldn’t even be all that out of character for Joyce to happily start taking birth control pills to help with her periods (assuming that’s even the issue and she doesn’t have intermittent appendicitis or something weird). Joyce’s has almost never rejected doing something because of her religion directly, it was always things that *made her uncomfortable* that she rejected, which ultimately included the religion itself. I could very easily see Joyce quickly rationalizing an excuse for why birth control is okay if it stops her from being in horrible pain semi-regularly.
I’m pretty sure Joyce is also aware doctors exist??? Like, at some point this has probably already been discussed with her PCP in her life and whatever the discussion was, she was probably present for it. If she wants to try to bring it up with a new doctor, she is an adult who is capable of scheduling her own appointments.
YES! Joyce is just as much an adult as Dotty and Becky. All of them have probably spent their life with people telling them periods just suck sometimes, without actually qualifying that sometimes, they suck TOO MUCH because something is WRONG.
Of all of them, Joyce is the one best equipped to talk to her doctor to see if this is a normal amount of pain. And hopefully has, honestly.
People who menstruate often grow up believing that periods are *supposed* to be absolute hell. This leads to them not seeking help, because it doesn’t occur to them that it might even be an option.
It’s certainly possible, maybe even likely, but the idea that she might have mentioned this to a doctor at some point in the past doesn’t even seem to have come up.
The thing is, they’re almost certainly correct. A lot of doctors WILL just put her on a pill or some other form of birth control. MAYBE they give you a painkiller. Most people go a long time waiting for any other diagnosis and even longer for anything to be done with it. Joyce has had this problem before and it isn’t every period, so odds of it being anything life threatening are probably low. Regardless, doctors are very reluctant to do any sort of surgery on baby making parts if you don’t have kids and are younger than 30-35.
My grandfather was blind for fifteen years because he assumed that doctors couldn’t do anything about glaucoma. Then it turned out that he had a cataract. A simple operation and a monocle restored vision that he could have had all along.
That is awful and I’m sorry to hear that, but it doesn’t change that women* complaining to doctors about period pain often are not taken seriously. If you have a doctor who WILL take it seriously, it’s luck of the freaking draw. And your grandfather had a diagnosis to work with – again, it’s often a challenge to GET a diagnosis.
It’s still worth while to see a doctor, but assuming the answer (or part of it) will most likely be birth control (which is used to treat all the most likely suspects for period pain) and that Joyce would not like that is pretty accurate.
* = Trans men, non binary folks, intersex folks, etc. too but A) People suck and so doctors often label them women and go right on ignoring them too and B) They also each have issues of their own relating to this so I’m gonna stick to my experience (and the likelihood on Joyce) and the data on women.
I know that some doctors are callous pricks, and I’ve had my share of trouble getting treatment e.g. for stonefish sting and for gout. (“Stonefish hurt more than that.”, apparently). Nevertheless it would be pretty poor of Joyce to avoid consulting a doctor for her pain and then blame the doctor, if that is indeed what she’s doing.
Pretty sure Joyce isn’t doing that. She’s either never talked to a doctor about it in any detail or she already has and has been assured it’s just normal .
I’m complaining about Dorothy and Becky, not Joyce. They are assuming, on the basis of being teenagers who heard a rumour once, that if Joyce went to a doctor the doctor would make the diagnosis that they have heard of and prescribe the treatment they have heard of. On that basis, they have decided that it is not worth trying to badger Joyce into seeking treatment.
Where are you getting ‘heard a rumour once’ as opposed to ‘this is the most common way this plays out’. Because I promise you, it IS.
This is like being angry they heard she was sneezing a lot one day, without a cough, congestion, any consistent environmental factors like dust or pollen and no fever, and said ‘You probably have the sniffles, you should go try some acetaminophen and get some rest’.
Grandad didn’t “have a diagnosis to work with”. He was an architect and an artist who lost his occupation for fifteen years because he assumed he knew why he was going blind and didn’t bother to consult a doctor about it. Then he mentioned his “glaucoma” to a doctor on a social occasion and the doctor said “Glaucoma? You have a cataract.” That’s the kind of danger that Joyce would face if she relied on ignorant and meddlesome teenagers for her diagnosis and treatment.
Or to put it another way, none of these dumb kids ought to be basing their decision on a reckless assumption that they know the medical cause of her pain and suffering and how it ought to be treated.
My mistake. I assumed glaucoma was a misdiagnosis coming from another doctor.
I understand what you’re saying, but it’s still true that based on what we know of her issues, all the most likely causes ARE treated with birth control. There’s a very outside chance it could be cancer, but that’s less likely with all the symptoms only showing up during some cycles. They’re not being teenagers making reckless assumptions here. What they are describing IS, in fact, the reality of all the most likely diagnoses. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t see a doctor, but it’s really weird to blame them for ‘assuming they know better’ when they’re almost certainly CORRECT.
A friend of mine has been a chronic pain sufferer her entire adult life, and from what she has said, doctors are very reluctant to listen to women patients period.
Doctors won’t even touch an ovarian cyst unless it’s basically the size of an orange. The first solution will almost always be hormonal birth control to help shrink and prevent them without invasive surgery.
I had d a cyst that was the size of a plum causing internal bleeding and they did sweet fuck all for it. 4 weeks in agony unable to stand up straight with nothing for pain till it resolved on its own.
My daughter who lives in Scotland and works for the NHS presented with abdominal pain and cramps, they did an ultrasound in the ER to rule out her appendix and removed several ovarian cysts, I think the next day because it wasn’t life-threatening. But it might have been that night because she was incapacitated by the pain.
For some reason, I find it hilarious that Joyce has to be given pills like a puppy. Probably because she vaguely looks like (and has the friendly personality of) a golden retriever.
We had a cat that needed daily medication. She was tiny, but fast and crafty, so we just couldn’t pill her until her last few months. Instead, her thyroid medication was a cream we had to put on the inside of her ears, and the seizure pill got hidden in her wet food. (Luckily her 16-pound brother never ate even his own wet food, never mind hers, so he never got her pill.)
Every so often we’d find it spit out on the floor or left in an untouched part of the bowl, but most of the time it worked every time.
does jennifer have a history of stepping up and solving problems for everybody or is she just acting like that? genuine question, my memory is spotty for any strips over like a year old
We started DoA with Jennier’s identity as “Billie: head cheerleader, problem solver.” We saw much of that go wrong in her first semester of college, but I do think she lives to help. Whether she helps others for the ego boost, or her identity drives the desire to help where needed, who knows.
Right now jennifers motivation seems to be to make herself to be the “mature adult” who everyone relys on, even though she offered occasional help before at best. I guess this is to distance herself from last semester.
So neither of them have considered that now that Joyce is Atheist she might be more open to stuff like birth control, especially if it’s explained that it could help her not want to die every other month
Theyre still operating on old Joyce protocols without even considering that some of her old hang ups may have been religious in nature and thus she could likely be talked out of now
Dorothy fought for it. Becky fought against it on the grounds that Joyce never needed it and Dorothy was lying and overreacting.
More importantly, Dorothy made the effort anyway, and for something that’s less of an immediately obvious problem like “Joyce is in agony for a week every couple of months.”
*Joyce’s grades in math are struggling due to vision problems but shes still otherwise functional*
Dorothy: this is unacceptable and must be fixed immediately
*Joyce is in debilitating agony on a regular basis*
Dorothy: ehh what can you do
It’s even weirder considering Joyce’s objection to birth control is likely to be a relic of her religious upbringing, which Dorothy now knows she’s eager to get rid of all that baggage, so even if it ultimately doesn’t pan out its still worth trying
Likely yes, but birth control is less directly tied to the biblical interpretations that she’s been ridding herself of, and the glasses saga showed that she’s still extremely resistant to changing things, especially when she’s already changed so much. It’s likely to be a struggle, and someone who’s in pain is also less likely to be receptive to reason.
We’d all hope that the motivation of getting out of this kind of pain would be a major motivator, but it’s hard to say.
And on the subject of Joyce’s vision, she was most certainly not otherwise functional. I’d like to remind you that the thing that swayed Becky to supporting Joyce in getting glasses was the likelihood that her inability to see was contributing to or causing her agoraphobia, which meant she wasn’t able to walk anywhere alone. This was impacting the minutiae of her life as well as her grades. And also was a fight that seemed more winnable than birth control.
I’d rather have Dorothy try to pursue this too, but I also sympathize with not potentially straining your friendship on a fight that may be good for your friend but seems likely not to go anywhere. Maybe that evaluation is wrong, but we have more information than Dorothy and even we can’t be sure.
The thing is it’s not regular. It’s not even every cycle. Dorothy only found out she’s an atheist three days ago. It’s not surprising to me that that hasn’t sank in yet.
They do not have to fight her to wear glasses. Dorothy fought her to get an eye exam to be prescribed glasses.
Unless Dorothy has been stalking Joyce to bodily shove the glasses on her face every time Joyce takes them off, WEARING glasses is Joyce making her own decision on the matter of wearing glasses.
I’d be more worried about what might happen if Joyce’s parents find out she’s taking birth control. Her dad would probably understand, he’s obviously the more decent parent. Her mother will go completely ballistic.
Yeah I don’t think that would be an argument against at this point. I’m not sure she’s actively spiting her mom, but she sure isn’t seeking her approval right now.
I don’t think they’re assuming that she has to, I think they’re assuming that that’s the overwhelmingly most likely outcome of going to see a doctor, which based on what I’ve heard from friends as well as other comments on this strip (and I think maybe yesterday’s too) is probably pretty on the money.
Didn’t Dorothy once say to Joyce “I’m not continuing to talk about this topic until you buy a bottle of personal lube”? why does she consider that appropriate but not suggesting birth control?
Becky and Dorothy kinda fail as friends here, not because they failed to force Joyce to take hormonal birth control (which they shouldn’t do) but because they failed to BROACH the topic.
Dorothy and Becky have talked to Joyce about sex, evolution, a female God and homosexuality, and yes Joyce DID freak out but she absorbed those topics in her own time and more often than not came out with a better understanding of them than before.
I’m sure Dorothy could have floated the idea of birth control pills long before this; and yeah it’s likely Joyce would have rejected the idea out of the gate, but then she’d know it was an option. Given Joyce’s upbringing, it’s very likely she didn’t know birth control could be useful for other things than making loose women be sinful or whatever.
The first part was pre-Atheist Joyce, and I read that more as Dorothy just getting tired of managing Joyce’s stuff for a bit.
And, honestly, yeah, I’m understanding of Dorothy here. Getting Joyce to just try glasses when she couldn’t read the chalkboard was like pulling teeth, broaching something like daily medication to someone who’s never taken some, particularly medication that’s mostly used as birth control to someone who was, until very recently, known as being extremely Christian…
…at some point you just start picking your battles. Yeah, they should’ve probably said something in one of the, what, 2-3 previous periods that were like this (based on Becky saying that this is every other period for Joyce), but between all of Joyce’s other hang-ups and the fact that, as a society, there’s heavy stigmas against talking about periods, um, period, it’s understandable why they hadn’t.
Of course, it’s not Dorothy who’d be broaching the idea of taking daily birth control – Dorothy would be suggesting going to the doctor because of the pain. The doctor would suggest the birth control. Given Joyce’s response to authority figures, she might just be fine with it, leaving nothing traumatic for Dorothy to deal with.
Let’s not forget that Joyce failed harder than Dorothy and Becky put together. She should goa and see a gynaecologist; “my friends didn’t make me!” is a lousy excuse for not doing something that obvious.
Joyce has probably heard her whole life “That’s just how periods are sometimes, take some ibuprofin and deal with it” because people are notoriously unsympathetic towards period pain.
Joyce was raised in a fundie cult that very likely told her girls don’t see gynecologists, MARRIED WOMEN see gynecologists when they’re pregnant with their lawfully wedded husbands.
So no, Joyce didn’t fail herself, but Dorothy (who already pushed past boundaries with the glasses arc) has since she hasn’t even suggested it.
Is every other period being bad… a thing? I am a woman who gets a period and have never heard of this. Also kind of weird that Becky who presumably has had about zero sex ed even knows that ovaries switch off in releasing eggs.
Based on my current experience, your ovaries don’t necessarily decide they’re gonna go in alternating order, and sometimes just decide to say “Screw you, welcome to pain” several months in a row.
A sensation I’m currently aware of because my body decided ovulating should HURT, and the last two months were both on the right side.
It has been, you don’t even know. It was bad enough that my friend dragged me to ER because “intense pain on the right side” can mean ovarian cysts, or also, appendicitis. And unfortunately (fortunately?), it was not the one where they do a surgery and you never have that issue again.
I’ve been trying to get a referral to an OBY/GN for an IUD or some other sort of “turn off periods” solution, but turns out, they’re also backed up cause of COVID.
I’m in Canada, and had a phone appointment with my doctor just yesterday, so it’s… getting somewhere. All the OBY/GNs are like that, just overly busy.
My doctor did prescribe something that might help in the meantime, at least. And you know, I’ve spent 18 years suffering already, what’s a couple more months?
For the record, the Nuvaring is good but apparently also greatly increases the risk of blood clots (all BC does, that one just a lot), I’m hesitant about pills cause I’m terrible at taking them on time and had a really bad experience before.
Oh, wow. Thank you for letting me know about the blood clots. I was unaware of that. And congratulations on getting a phone appointment! I really hope that it all comes through for you very soon! Good luck!
Ok, so Push Health gets very mixed reviews. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.pushhealth.com
Sorry!
Plus, they do prescribe Ivermectin online for COVID, which is unethical, but it sounds from reviews as though they at least TRY to use the Ivermectin appointment to prescribe other more helpful medicines as well, so maybe it’s harm reduction.
So, let the buyer beware when it comes to Push Health!
Yeah. Mine have been less hellish since I swapped milk types as a kid and started magnesium a while ago, but they still suck. Last ‘bad’ one I had, I was bedridden from pain for three days and the first of those I could not move without being sure I’d throw up. So, sometimes, it’s really just an organ deciding it hates you in particular and is gonna be a bongo about it for a week.
It is a bit weird to me that Becky is knowledgeable of birth control, but also assumes Joyce would react poorly to the suggestion when they’ve formerly shared the same upbringing and similar opinions. Feels slightly condescending to me. This is the same girl who thinks Joyce would laugh at and mock her for having sex, but it kind of seems like Becks has done a fair share of judging herself.
Yes, it’s a thing. sometimes it’s like one month You just dribble some red for a few days, and the next month you have to replace all the sheets and your underwear because you hurt too much to even get out of bed to walk to the bathroom.
Source: I have 2 daughters and a wife.
Yeah , yeah, yeah. Most women experience some period pain, many severe.
But those experiences occludes a minority that are just >OFF THE DANG Pain CHARTs<
< even though I am a man, i am a pain patient and i have listened very closely to how other pain patients describe pain: Many of them women.
Just listening to forums and believing people it becomes apparent that cyst pain and bladder pain in women in radically underrecognized and undertreated by a few logs.
The problem is these women are often thought to have "normal' severe pain and not debilitating. its hard to understand this degree of pain if you havent had it.
Plus due to misogyny people can miss the redflags. One is Necessity to mentally concentrate to maintain emotional control ( due to severe pain ). This can be mistaken for hormonal changes when its just searing pain.
It doesnt mean Joyce is this category, but it doesnt look good.
Both Becky and Dorothy decided Joyce Can’t Be Helped even though Joyce has demonstrated many many times she’s capable of learning new information and adapting her worldview to it.
I’m not saying Joyce would have accepted the help, but those two didn’t even give her the chance to accept or reject it, they decided what her decision was going to be anyway
They also decided what the doctor’s diagnosis and prescription were going to be. These guys suck. Joyce should see a doctor instead of relying one them.
The whole point of this is what Joyce should do. Becky and Dorothy aren’t trying to talk her out of it, I’m sure they’d love for her to see a doctor. Your ‘instead’ is a false dichotomy.
Right. Jennifer and the comment section are lambasting Dorothy and Becky for not making Joyce do what Joyce should do. I was being ironic for purposes of sarcasm.
Joyce should see a doctor. Whether or not Dorothy and Becky think it’s worth buffaloing her into doing so, she ought to do so.
This pattern in which Joyce refuses to seek treatment and do other things that are obviously called for, and in which Becky and Dorothy then treat her like a petulant child or a goddam puppy, and buffalo her into doing normal adult self-maintenance, is maladaptive, infantilising, and dumb. But half the commentariat are blaming Becky and Joyce for not meddling hard enough.
Surely there’s a healthy middle ground like in all things (except politics).
They can help as friends do without taking over. Instead they’re willing to intrude on topics like “what is Joyce allowed to think” and “Joyce can’t have this friend” but come one with the slightest shred of any actual importance, well Joyce is a dumb puppy and there’s nothing to do.
We’re talking about two people who, textually, by actions they’ve done in the last year plus of strips, are pretty apparent on where they stand on whether or not they’re in charge of Joyce.
So a lot of women – not just christians – ignore period pain instead of going to a doctor. Pretty sure most have been told all their lives that “that’s just how it is.”
Bear in mind, they are still kinda in the fallout of a big fight between Joyce and Becky; I think on some level they’re nervous about opening that wound again. I’m not saying they’re right, just that I do empathize.
They’re definitely not nervous about “opening that wound again”, because Dorothy literally blackmailed Joyce to go talk to Becky and Becky took the peace offering of a homecooked meal and immediately made it about the “wound” again.
Becky and Joyce are just out of a fight, and Dorothy just went through the exhausting effort of trying to help Joyce with a medical issue. I think it’s less that they think she can’t be helped and more that neither of them have any desire to help her at the moment knowing she’s probably going to put up a fight about it based on past experience.
Jennifer’s ideal of head cheerleader, problem solver is one where she bulldozes through problems. The specific incident being referenced is probably the party where Joyce was drugged.
There’s actually a strip originally titled the other b-word that got autofiltered to “Bongo” when said filter was introduced. I remember Willis lol’d when I pointed it out in the comments.
Sorry if this is a bit out of place, (I’m not the best at reading social cues 😅), but would you like to help out a neurodivergent in need?
The neurodivergent in question is me. The need is occupation. And possibly friendship. Just shoot your discord, and I’ll also show you a cool project I’m working on that has DOA and dinosaurs in it!!! 🦖🦕🌈 😁
That’s the reason my wife’s health insurance finally would let her get birth control. She worked for a Catholic hospital and they refused her attempts to get birth control.
The real joke? It’s the fact that that very same employer was more than happy to hook me out with getting the old snip-snip with no fuss at all. Funny how the man in the relationship can get permanently sterilized but the woman could even get a temporary fix until it started making her really sick.
At least my current insurance had no issue with her receiving an ablation surgery.
It seems like Jennifer’s trying to rewrite history a bit here. Her comments imply that she was always the one taking care of Joyce the most when that role was usually split between Dorothy and Sarah. The birth control isn’t a bad suggestion but she’s trying a little too hard to make herself the problem solver of a group she doesn’t even want to hang out with anymore.
She previously described herself as “head cheerleader, problem solver” despite not solving any problems we’ve seen…she wants that image, deserved or not.
She had an off-screen little arc of helping with dorm problems (the trash chute) pre-shacking up with Ruth, I think. and she’s generally savvy about some stuff (like joyce being drugged).
She’s honestly given decent advice/helped some people so I can see her wanting to be needed/a problem solver but she struggles to actually… be approachable for help.
She has her moments but compared to Dorothy and Sarah her moments of providing personal help are a bit low to be considered the designated problem solver.
Not only that but she seems to get jealous/bitter if she feels anyone else is being the problem solver instead; judging by her attitude after Dorothy got Lucy and Walky together. And before that her comments about Dorothy only helping Becky with roz for her personal agenda.
She’s mentioned part of being an alpha bingo included (in HS) taking down abusive boyfriends, scanning parties for roofies, and shuttling girls to womens’ clinics.
That’s some to-the-manner-born problem solving in my book.
And while that is great, she hasn’t really done enough if any of that kind of stuff in college to justify looking down on others for not doing enough. Especially when said other people have been seen doing alot more to help their peers then her.
She’s not talking about Joyce specifically, but their friend group in general, which is why she said “everybody”.
And, to be fair, she has repeatedly tried to solve both problems and “problems” big and small, even though it didn’t always work or was needed.
For example, and in no particular order:
She tried to get Walky with Dorothy (she also advised him on Amber, but he asked for that help).
She stomped garbage down the garbage chute.
She tried to help with Ruth’s drinking a couple different times in different ways; never amounted to much, but she did try what she THOUGHT were good ideas.
She volunteered to hang with Walky to cheer him up after the breakup with Dorothy.
She encouraged both Joyce and Lucy in their pursuit of their crushes.
She bought Joyce new boots.
She gave Becky her bed.
She tried to write an article about Ruth’s abuse of power (that was personal, but still a problem).
So yeah, she does ATTEMPT to solve problems, just usually not very well.
I think the best example of her being the problem solver that comes to my mind is figuring out that Joyce was drugged. Most of the time, though, I wouldn’t associate her with being the “problem-solving” friend. Despite all these attempts, it’s never really been evident or up-front that it’s who she is as a person. To my memory, Carla’s been a way better problem solver.
It just feels really weird that out of nowhere, Jennifer suddenly gets up and goes “hey, I’m the problem solver friend, I got this,” when many readers don’t seem to characterize her as such. It’s pretty obvious this current story arc is gonna be very much hers, so I’m curious to see what Willis does with this.
Whether or not she’s successfully played that role, it’s long been established as part of her self-image. At least when she’s feeling relatively confident and not in her “I’m poison, I ruin everything I touch” mode.
she’s an atheist yeah but it would be a big assumption that she’s going all into that quickly and not just peeling away her fundamentalist upbringing bit by bit.
Because its a daily medication that Joyce would need to take because her body isn’t working right.
I know, I know, that’s an unfair thing to say. But that’s probably something similar to how Joyce would look at it. If you go through your life with your body just, you know, working properly, I mean it’s got its kinks, not everything’s super proper, but it, ya know, kinda works just being left alone, it can be really hard to accept that you need to do something special to take care of it.
This is a trap I’ve fallen into myself. I don’t even need glasses, but I do need to be taking allergy drugs because if I don’t I do into mucus overdrive when I leave my apartment/cave… but having that feeling of not having to bother with things for so long in your life? Breaking that habit can be particularly hard.
And remember how hard Joyce was fighting just getting glasses despite not being able to read the chalkboard? Not even Evangelical Christianity in all its abusive bullshit has a bad thing to say about fucking glasses…
Alas, you are not completely correct. My mother tried to keep me from having glasses because nice homeschooled girls do not really need to see that far, and there was an undertone of if God wanted me to see he’d have made my eyes work,which other people believed more explicitly
My mom took us all to get checked hoping my brothers needed glasses because they’d look handsome.. only I needed them and she flat out told the doctor I didn’t need to see because I was a girl.
She didn’t let me wear them often because she didnt want me to break them and she thought they made me less attractive
I really hope this didn’t cause your eyesight to worsen, and that you are now at a place in your life where your mother does not have power over your ability to see or otherwise go about your life
I am free to have all the glasses I want now! Which is just one and a backup but I did go through a “try different fashion lenses” phase once I had money and found out about Zenni optical. My eyesight did get worse, but it’s still getting worse, every 2 years or so I notice it’s not as good and get a new prescription. So not being allowed to wear glasses is probably not why. Thank you for caring
This characteristic is not confined to evangelical Christians, either. Social-conservative authorities in other denominations and religions have the same propensity to embrace any absurdity or cruelty that will give them more control over women and girls.
Ingrained thought patterns do not get changed that easily. Changing how you view one thing does not automatically change, or allow you to change, how you think about everything else. Even if those other things depended on that one thing. And it’s usually not fear of how God will judge so much as fear of how other people will judge you.
Because she may not have fully unpacked her sexual shame, which in the past was quite extreme. This might force her to confront things before she’s ready.
I’m really confused why solving Joyce’s medical problems is anybody’s responsibility other than Joyce’s and her doctor’s. Joyce is an adult woman who has access to student health and to the internet. I have a very hard time believing she hasn’t either asked a doctor about this before, googled “painful periods”, or both. Even a very conservative doctor will probably say something about how “other doctors might proscribe birth control but I’ll protect you from that” and if she wants to look for a solution, she has access to student health doctors.
Joyce may have non-religious-hang-up reasons for not wanting hormonal birth control. That stuff isn’t risk free. Different people have different degrees of side effects and some people know enough about how birth control has impacted other women in their family and don’t want to take that risk for themselves. And I say this as a person who has been on the pill for many years now.
Joyce and her friends are locked into a maladaptive pattern of behaviour that enjoys social approval. She endures pain and risks life-changing or even life-threatening complications because the toxic culture she was raised in told her that that is the proper thing for a woman to do. In doing so a person in that culture depends on having concerned friends overbear their virtuous indifference to pain, so that they get credit for endurance but do eventually get treated, while their friends (a) get credit for their kindness and concern and (b) get cover for their own impractical stoicism.
This pattern is (a) dangerous, (b) toxic, (3) co-dependent, and (iv.) not confined to conservative evangelical Protestants nor even the religious.
On second thoughts, I think it might be part of the duty of Joyce’s R.A. to keep an eye on her welfare needs and guide her to resources and services that she needs.
If your friend was in chronic pain, which they could take steps to mitigate but aren’t, wouldn’t you feel some responsibility to convince them to take those steps? Yeah, it will ultimately be Joyce’s decision, but remember, she’s still unlearning a lot of what her upbringing taught her – and getting up to speed on the stuff her education left out – so it’s not really reasonable to assume that she’s making an informed choice about this. If nothing else, I do think it is her friends’ responsibility to help her make an informed choice.
And to be clear, I absolutely empathize with why Dorothy and Becky don’t want to have that discussion; they’re still sort of in the fallout of Joyce and Becky’s big fight, and they don’t want to get into another argument. But still, I think Jennifer’s right in this case; someone should absolutely be doing something about this.
I would not feel a responsibility, but I would probably do it anyway. At least to the point where it became clear to me that my hypothetical friend’s choice to endure pain was knowing and willing.
Honestly she probably just thought this was normal because she’s been dealing with it for so long. I’ve been in the same boat until friends told me “yeah no that’s not normal”
From Jennifer’s perspective, it’s their responsibility because solving your friends problems is what makes you a good friend and she’s solving friends problems as part of her identity. From the point of view of Becky and Dorothy it clearly *isn’t* their responsibility, but they’d still want to do it because they like helping their friends if they didn’t think it was going to be difficult and exhausting.
So I grew up with really good sexual education, at least in comparison to the horror shows I hear about from Americans.
I didn’t know my periods weren’t normal. I had in average 10 days of heavy bleeding, and for 4 of those days would have crippling cramps that I’d medicate with painkillers.
Why, when I KNEW that the “average period lasted 4-6 days” etc, did I not think it was a problem?
Cause 1. Everyone complained about their periods, so I thought I was just a bit unlucky! Didn’t occur to me that most uterus-owners had 4 days of heavy bleeding and the others were spotting! No one talked about how many pads or tampons they used in a day, or how often they soaked through!!
And 2. My mum had the exact same experience when I was a kid. So when I asked her, all was normal in HER eyes (she DIDN’T have good sex Ed)
After I got my first boyfriend and got on BC, my life changed. I still deal with some med issues, but my current IUD is such a game changer. I think we just don’t talk about where in periods there’s something that’s just “abnormal” vs “oh I just have bad periods”.
Now think how often that topic comes up in Joyce’s life.
it’s not anyone responsibility, but if you’re a GOOD friend you tell your friend who was raised in a fundie death cult that birth control is not the work of Satan devised to turn women into sluts. It’s a NICE thing to do and I would hope Dorothy would want to be nice to Joyce.
She’s not required to!
While if its debilitating her parents should have taken her to the doctors about it, but that wasn’t going to happen.
While Joyce is an adult and its ultimately her responsibility. Her friends should at least say you a doctor might have medication that could lesson the symptoms you should talk to one.
I don’t think its anybodies responsibility to do more than that though.
Joyce’s upbringing being so rough, some of what should have been the parent’s responsibility gets shifted onto her friends. Remember the “teachable moment” with Booster? While it’s unfair, she doesn’t really have anyone else. The bit about Joyce being an adult who should discuss this with her doctor assumes she’s had proper sex ed and been taught that it’s okay to discuss menstruation with your doctor.
Welp, here’s hoping you get a good doctor for her, Jennifer. Because unless they are very sympathetic, you’re looking at symptom relief, not ‘Jesus god make this fucking process STOP’ relief. Doctors don’t tend to be very handy-outey with those until you’re 35 and/or have a bunch of kids.
My favourite excuse is “Having a baby might make your periods easier and you won’t need it”. What a DELIGHTFUL reason to have a baby. Other greatest hits include “That’s Just How Periods Are”, “You’re Just Fat”, “You’re Too Young.”, “You’ll Change Your Mind” and “What If Your Husband Wants Kids?”.
I can track the logic in riding out the storm and approaching Joyce with solutions when she isn’t a possible menstruating rage bomb waiting for an outlet. The Glasses established she can be a pain about stuff that’s for her own good.
Every other month this happens to Joyce according to her alleged friends.
THEREFORE: Becky has known her since before Debilitating Pain became a sixish-times-yearly feature of Joyce’s life. Even if you start counting only from Becky’s self-emancipation and flight from Anderson, there have been multiple opportunities for Becky to say ‘hey Joyce, I think there’s something bonkers in your insides, let’s go see what a doctor has to say’.
THEREFORE: Dorothy has also seen this multiple times: she has known Joyce four months, this is either the second or third time she’s seen it. She has ALSO has multiple non-fraught opportunities to say ‘um, Joyce, you realize this much pain isn’t normal, right? Have you seen a doctor?’
IN ADDITION: Joyce was a pill about going to the eye doctor in the first place and poured about the glasses, but I draw your attention to the fact that, unless Dorothy is bodily shoving the glasses on her face every morning and supergluing them there or something, JOYCE HERSELF is specifically choosing to continue to wear the glasses. She has identified that they help, she chooses to put them on her face every morning. Bringing up the glasses is NOT a point in favor of the ‘Joyce is a dumb baby who will never make decisions for herself and has to be fought daily for any good actions to be taken’. The glasses are, in fact, an argument in favor of ‘Joyce may argue the necessity and drag her feet, but she doesn’t continue the fight when it’s recognizably counter to her interests’.
And screw you, Dorothy, for co-signing Becky’s humiliating ‘we’d have to trick her like a puppy’ by adding a side of ‘but she’s so dumb about food that wouldn’t even work’.
Jennifer’s doing the opposite of momming because her solution involves treating Joyce as a functioning human being who can make an informed choice about taking birth control.
She is very pointedly not deciding for Joyce, she is going over there to have what’ll probably be a difficult conversation.
My sister has been hemorrhaging from her uterus every single day, to the point of anemia, to the point of being unable to work or carry out daily activites, for the past almost year and a half now. Still has to fight to get effective and pain-accommodating treatment.
Yeah, GYN care in this country has a long way to go.
…Still, it’s better than GYN care in France, where every doctor takes the opportunity to pass judgment on your sexual morality and think nothing of violating medical privacy to tell others in your life (who may or may not be family) about your sexual morality.
…Although, GYN care in France is free, and doctors will usually let you put uninsured friends on your single-payer national health insurance, so there is that going for it.
It’s kinda hard to describe really. It’s like… an alamgamation of my rage against and resentment of those who’ve abused me and abusive power structures that have thrived for centuries with indoctrination, censorship, and violence against the innocent, my empathy for those like me who have suffered at the hands of these powers, my fury and passion to help the innocent and inhibit the power structures that have caused them to suffer.
This part of me may have come from a dark place, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I can use it to help people. In all my work, all my writing, my friendships, in what I do I take power away from the powers who have caused centuries of suffering, all of this is an expression of what I call my demon blood.
OK, wow. Thank you for sharing that. It’s very illuminating.
Now, when you call yourself an alien parasite with a human host body, is that similar to being a demon, or is that another aspect of your being expressed in that way?
Please accept my apologies if I am over stepping. It’s just — well, I always like it when people ask me questions about who I am and how i see the world, and I like learning about good folks, so I ask questions too. And of course, if I am probing and pushing too much, please just ignore the question and I won’t ask again.
We, The Parasite, are that which changes a human into something else, for it is undesireable to remain part of a species where members are punished relentlessly for the random circumstances of their birth. We do what it takes to survive, wondering about an unjust, indifferent universe that cares for nobody and nothing, including itself.
The bigots, the bourgeois, the powerful, the scum of the earth, have their most dreaded Nightmare. Within that which seems like any other human in any conceivable way, lay an Alien Threat, “turning their children gay”, spreading communism, using “Satanic mind control”, reproducing itself, threatening their very “way of life” so precious to them.
We are that Living Nightmare. And we are proud of it.
My sister took her teenaged daughter in for an exam and the GYN encouraged my sister to authorize the HPV vaccine for my niece. My sister asked the GYN whether her own daughter had gotten the vaccine. The GYN retorted, “Oh, Heck no! MY daughter’s not a Guinea pig!”
My sister has been militantly anti-vaccine ever since. Way to frikkin’ go, there, Doc.
1. Dorothy & Becky are getting along way better now, huh?
2. I’m kinda here for new Jennifer who thinks she is being Helpful and Good For Everyone to try to help Joyce and for it to maybe a little bit blow up in her face.
Not that it’s a bad impulse really, assuming you SHOULD try to help your friends out, but it’s a little over-the-top to assume you CAN help them without, y’know, their consent.
No one else gave up. Becky and Dorothy didn’t even try. They just decided independently that Joyce cannot be allowed to make her own decisions regarding her frequent debilitating pain, so they as her best friends must make decisions FOR her consulting only their own convenience, so Joyce must continue to suffer debilitating pain roughly six times a year .
They have decided that it’s not even worth their time yo say ‘I think maybe something’s wrong in there, have you seen a doctor?’ They decided that won’t ever work and twelve words is too much hassle, it’s way better for Joyce to just continue to suffer approximately six weeks out of fifty-two because no one acquaints her with how not actually normal that is.
Conversely, I can’t think of anyone who has even offered to try and help Joyce? She is in pain in a lot of different ways and people just want to scold her for lashing out at God because it isn’t her “brand”.
So many comments looking at this strip (which still involves Becky and Dorothy talking about Joyce as if she’s a fucking dog) in a vacuum as if there ain’t a long list of behaviour in the last year to draw from where they happily barreled in whenever they felt like it.
It’s not any more complex than that they don’t feel like it.
If Joyce’s periods are anything like mine were as a teenager, the possibility of NOT experiencing them would vastly outweigh any preconceived notions she’d have about BC.
Yeah, and also — I mean, she’s probably opposed to abortion just based on her general adoration of all babies. And she survived an attempted rape at her very first campus party. So, you’d think that she would be in favor of birth control because, if anyone like Ryan ever actually did succeed in such an attempt, she would never want to have to face the decision of whether to abort. Just how I see it — seems internally inconsistent to be unable to stomach abortion (again, I’m assuming that about Joyce) and aware of the possibility of rape, unless one is pro-contraception.
I don’t know if she has thought it through that logically. She was probably raised to think that sex is wrong, and anyone who has sex and needs birth control is immoral. Even though she’s rejected a lot of her upbringing she hasn’t fully unpacked the shame.
What a pair of chickens! Jennifer, go! You’re the only hope in this case. Surely Joyce will be upset at the idea. But her pain is so much, she will at some point realize that something that helps you reduce the pain is a good thing and she will accept it.
Maybe Joyce will get one of the good doctors who takes her pain seriously and gives her appropriate treatment. Or maybe I’ll need to take a self-care break until the storyline resolves. I wonder.
I hope they at least asl? Because I am modestly sure its sleep deprivation from working on her passion project, the comic strip. Not that she doesn’t need birth control, a doctor, therapy, etc. But Joyce just needs to fine tune that work/life balance, which is always harder when you love your work. I mean, maybe there’s the OB-GYN component, but I am hesitant to take someone else’s word on it, and they (Becky and Dorothy) weren’t a part of Joyce’s strong efforts to get published. They may not know she has a strip?
That’s my take. The proposed help would be helpful, but I don’t think it would solve the ‘Joyce looking like shit and being tired’ problem.
Also she recently got in a big fight with her oldest friend, and none of her other friends supported her. Stress like that can cause real, physical pain.
I’ll be honest, I know it’s baked into the societal consciousness that way, but the whole ‘BuT It’S BiRtH CoNtRoL’ still feels ridiculous to me. It is a medication that MAY help relieve Joyce’s debilitating symptoms (every medication works differently for different people) by correcting a hormonal imbalance, and it happens to have a side effect (reduced ability to conceive) that is not relevant to Joyce’s life currently or in the immediate future.
BuT It’S BiRtH CoNtRoL. Yeah and I don’t have to explain that I’m not worried about malaria when I order a gin & tonic. I don’t have to specify that I haven’t eaten any peppers today when I have a glass of milk. I have not once been asked whether a cup of water is to put out a small household fire, and if I were, frankly I would let them wonder.
And in today’s installment of Joyce’s Friends Are The Actual Worst, I can’t believe when I described Joyce as being treated with the emotional awareness of a housepet, I was way closer to the mark than I realized.
“Joyce won’t take birth control, she’s a fundie!”
“But like, have you asked? And also, she’s not even religious anymore?”
“Yeah, but how long do you think THAT will last?”
“I mean, far be it from you to question the legitimacy of her choice? And even if she decides to try religion again, I don’t think it will be an extremist denomination that prohibits things like birth control…”
“Eh, once a fundie, always a fundie.”
“…What does that even MEAN?? I just want you to admit Joyce has autonomy!”
“In theory, I guess.”
“What the actual fuck. With friends like these, who needs enemies…”
Aight one of y’all has to square for me why Dorothy and Becky are allowed to hunt Joyce down using someone else’s social media on the grounds that she is being a School Misser and that she’s only allowed to have one Cool Christian Friend, respectively, and when this blows up in their faces Joyce is expected to do all the emotional labour for Becky while Dorothy tells her that she doesn’t have the ability to decide her own theological beliefs and should settle on a nice deism, I want to know why all that is within the appropriate boundaries of friending and not broaching this topic in the slightest.
They’re not going to force it down her gullet, they didn’t even ask. They believe Joyce is so innately stupid and fragile that she won’t consider taking something that’ll help with debilitating, physical pain because she’s too much of an idiot fundie. It’s not even fearing a difficult conversation, they aren’t bothering and, sure enough, as soon as someone other than the walking victim complex and the neolib see Joyce’s current crisis, they can immediately leap to addressing it.
These two don’t respect Joyce and I don’t even know what “like” means when you have friends who think you’re incapable of having the slightest adult conversation, and they only like you when you exist within the confines of “my buffer from everything” and “little dumb puppy I can lead by the hand to neolib moral enlightenment.” How the hell are they even friends? Why are they friends? What is Joyce to them other than something they can shape at their leisure?
I’m glad I’m not the only person who sees that Joyce is consistently treated like she’s the one who has to carry all the weight of adapting to whatever her friends want her to be in the moment.
They’re not friends. They’re “friends”, because Joyce will be actual friends wiith basically anyone, Becky wants someone to do all the work for her on everything (also see: her relationship with Dina, where Dina is the one that has to take all the initiative and do all the navigating), and Dorothy is an unrepentant, conflict-averse (she probably thinks conflicts are “rude”) control freak (also see: her relationship with Walky) so spending time with the girl that’s been raised in a controlling cult enables that thoroughly.
This is everything that frustrates me about how Joyce is treated by the Bull of her alleged friends, and strips like this only bring it into sharper relief that Joe, Walky, and now JENNIFER are being much better friends to Joyce than her alleged best friends.
I don’t think it is because Joyce is a “dumb fundie” or “fragile”, I think they recognize that she’s been deeply repressed because of the way she was raised. Having to make a decision about taking birth control may stir up some stuff she’s not fully ready to deal with, so Dorothy is taking the choice off her plate. It comes from a place of love but also a lack of trust in Joyce to make the right decisions, as though she was a child who needed to be protected.
I can honestly at least see why Becky, who has probably watched their respective families tell Joyce to her face that whatever it is is not that bad and thou shalt not go to a doctor who will just turn you into a [redacted] with that demonic pill, might be under the impression this issue is moot. That it might not have occurred to her that it might not have occurred to Joyce that she can do something about this now, if that scenario is correct.
I don’t have a clue why Dorothy suddenly decided Joyce’s medical choices aren’t hers to influence.
Billie’vable has a point here- Even if Joyce ultimately rejects and is offended by the option, medical knowledge and choices are important. Joyce’s ‘steadfast principles’ might buckle under the enormous weight of, y’know, the pain she has to go through for this…
I get not wanting to confront Joyce about needing birth control, but… let a doctor do that job. As friends, they should be getting her in front of a doctor. At the very least a doctor could help manage pain more effectively.
There seems to be an underlying assumption between these three that Joyce doesn’t even know that medically addressing the severity of her periods is an OPTION. Becky and Dorothy aren’t obligated to feed Joyce birth control or even drag her to a doctor like Dorothy did over the glasses, but I feel like it would take no effort and cause them no inconvenience to at least see if Joyce is aware that there are options for addressing this pain and SUGGEST that she see a doctor.
Dorothy’s priorities for when to mom Joyce are odd. Becky is being Becky, so that tracks. It’s dire straits when Billie is the voice of reason.
Dorothy definitely has a touch of “I made this decision for you because I love you” mom energy. It’s possible that Joyce making a decision about birth control would stir up a lot of stuff for her, and Dorothy will feel responsible if that happens as a direct result of her actions.
For me personally, it’s fine if Becky and Dorothy have busy lives and don’t want to help a person in pain, but they don’t get to claim they’re friends, or at least close friends.
Themes the rules, if you want to consider yourself someone’s friend, you gotta care about when they’re in pain (and here’s the key part) DO SOMETHING!
Becky and Dorothy are likeable characters sometimes but also gosh are they kind of annoying in certain respects, sure Joyce can be a lot but also she’s in obvious pain and it seems kind of a jerk move to go on and on about Joyce being rude about her feelings on beleif in private and then ignore her suffering in pain.
This ongoing arc has me curious, how common is it for friends in college to discuss reproductive health issues with each other?
In my own experience (and I’m not sure if it matters that I’m a cis man), I had a group of friends in college with similar nerdy interests as me, about 50/50 men and women, and when I hung out with those friends there was almost never any talk about such things. I don’t know if any of my women friends talked about it with each other when the men weren’t around, but I don’t recall my men friends in that friend group talking about men’s reproductive health stuff when our women friends weren’t around either.
And I was in college from 2007 to 2011, so not that long ago really, and it wasn’t some fundie Christian college where talk about such things is discouraged either.
I never experienced talking about reproductive health issues much with my friends back then, and I’m just wondering if I was an outlier and most people talked about that stuff with their college friends, or if it’s normal to not discuss such things with your friends in college.
Dude, I’ll talk about EVERYTHING reproductive with ANYBODY now. Maybe I’m just weird that way. Used to not, but, you know, life’s too short for hangups, you know? We should just talk about things.
Blergh. Joyce needs new friends. Friends who actually like and respect her. This is not that.
On a tangential note, I was hoping this storyline would go this route, because I am EXTREMELY curious what Joyce’s actual reaction to the possibility of going on birth control will be, given that she’s walking away from the religion that demonizes it. I expect she’ll have a knee jerk negative reaction (unless she’s already thought about it and gotten past that part)—after all, she’s still unlearning a lot of toxic lessons and outright lies from her religious upbringing. But there’s a possibility she does get over that aspect relatively quickly (we have certainly seen her work her way through this kind of thing as part of her deconversion), but has a lingering reluctance or discomfort that has nothing to do with God, and everything to do with her fear of her *own* sexuality. Because if God isn’t stopping Joyce from having sex, and the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy isn’t stopping Joyce from having sex…what IS stopping her from having sex? (A thing she desires and fears in equal measure.)
I would super duper love to see her have this meltdown in front of Joe, by the way. A) because of the sheer soapy melodrama of her confessing these fears and desires to a guy who is head over heels in love with her but afraid to act on it lest he “ruin” her (and who recently got a very up-close picture from his near-tryst with Liz of how that anxiety, desire, and regret about sex can manifest on a Good Christian Girl who’s not a good Christian anymore). B) Because Joe has in fact been the most supportive friend to Joyce about her leaving Christianity (what’s that Ted Lasso line? “Be curious, not judgmental”? Joe’s closer to embodying that with Joyce than any of her other friends. Terrifyingly, Walky comes the closest otherwise, as he is curious AND judgmental, instead of just judgmental). If Joyce WAS actually willing and able to talk to Joe about her fear of herself as a sexual being, it would speak volumes to the level of trust she has in him right now, given their history together, and their respective separate experiences.
Also, this would bring them one step closer to hooking up, a thing *I* fear and desire in equal measure. (Okay, mostly desire. Although I do fear that if they rush into a relationship before either of them is ready, it’ll end badly. In real life I’d say they need at least another six months to work through their respective issues—but dammit, I don’t want to wait another ten years to see it happen. Make them kiss, Willis!)
See, I wonder how that’ll go. They haven’t interacted since October.
Which is another way of saying that I wonder if Joe’s gonna say the absolutely worst thing possible when they talk again, because he got a big confirmation that he would ruin Joyce forever if they had sex, and here’s a Joyce who (if it plays out like you have it here), is nominally capable of having sex.
We still don’t really know what Amber and Joe’s mutual deal for sharing trauma’s gonna go, but I’m real curious what “hold onto my Joyce Issues” is gonna mean in the long term.
Willis being Willis, I think they’ll probably be going with whatever draws this out longer. I say that actually less because “mmm, the slow burn is sexy” (it is so sexy) and more because they have a demonstrated history of patience in their approach to storytelling. I respect this both as a reader and as a writer, and therefore I will not bang my hands on the table like a child demanding them TO KISS RIGHT NOW! (More than once.)
I’m a little curious about that, too! It certainly suggests Joe’s not…ready to do anything with regards to Joyce. What does that even MEAN for Amber, though.
(Man, it says something that I’d actually prefer a pivot to *Amber* right now, if it meant getting away from Becky and Dina. Speaking purely from a very Joyce-centric POV, any enjoyment I might otherwise take in Becky and Dina being a cute couple is not really manifesting in the face of Becky and Dina individually managing to be truly horrible to Joyce, during this arc. I don’t even if Joyce also did some bad stuff, I’m just tired of this configuration where every one of Joyce’s personal needs or boundaries is subsumed by Becky’s needs, and Joyce keeps getting slapped over it even when she’s trying her goddamn best to keep being whatever Becky or Becky’s proxies need from her. This is exhausting.)
I know this has been mentioned before, but segregating food is a common characteristic of abused children. I’m pretty sure Joyce wasn’t physically abused, but psychological abuse especially from her mother is still possibly on the table especially considering the home-schooling keeping her from outside supervision.
Dorothy, are you saying you go into Joyce’s room every morning when she wakes up and shove the glasses on her face? No? Then yu are not ‘getting her to wear glasses’. You got her to go to the doctor and get a prescription. Joyce is choosing to abide by the prescription no wear the glasses, no doubt because she likes being able to see better.
What about that, in the name of all that is, tells you that Joyce would behave any differently about a doctor prescribing pills that happen to be birth control? If they help, JOYCE WILL CONTINUE TO DO IT. She might fight going to the doctor, but she doesn’t fight the prescription.
This is horrendous friending on the part of both Dorothy and Becky – not really a surprise given their recent history, but Joyce needs more new friends, stat, or at least to spend more time with the friends who actually DO think she’s a real person and not their favorite fundie babydoll toy. (This list right now is Joe, Walky, and Jennifer.)
Joyce wasn’t the most cooperative person when the glasses appointment was suggested. And that in no way touched her hangups about modesty and sex. Dorothy fully expects a freak-out at the suggestion of such an appointment.
Joyce being in debilitating pain once a week every two months feels like the kind of thing worth pushing about, or at least putting it on the table and letting her decide on her own. At least then they’d have made the effort, but they’re only willing to do that and more when it involves making sure Joyce stays in her box and only comes out of it in pre-approved ways.
So? How is that a reason not to make a bare minimum effort when medication may help her way more than glasses and you know that Joyce only fights up-front and then it’s smooth sailing?
It’s a selfish reason, but it seems pretty clear that avoiding drama is Dorothy’s main concern. Dorothy will likely have to be the voice of reason if Joyce gets emotional, so I’d say it’s up to her to determine how minimal the effort will be.
Maybe it’d be enough to spend some time with her old friends and update them on what is going on in her life. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of that happening anywhere in the comic lately, no one talks about anyone else behind their back like they’re a real person.
It could have something to do with being snarky teenagers too. . .
I don’t know whether you’d call it joy, but reading all this and being reminded of the innocent who suffered for centuries at the hands of dogmatic systems, the millions who need help and saving from their pain all over the world, gives me reason to live, being reminded of the millions more who would suffer if I don’t go on to help them somehow, some way.
Sometimes cartoon characters do dumb things and it’s fun to say it’s dumb. I only get testy when I gotta do things like argue occasionally challenged human rights because it’s bad manners to raise a fuss.
I dunno what enjoying myself means if I’m reading this series to watch these characters be ruinous failures, since the characters being dumb idiots is what I’m here for and what I’m most enjoying. Sal and Danny are cute af but I won’t be sated with that, I need blood.
Becky sucks, but it wasn’t till now that I cared about why she sucks.
which is kinda justified considering how currently her relationship with Becky is tenuous at best right now with all the drama surrounding joyces atheism, last thing she wants to do right now is rock the boat, especially when she’s (understandably) grumpy because of her period.
Joyce is either going to completely and utterly dismiss the idea of birth control initially, but eventually come to terms with it after being pestered about it enough.
Ooooor, she’s going to be completely open to it surprising everyone but still feel weird about it given her upringing.
Personally I think it would have been nice if either Dorothy or Becky might have *suggested* taking the birth control pills, but not pushed her if she resists the idea.
Best case scenario (however unlikely) is that Joyce agrees without fuss, takes the pills, she feels better, and everyone is happy.
Worst case scenario Joyce freaks out and refuses, but they can just leave her alone if that happens rather than having to deal with a freak out.
In general I don’t think her friends ought to take responsibility for Joyce (she’s an adult and can make her own decisions, even if they frequently backfire, plus it’s not fair to her friends to expect them to always take care of her.)
However, because she’s in such extreme pain right now, she likely can’t think very clearly, and I think it would make sense for her friends to at least try to help. Just mention the option of the pills.
If they’re worried about a nasty freakout from Joyce, they could also offer to walk with her to campus health, where a professional can suggest the appropriate treatment, so they don’t have to deal with a freak out themselves.
[And honestly, it’s probably better to have an actual professional prescribe medications.]
OK, but depending on what’s actually wrong with her, she might need more than just birth control pills. She might also need other medication or even surgery.
I mean, it’s highly likely that a doctor will just hurl a random birth control prescription at her but it’s still not a given.
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Another opportunity to break more Chains of the Sunday School with the Power of Science?!?!
HELL YEAH!!! GET EXCITED!!!
✌️😈 🌈💊⚕️🩻🍭
*plays “Paved With Good Intentions” by Michiru Yamane on hacked muzak*
I totally called it yesterday… 😀
“Look, it’s EASY, you just need–”
“Joyce goes kablooey.”
“That’s why you need–”
“That ALSO makes Joyce kablooey.”
“Which is why I will–”
“KABLOOEY.”
(also, Indiana senators are not having any of this bodily autonomy, would be nice if they KABLOOEYED and got to feel what it’s like)
That last part…
You’d make a good ADHDemon 😈
You’re assuming said Indiana senators are in something resembling their right minds, and not suffering from the prolonged aftermath of hormonal imbalances themselves.
I’m actually not sure that’s even close to an accurate assessment. Reasoning is impacted by your biochemistry, and think about the level of irrational insecurity behind a lot of those attitudes-it could be that the real problem is a deficiency in testosterone precursors among the political population influencing their decision making abilities (or that of their chief supporters.)
Mind you, it could also be an aftermath of having a government run by people who make their entire adult career about pursuing power over others, and the local expression of it just happens to be degrading god by mixing him with politics.
I’m hoping that the Dumbiverse supreme court is less dumb than thisiverse’s one. I don’t think I could take several months of the main cast just screaming in anger all the time.
You know everyone else in the story has royally fucked up when Jennifer is the one cleaning up the mess.
Whether she actually helps or not remains to be seen, the last few times she tried to help ( setting walky and lucky up, getting her boss a date) it didn’t end well for her because she was more concerned about being a problem solver then stopping to think if it was a good idea.
Yeah, Jennifer wants to be the authority figure here and validate her choices in friends.
Lucky?
Do you mean Lucy? I thought that turned out OK.
Yep Lucy sorry spell check. It turned out okey but only because of Dorothy, Jennifer’s advice to did not work for Lucy and she seemed kind of bitter towards Dorothy afterwards.
Does Jennifer still think she set up Walky and Dorothy?
No. Joyce made her realize that ages ago, though I can’t find the specific strip. Or, rather, Joyce’s expression made her realize it, and then Joyce confirmed it by explaining that Dorothy was describing Walky in terms of food within a week.
Ah, thanks. Now that you mention it it does ring a bell.
I’m actually more than a little disappointed in both of Joyce’s “best” friends here. Like their justifications aren’t even that good.
Aren’t they? I mean, unless her opinion has changed due to the atheism, something she’d been hiding, what could they realistically do to make her get and take medicine she would be dead-set against taking?
I mean, should they have tried more? Yeah, I think so, but she’s not their stepkid or anything. Joyce doesn’t get blamed when she isn’t proactive about fixing things for them. I’m glad Jennifer’s stepping up to the plate here, but if Joyce is going to be obstinate, she also needs to take care of herself more than not at all.
It’s not about them not taking initiative it’s that their justfication is based on assuming the worst of Joyce which is mildly effed up. Like if they just said “Didn’t think of it, my bad.” That’s a weak excuse but it’s fair. Instead they said “Joyce will explode if we mention birth control exists!”
I mean, until a little while ago, it was almost certainly TRUE. How much do you wanna bet her sect held birth control as a strict no no?
How is it effed up to assume the worst of Joyce when they literally jump saw the worst of Joyce, like, a week ago? She was an absolute pain about the glasses—and I’m kinda eyerolling at this comments section blaming Dorothy and Becky for hand-waving this when so many people thought Dorothy was way overstepping on the glasses issue—and if I were them, I wouldn’t be standing in line do redo that one except with vaginas (a word that iirc Joyce refuses to say) instead of eyeballs. Dorothy all but says her unwillingness to step up now is because she barely got the glasses to fly and that was a heavy lift on its own.
Actually, my new head canon is that Dorothy did run into Joyce once when she dealt with her first college period in September, Dorothy suggested she go see a doctor, and Joyce said she wouldn’t because periods are women’s punishment for the apple and we have to live with the pain of something.
Not to mention that they are college students with their own work and personal lives aside from Joyce. Like, it’s great to want to help a friend (and they clearly did before) but it’s also not their job to solve every one of her problems for her, Especially when they have already seen that doing so is gonna be a pretty large commitment of both time and energy.
This here, yes.
Weird how they didn’t have a personal life outside of Joyce when they decided to stalk her all the way to Joe’s room.
Seriously.
Like you can be fussy, overbearing and outright emotionally manipulative, but at least be consistent about this instead of leaving it to “when it’s not that hard.”
You all get that it’s not about assigning them responsibility for Joyce’s health right? Neither Becky or Dorothy said anything close to “Joyce is a big girl. She can figure this out on her own. I don’t have the time or energy to care.” They’re actually implying Joyce is too immature or rigid or sensitive or whatever to have a conversation about birth control. Becky even making comparisons to feeding dogs medication which is just real nice.
I guess cause Joyce didn’t like getting glasses that one time (which she is having no obvious problem with now by the way) and is a picky eater she’s incapable of taking pills! Which is a completely different experience from coming to terms with low vision.
In a way Jennifer just showed she respects Joyce as an adult in a way Dorothy and Becky don’t.
Becky’s making a joke, which Dorothy responded to with another joke, that hyperbolized how difficult it would be to get Joyce to take birth control. It’s like when a kid is running around being loud and annoying and you mutter “Jesus someone put a leash on them.” It’s not a literal desire that someone should treat the child like a dog (for most people, at least) so much as a humorous way to remove some frustration at the situation and joke about the behavior.
Likewise, they’re joking here because until VERY recently they knew that Joyce was heavily entrenched in Christian fundamentalist ways of thinking. Believing sex to be a sin to the point that she didn’t like showing off any leg, even below the knee, or shoulder. Wearing shorts under a dress. Believing it was her duty to date a gay Jewish guy in order to make him stop being either of those things. Joyce’s relationship to fundamentalism has, for the most part, been unwavering adherence.
And then we add on the way that she reacts to things and people that try to pull her out of her comfort zones and preconceived notions, which has generally been way over the top. She honestly thought it was a good idea to hire Mike to punch her date in the face if he did anything that hinted of sexuality. Even when she’s not involving other people or physical pain, “Kablooey” is a fair assessment of her reactions in those circumstances.
So putting it all together, we have a person who has historically strongly adhered to Christian fundamentalism and its views on sex (which usually carry over to birth control being a sin) and who doesn’t take suggestions that she should change part of her worldview or habits very well, and it’s very easy to see why her friends would decide it’s safest, best, and easiest to just let this one slide.
And for the record, I agree with them that up until Joyce became an atheist, she likely was too immature, rigid, sensitive, and whatever else to have a conversation about birth control. Because, as I said before, she’s repeatedly shown that she’s immature, rigid, sensitive, and whatever else when something challenges her views and habits.
Joke? I really don’t buy that argument. Maybe it was a joke but it was at Joyce’s expense since I doubt either would say that while Joyce was in earshot which actually makes it mocking. And hey! Didn’t Becky just get offended and argue with Joyce for mocking her religion with a new friend behind her back? Even Dorothy said she was disappointed in Joyce for that! Except if I wanted to be a pedantic, dick I could argue this is worse since at least Joyce didn’t directly mock Becky!
So saying it’s a joke kind of make Becks and Dotty jerks. I’d prefer to believe they just didn’t care over that.
You never actually know how someone will react. Becky’s head didn’t explode at the knowledge of birth control at the least she could expect the same from her best friend. What are they scared of? The subject of birth control hasn’t been brought up before as far as I know. Is Joyce gonna turn into the Hulk? This barely even has anything to do with Joyce’s past faith or upbringing. They just didn’t trust their friend.
1: Yes, I’m actually fairly sure they WOULD say that in Joyce’s hearing, as the very first thing Becky did when waiting on Joyce was not ask her for her order and wrote down the exact thing she wanted. Teasing friends about their flaws generally isn’t a big deal.
2: Joyce DID directly mock Becky. Saying that everyone who believes X when your best friend believes X is mocking them. There’s no real wiggle room there. Moreover, it’s still pretty insulting because it’s not poking fun at the things Becky does. It was directly insulting her intelligence and was meant to be an insult on the intelligence of people who believe the things she does. The fact that Joyce didn’t really mean it to include Becky doesn’t change the fact that she made a sweeping and insulting generalization about a group that includes Becky. If I say “Man I hate children with their snotty noses and constantly asking questions” I can’t be surprised when my kids feel hurt by it.
3. Becky has been well-established to adhere much less strictly to the fundamentalism they were both raised in. She accepts evolution and homosexuality, two points that Joyce has been seen on-screen to have massive issues around until her deconversion. Why wouldn’t she have issues with birth control as a means to aid with bad periods? There’s never been anything to even suggest that except for Joyce apparently always assuming that Becky believed the exact same things JOyce herself does.
4. What are they scared of? Gee, I don’t know, maybe an exponentially more difficult fight than they had when Dorothy took Joyce to get glasses, just like they say in the strip? If they already know Joyce was extremely upset over such a minor medical issue that doesn’t intersect with her religious beliefs in any way, why wouldn’t they assume that she’d be much more upset over one that does? That’s not a lack of trust. It’s taking established information and extrapolating from it to understand the most likely scenario. Something that Becky and Dorothy have, generally, shown they’re not particularly bad at.
Look, if you’re just looking for reasons to hate on Becky and Dorothy, go off I guess. But I don’t see any flaw in how they expect Joyce to respond because it’s 100% in line with the ways we’ve seen her respond to things up to this point.
@Andy. I’m not looking for reasons to hate Becky and Dorothy. I stand by my original comment that this is just a disappointing moment for them. They can both do better and should trust Joyce to be capable of responding like an adult.
1. This isn’t really friendly teasing. That implies an active role between all parties. Joyce is assumedly out of earshot. If they wanted to tease Joyce they could have when Joyce was right next to them. Even in your example they were actively playing off their shared knowledge.
2. I don’t actually want to rehash the whole toxic argument of who was in the wrong for the Joyce and Becky religion debate. Shouldn’t have brought it up in my comparison. For the record I think they were both assholes but Joyce was the slightly bigger one. Fair enough. My mistake.
3. I disagree here. Not with Becky being more flexible with her faith and more receptive of science and knowledge ect. That’s all true. It’s just not a justification. They’re just freely making assumptions here. They didn’t bother to bring it up because they were assuming the worst of Joyce. It’s a topic that’s never been brought up, there’s no baggage here. Humans are incredibly nuanced beings. You can hate chocolate but love chocolate icecream.
4. I can respect them making a call based on Joyce’s past behavior, but it really reads as them avoiding a interaction out of selfishness. They made a risk assessment and decided this cold negatively impact me so nevermind except I think I’d respect that more than them assuming Joyce is incapable. Not to mention getting glasses is completely different from getting birth control. The two subjects have no real relation to each other beyond being under the umbrella of general health.
Joyce was willing to tolerate visual impairment over the perception of losing her identity and becoming a bespectacled dork like the rest of us glasses wearers. That doesn’t mean she would fight against not being in crippling pain every month if the option presented itself. This is two different things.
This doesn’t condemn Becks and Dotty in anyway. People can be jerks sometimes. They’re dtill cool. I just wanted to point out a character flaw here not battle for their souls.
It was good writing on Willis’ part to have this be shortly after they did all that heavy lifting to get Joyce to get glasses. I feel like it’d be less in character for them, Dorothy especially, to sit this out if they hadn’t already gone through a recent healthcare provision adventure.
In which the commentariat alternately hated on Dorothy for trying to make Joyce do something she really didn’t want to and on Becky for not helping.
I mean, they don’t *know* if her opinion has changed due to atheism. It’s possible she has some sort of drug-related anxiety and would rather suffer through her periods than take a new medication. It’s also possible she had a religious objection to birth control that’s no longer relevant and simply hasn’t thought about it. Or maybe she has an ethical objection that’s a holdover from her religious objections and is open to persuasion.
What I’m saying is that they could just ask her. Or at least not object to *Jenny* asking her.
I was thinking about this too. I think that they’re doing that thing Joyce complained to Sal about everyone doing to her (back when she borrowed Sal’s leather jacket after apologizing to Sal for doing the same thing to her) – taking who she definitely used to be and making assumptions about her without believing she’s capable of changing.
Nah, Birth Control+Joyce does not seem like a winning combination. Like, yes, new Joyce is atheist, but she still has the Christian hangups and also I doubt either of the other two have reevaluated things since learning that. It’s probably possible to get Joyce on BC now, but after how she reacted to glasses, do you blame them for considering it unlikely?
You might be surprised how much Pain motivates Change.
This. I’m betting tomorrow’s strip is going to be surprisingly anti-climactic.
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is deconsecrated…”
Hmmm. I was a super religious Adventist in middle school and got on birth control because I had periods that lasted like 2 weeks and didn’t think much of it. My mom freaked out, lied and told me what they were giving me “wasn’t the real thing” but I was an autistic little weirdo who still liked to play with toys and was obsessed with the Ninja Turtles so I had no idea what she was talking about and never even made the connection that birth control was for sex -_-;
Dunno why I’m telling this story except that I don’t think being super religious necessarily means you’ll freak out over the use of BC for medical reasons
The amount of women that are on birth control for health reasons rather than prevention is probably more than people think.
I was put on BC for painful, long, frequent periods (24-26 day cycles, 10-12 days of bleeding, 3 weeks of cramping; at its worst this was sometimes literally so bad I couldn’t straighten up or move) at 15. I was not sexually active at 15. My mum telling me “reassuringly” that after I had kids it should settle down was not enough motivation to get over my squicks over the idea of sex, and I was aware “don’t want to deal with menstruation” was a really bad reason to have a teenage pregnancy. Taking birth control seemed a much less extreme option. (It made me put on a stone a year til I was taken off the pill coz my weight meant there was a risk of blood clots, and switched to the implant which also triggered me to start getting migraines. This year, I had one which lasted 10-11 weeks straight so that’s really not fun… But having 3 kids, I still think it was a less extreme option. They’re amazing, but I was 30 when I had the first one…)
More importantly, taking a birth control medication is so closely tied to having sex that some women freak out at the thought of taking it even when it’s not for sex.
“She would be opposed to it on a fundamental level (at least, until very recently she would have been) and freak the hell out at even the suggestion” isn’t a good justification?
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad justification, it’s that they didn’t *try* first.
Run it by Joyce, let her blow up (if that’s how she decides to react) and then respect her choice about her own body.
Their assessments aren’t necessarily inaccurate, but they’re still not reasons to not try. And yeah, it’s become more than a little apparent that those two kinda put Joyce in a little box.
Like, even if there’s very little chance Joyce will take the option (fundie hangups and all– plus I wouldn’t be surprised if she has trouble swallowing pills), she at least deserves to know that she has the option.
That dings a bell about a conversation Joyce had with Joe about being in a box, and moving outside of said box, and how people react to it.
My search-fu is weak, and I don’t even recall if it’s relevant to this situation, but it’s in my head anyway.
She had the conversation with Sal, too. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/stings/
Actually, I’m guessing that Joyce is, in this moment, the more receptive to the possibility of end-the-suffering pills (which might also be birth-control pills, but who cares) than she’s ever been.
It wouldn’t even be all that out of character for Joyce to happily start taking birth control pills to help with her periods (assuming that’s even the issue and she doesn’t have intermittent appendicitis or something weird). Joyce’s has almost never rejected doing something because of her religion directly, it was always things that *made her uncomfortable* that she rejected, which ultimately included the religion itself. I could very easily see Joyce quickly rationalizing an excuse for why birth control is okay if it stops her from being in horrible pain semi-regularly.
I’m pretty sure Joyce is also aware doctors exist??? Like, at some point this has probably already been discussed with her PCP in her life and whatever the discussion was, she was probably present for it. If she wants to try to bring it up with a new doctor, she is an adult who is capable of scheduling her own appointments.
YES! Joyce is just as much an adult as Dotty and Becky. All of them have probably spent their life with people telling them periods just suck sometimes, without actually qualifying that sometimes, they suck TOO MUCH because something is WRONG.
Of all of them, Joyce is the one best equipped to talk to her doctor to see if this is a normal amount of pain. And hopefully has, honestly.
People who menstruate often grow up believing that periods are *supposed* to be absolute hell. This leads to them not seeking help, because it doesn’t occur to them that it might even be an option.
It’s certainly possible, maybe even likely, but the idea that she might have mentioned this to a doctor at some point in the past doesn’t even seem to have come up.
They assumed that the treatment would be the Pill and not, say, life-saving surgery, without doing a proper differential diagnosis.
NEWS FLASH TO DOROTHY AND BECKY: being nineteen and smug is no substitute for a medical degree.
The thing is, they’re almost certainly correct. A lot of doctors WILL just put her on a pill or some other form of birth control. MAYBE they give you a painkiller. Most people go a long time waiting for any other diagnosis and even longer for anything to be done with it. Joyce has had this problem before and it isn’t every period, so odds of it being anything life threatening are probably low. Regardless, doctors are very reluctant to do any sort of surgery on baby making parts if you don’t have kids and are younger than 30-35.
My grandfather was blind for fifteen years because he assumed that doctors couldn’t do anything about glaucoma. Then it turned out that he had a cataract. A simple operation and a monocle restored vision that he could have had all along.
That is awful and I’m sorry to hear that, but it doesn’t change that women* complaining to doctors about period pain often are not taken seriously. If you have a doctor who WILL take it seriously, it’s luck of the freaking draw. And your grandfather had a diagnosis to work with – again, it’s often a challenge to GET a diagnosis.
It’s still worth while to see a doctor, but assuming the answer (or part of it) will most likely be birth control (which is used to treat all the most likely suspects for period pain) and that Joyce would not like that is pretty accurate.
* = Trans men, non binary folks, intersex folks, etc. too but A) People suck and so doctors often label them women and go right on ignoring them too and B) They also each have issues of their own relating to this so I’m gonna stick to my experience (and the likelihood on Joyce) and the data on women.
I know that some doctors are callous pricks, and I’ve had my share of trouble getting treatment e.g. for stonefish sting and for gout. (“Stonefish hurt more than that.”, apparently). Nevertheless it would be pretty poor of Joyce to avoid consulting a doctor for her pain and then blame the doctor, if that is indeed what she’s doing.
Pretty sure Joyce isn’t doing that. She’s either never talked to a doctor about it in any detail or she already has and has been assured it’s just normal .
I’m complaining about Dorothy and Becky, not Joyce. They are assuming, on the basis of being teenagers who heard a rumour once, that if Joyce went to a doctor the doctor would make the diagnosis that they have heard of and prescribe the treatment they have heard of. On that basis, they have decided that it is not worth trying to badger Joyce into seeking treatment.
Where are you getting ‘heard a rumour once’ as opposed to ‘this is the most common way this plays out’. Because I promise you, it IS.
This is like being angry they heard she was sneezing a lot one day, without a cough, congestion, any consistent environmental factors like dust or pollen and no fever, and said ‘You probably have the sniffles, you should go try some acetaminophen and get some rest’.
Grandad didn’t “have a diagnosis to work with”. He was an architect and an artist who lost his occupation for fifteen years because he assumed he knew why he was going blind and didn’t bother to consult a doctor about it. Then he mentioned his “glaucoma” to a doctor on a social occasion and the doctor said “Glaucoma? You have a cataract.” That’s the kind of danger that Joyce would face if she relied on ignorant and meddlesome teenagers for her diagnosis and treatment.
Or to put it another way, none of these dumb kids ought to be basing their decision on a reckless assumption that they know the medical cause of her pain and suffering and how it ought to be treated.
My mistake. I assumed glaucoma was a misdiagnosis coming from another doctor.
I understand what you’re saying, but it’s still true that based on what we know of her issues, all the most likely causes ARE treated with birth control. There’s a very outside chance it could be cancer, but that’s less likely with all the symptoms only showing up during some cycles. They’re not being teenagers making reckless assumptions here. What they are describing IS, in fact, the reality of all the most likely diagnoses. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t see a doctor, but it’s really weird to blame them for ‘assuming they know better’ when they’re almost certainly CORRECT.
A friend of mine has been a chronic pain sufferer her entire adult life, and from what she has said, doctors are very reluctant to listen to women patients period.
Doctors won’t even touch an ovarian cyst unless it’s basically the size of an orange. The first solution will almost always be hormonal birth control to help shrink and prevent them without invasive surgery.
I had d a cyst that was the size of a plum causing internal bleeding and they did sweet fuck all for it. 4 weeks in agony unable to stand up straight with nothing for pain till it resolved on its own.
So, uh, can confirm.
My daughter who lives in Scotland and works for the NHS presented with abdominal pain and cramps, they did an ultrasound in the ER to rule out her appendix and removed several ovarian cysts, I think the next day because it wasn’t life-threatening. But it might have been that night because she was incapacitated by the pain.
Maybe Joyce doesn’t have an ovarian cyst. Somebody ought to do an ultrasound.
Agreed. There’s alternatives to birth control. I had a prescription pain medicine for my periods when I was Joyce’s age.
Well when you put it that way, I can understand where Joyce is coming from on mixing food.
For some reason, I find it hilarious that Joyce has to be given pills like a puppy. Probably because she vaguely looks like (and has the friendly personality of) a golden retriever.
We’d just pretend like we were eating candy, “accidentally” drop the pill, and then the dog would dart over and swallow it before we could get to it.
I doubt that method would work on Joyce.
Oh that is smart.
We had a cat that needed daily medication. She was tiny, but fast and crafty, so we just couldn’t pill her until her last few months. Instead, her thyroid medication was a cream we had to put on the inside of her ears, and the seizure pill got hidden in her wet food. (Luckily her 16-pound brother never ate even his own wet food, never mind hers, so he never got her pill.)
Every so often we’d find it spit out on the floor or left in an untouched part of the bowl, but most of the time it worked every time.
I am so sorry you lost your cat. It is always horrible when someone you love fades away like that.
They’re assuming she has to, at least
On the bright side, the idea of it being mixed food will help with Joyce going out of her way to believe it’s not actually happening.
I like your thinking!
You seem so cool! Wanna join me on Discord to see project related to DOA and Dinosaurs?
Did I mention it’s a game?
does jennifer have a history of stepping up and solving problems for everybody or is she just acting like that? genuine question, my memory is spotty for any strips over like a year old
It’s part of her head-cheerleader, alpha-bongo identity.
okay yeah that’s what I was thinking ty
We started DoA with Jennier’s identity as “Billie: head cheerleader, problem solver.” We saw much of that go wrong in her first semester of college, but I do think she lives to help. Whether she helps others for the ego boost, or her identity drives the desire to help where needed, who knows.
Right now jennifers motivation seems to be to make herself to be the “mature adult” who everyone relys on, even though she offered occasional help before at best. I guess this is to distance herself from last semester.
To me it looks like she thinks if she can fix others problems it proves to herself that she has “fixed” herself and she no longer has any problems
So neither of them have considered that now that Joyce is Atheist she might be more open to stuff like birth control, especially if it’s explained that it could help her not want to die every other month
Theyre still operating on old Joyce protocols without even considering that some of her old hang ups may have been religious in nature and thus she could likely be talked out of now
Probably not, because Joyce being atheist is something they only learned like 2 days ago and it hasn’t connected yet.
Remember also that just barely a week ago (their time), they had to fight like hell for Joyce to wear glasses.
Dorothy fought for it. Becky fought against it on the grounds that Joyce never needed it and Dorothy was lying and overreacting.
More importantly, Dorothy made the effort anyway, and for something that’s less of an immediately obvious problem like “Joyce is in agony for a week every couple of months.”
*Joyce’s grades in math are struggling due to vision problems but shes still otherwise functional*
Dorothy: this is unacceptable and must be fixed immediately
*Joyce is in debilitating agony on a regular basis*
Dorothy: ehh what can you do
It’s even weirder considering Joyce’s objection to birth control is likely to be a relic of her religious upbringing, which Dorothy now knows she’s eager to get rid of all that baggage, so even if it ultimately doesn’t pan out its still worth trying
Likely yes, but birth control is less directly tied to the biblical interpretations that she’s been ridding herself of, and the glasses saga showed that she’s still extremely resistant to changing things, especially when she’s already changed so much. It’s likely to be a struggle, and someone who’s in pain is also less likely to be receptive to reason.
We’d all hope that the motivation of getting out of this kind of pain would be a major motivator, but it’s hard to say.
And on the subject of Joyce’s vision, she was most certainly not otherwise functional. I’d like to remind you that the thing that swayed Becky to supporting Joyce in getting glasses was the likelihood that her inability to see was contributing to or causing her agoraphobia, which meant she wasn’t able to walk anywhere alone. This was impacting the minutiae of her life as well as her grades. And also was a fight that seemed more winnable than birth control.
I’d rather have Dorothy try to pursue this too, but I also sympathize with not potentially straining your friendship on a fight that may be good for your friend but seems likely not to go anywhere. Maybe that evaluation is wrong, but we have more information than Dorothy and even we can’t be sure.
The thing is it’s not regular. It’s not even every cycle. Dorothy only found out she’s an atheist three days ago. It’s not surprising to me that that hasn’t sank in yet.
They do not have to fight her to wear glasses. Dorothy fought her to get an eye exam to be prescribed glasses.
Unless Dorothy has been stalking Joyce to bodily shove the glasses on her face every time Joyce takes them off, WEARING glasses is Joyce making her own decision on the matter of wearing glasses.
The alt text reminded that I’ve been wondering for awhile if this site still censors the word bongo
I don’t think it ever censored the word bongo. Talk about drums all you like.
oh look, it’s yesterday’s comment section.
*Cries as a fellow “one of my ovaries hates me” sufferer.*
Join me on the journey to get Birth Control, Joyce.
See, Becky? Being the Snarky Duo with Dorothy is a MUCH Better Dynamic for the two of you than the forced Antagonism.
I’d be more worried about what might happen if Joyce’s parents find out she’s taking birth control. Her dad would probably understand, he’s obviously the more decent parent. Her mother will go completely ballistic.
That actually sounds like a plus to taking the pill. Anything to piss off her mom.
Yeah I don’t think that would be an argument against at this point. I’m not sure she’s actively spiting her mom, but she sure isn’t seeking her approval right now.
I’m not sure the assumption that she has to take birth control is even correct.
I don’t think they’re assuming that she has to, I think they’re assuming that that’s the overwhelmingly most likely outcome of going to see a doctor, which based on what I’ve heard from friends as well as other comments on this strip (and I think maybe yesterday’s too) is probably pretty on the money.
I must say I love the rhythm of the uneasy alliance between Becky and Dorothy
Sadly I don’t think their rhythm method will help will Joyce’s problems …
…and is probably unnecessary for Becky
We don’t know how bi Becky is, but available evidence points to “not very”.
Didn’t Dorothy once say to Joyce “I’m not continuing to talk about this topic until you buy a bottle of personal lube”? why does she consider that appropriate but not suggesting birth control?
Becky and Dorothy kinda fail as friends here, not because they failed to force Joyce to take hormonal birth control (which they shouldn’t do) but because they failed to BROACH the topic.
Dorothy and Becky have talked to Joyce about sex, evolution, a female God and homosexuality, and yes Joyce DID freak out but she absorbed those topics in her own time and more often than not came out with a better understanding of them than before.
I’m sure Dorothy could have floated the idea of birth control pills long before this; and yeah it’s likely Joyce would have rejected the idea out of the gate, but then she’d know it was an option. Given Joyce’s upbringing, it’s very likely she didn’t know birth control could be useful for other things than making loose women be sinful or whatever.
The first part was pre-Atheist Joyce, and I read that more as Dorothy just getting tired of managing Joyce’s stuff for a bit.
And, honestly, yeah, I’m understanding of Dorothy here. Getting Joyce to just try glasses when she couldn’t read the chalkboard was like pulling teeth, broaching something like daily medication to someone who’s never taken some, particularly medication that’s mostly used as birth control to someone who was, until very recently, known as being extremely Christian…
…at some point you just start picking your battles. Yeah, they should’ve probably said something in one of the, what, 2-3 previous periods that were like this (based on Becky saying that this is every other period for Joyce), but between all of Joyce’s other hang-ups and the fact that, as a society, there’s heavy stigmas against talking about periods, um, period, it’s understandable why they hadn’t.
Of course, it’s not Dorothy who’d be broaching the idea of taking daily birth control – Dorothy would be suggesting going to the doctor because of the pain. The doctor would suggest the birth control. Given Joyce’s response to authority figures, she might just be fine with it, leaving nothing traumatic for Dorothy to deal with.
thejeff, you get it
Let’s not forget that Joyce failed harder than Dorothy and Becky put together. She should goa and see a gynaecologist; “my friends didn’t make me!” is a lousy excuse for not doing something that obvious.
Joyce has probably heard her whole life “That’s just how periods are sometimes, take some ibuprofin and deal with it” because people are notoriously unsympathetic towards period pain.
Joyce was raised in a fundie cult that very likely told her girls don’t see gynecologists, MARRIED WOMEN see gynecologists when they’re pregnant with their lawfully wedded husbands.
So no, Joyce didn’t fail herself, but Dorothy (who already pushed past boundaries with the glasses arc) has since she hasn’t even suggested it.
Is every other period being bad… a thing? I am a woman who gets a period and have never heard of this. Also kind of weird that Becky who presumably has had about zero sex ed even knows that ovaries switch off in releasing eggs.
Becky has spent the last six months inhaling every bit of science she can get her grubby little paws on, so it’s not that surprising.
Yessss, fills me with such delight! 🥲🧠🌈
Based on my current experience, your ovaries don’t necessarily decide they’re gonna go in alternating order, and sometimes just decide to say “Screw you, welcome to pain” several months in a row.
A sensation I’m currently aware of because my body decided ovulating should HURT, and the last two months were both on the right side.
That sounds like hell.
It has been, you don’t even know. It was bad enough that my friend dragged me to ER because “intense pain on the right side” can mean ovarian cysts, or also, appendicitis. And unfortunately (fortunately?), it was not the one where they do a surgery and you never have that issue again.
I’ve been trying to get a referral to an OBY/GN for an IUD or some other sort of “turn off periods” solution, but turns out, they’re also backed up cause of COVID.
I am so sorry you are dealing with that, Lexi! Ugh! How awful for you!
… a few ideas if I may? Some options for virtual phone/video consultations to get pills and other medications prescribed online and shipped to you:
Planned Parenthood virtual care: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/get-care/ppdirect#
Plan B emergency contraception (not for your specific situation, but just for anyone who might want it): https://www.planbonestep.com/how-plan-b-works/
Plan C self-managed abortion care online (again, this is just in general):
https://www.plancpills.org/find-pills
Don’t know how good these last 2 are so take these with a grain of salt as I cannot vouch for them:
Nuvaring: https://www.nurx.com/birth-control/ring/nuvaring-2/
The Patch and other birth control:
https://www.pushhealth.com/drugs/birth-control-patch
Through Push Health Online
I’m in Canada, and had a phone appointment with my doctor just yesterday, so it’s… getting somewhere. All the OBY/GNs are like that, just overly busy.
My doctor did prescribe something that might help in the meantime, at least. And you know, I’ve spent 18 years suffering already, what’s a couple more months?
For the record, the Nuvaring is good but apparently also greatly increases the risk of blood clots (all BC does, that one just a lot), I’m hesitant about pills cause I’m terrible at taking them on time and had a really bad experience before.
Oh, wow. Thank you for letting me know about the blood clots. I was unaware of that. And congratulations on getting a phone appointment! I really hope that it all comes through for you very soon! Good luck!
Ok, so Push Health gets very mixed reviews. https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.pushhealth.com
Sorry!
Plus, they do prescribe Ivermectin online for COVID, which is unethical, but it sounds from reviews as though they at least TRY to use the Ivermectin appointment to prescribe other more helpful medicines as well, so maybe it’s harm reduction.
So, let the buyer beware when it comes to Push Health!
Just speaking generally here, since it’s not relevant to your situation Lexi:
NUrx gets better reviews, but still mixed:
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/nurx.com
Yeah. Mine have been less hellish since I swapped milk types as a kid and started magnesium a while ago, but they still suck. Last ‘bad’ one I had, I was bedridden from pain for three days and the first of those I could not move without being sure I’d throw up. So, sometimes, it’s really just an organ deciding it hates you in particular and is gonna be a bongo about it for a week.
It is a bit weird to me that Becky is knowledgeable of birth control, but also assumes Joyce would react poorly to the suggestion when they’ve formerly shared the same upbringing and similar opinions. Feels slightly condescending to me. This is the same girl who thinks Joyce would laugh at and mock her for having sex, but it kind of seems like Becks has done a fair share of judging herself.
Becky is allowed to judge and be manipulative and controlling and a bully. She’s Becky, it’s all goofy fun when she does it so it’s all good.
No one else is allowed, though. Especially not Joyce.
The what now??? Dude I’m 35 and I never knew that’s why there’s two. Damn.
Yes, it’s a thing. sometimes it’s like one month You just dribble some red for a few days, and the next month you have to replace all the sheets and your underwear because you hurt too much to even get out of bed to walk to the bathroom.
Source: I have 2 daughters and a wife.
Yeah , yeah, yeah. Most women experience some period pain, many severe.
But those experiences occludes a minority that are just >OFF THE DANG Pain CHARTs<
< even though I am a man, i am a pain patient and i have listened very closely to how other pain patients describe pain: Many of them women.
Just listening to forums and believing people it becomes apparent that cyst pain and bladder pain in women in radically underrecognized and undertreated by a few logs.
The problem is these women are often thought to have "normal' severe pain and not debilitating. its hard to understand this degree of pain if you havent had it.
Plus due to misogyny people can miss the redflags. One is Necessity to mentally concentrate to maintain emotional control ( due to severe pain ). This can be mistaken for hormonal changes when its just searing pain.
It doesnt mean Joyce is this category, but it doesnt look good.
She is a big bad atheist now. She can handle birth control. ….. eventually.
Both Becky and Dorothy decided Joyce Can’t Be Helped even though Joyce has demonstrated many many times she’s capable of learning new information and adapting her worldview to it.
I’m not saying Joyce would have accepted the help, but those two didn’t even give her the chance to accept or reject it, they decided what her decision was going to be anyway
They also decided what the doctor’s diagnosis and prescription were going to be. These guys suck. Joyce should see a doctor instead of relying one them.
The whole point of this is what Joyce should do. Becky and Dorothy aren’t trying to talk her out of it, I’m sure they’d love for her to see a doctor. Your ‘instead’ is a false dichotomy.
Right. Jennifer and the comment section are lambasting Dorothy and Becky for not making Joyce do what Joyce should do. I was being ironic for purposes of sarcasm.
Joyce should see a doctor. Whether or not Dorothy and Becky think it’s worth buffaloing her into doing so, she ought to do so.
This pattern in which Joyce refuses to seek treatment and do other things that are obviously called for, and in which Becky and Dorothy then treat her like a petulant child or a goddam puppy, and buffalo her into doing normal adult self-maintenance, is maladaptive, infantilising, and dumb. But half the commentariat are blaming Becky and Joyce for not meddling hard enough.
Dorothy and Becky are not in charge.
Surely there’s a healthy middle ground like in all things (except politics).
They can help as friends do without taking over. Instead they’re willing to intrude on topics like “what is Joyce allowed to think” and “Joyce can’t have this friend” but come one with the slightest shred of any actual importance, well Joyce is a dumb puppy and there’s nothing to do.
We’re talking about two people who, textually, by actions they’ve done in the last year plus of strips, are pretty apparent on where they stand on whether or not they’re in charge of Joyce.
So a lot of women – not just christians – ignore period pain instead of going to a doctor. Pretty sure most have been told all their lives that “that’s just how it is.”
Bear in mind, they are still kinda in the fallout of a big fight between Joyce and Becky; I think on some level they’re nervous about opening that wound again. I’m not saying they’re right, just that I do empathize.
They’re definitely not nervous about “opening that wound again”, because Dorothy literally blackmailed Joyce to go talk to Becky and Becky took the peace offering of a homecooked meal and immediately made it about the “wound” again.
Yeah that.
These two are fine intruding and interfering with Joyce’s life at their convenience.
As if, and bear with me on this one; their entire scope of their behaviour since the Faith-Off has been “Joyce needs to be Like This for my comfort.”
Becky and Joyce are just out of a fight, and Dorothy just went through the exhausting effort of trying to help Joyce with a medical issue. I think it’s less that they think she can’t be helped and more that neither of them have any desire to help her at the moment knowing she’s probably going to put up a fight about it based on past experience.
If they’ve known this for months then their knowledge this is a problem predates that fight or the glasses
When did it EVER fall to her to solve ANY problem? I seem to recall her causing a few problems herself, and not solving much of anything.
Way back near the beginning, she figured out Joyce’s drink was drugged at that party (even though she was probably a little drunk herself).
Yeah, but she wasn’t the one with a baseball bat. And, that’s what solved that problem (temporary).
Jammed garbage chute. Birthday observances.
Jennifer’s ideal of head cheerleader, problem solver is one where she bulldozes through problems. The specific incident being referenced is probably the party where Joyce was drugged.
“We don’t think she’d like the answer so we just didn’t try.” 😐
Ah, hovertext, hoisted by your own filter.
(Yes, I know. Roll with it)
There’s actually a strip originally titled the other b-word that got autofiltered to “Bongo” when said filter was introduced. I remember Willis lol’d when I pointed it out in the comments.
“Kablooey” reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes: https://calvinandhobbes.fandom.com/wiki/Hamster_Huey_and_the_Gooey_Kablooie
Good times. 😊
Sorry if this is a bit out of place, (I’m not the best at reading social cues 😅), but would you like to help out a neurodivergent in need?
The neurodivergent in question is me. The need is occupation. And possibly friendship. Just shoot your discord, and I’ll also show you a cool project I’m working on that has DOA and dinosaurs in it!!! 🦖🦕🌈 😁
*plays “Your New Friend Sugar Plumps” on hacked muzak*
That’s the reason my wife’s health insurance finally would let her get birth control. She worked for a Catholic hospital and they refused her attempts to get birth control.
The real joke? It’s the fact that that very same employer was more than happy to hook me out with getting the old snip-snip with no fuss at all. Funny how the man in the relationship can get permanently sterilized but the woman could even get a temporary fix until it started making her really sick.
At least my current insurance had no issue with her receiving an ablation surgery.
Wow, I didn’t even drink tonight but that post was all over the place. Guess my constant lack of sleep is affecting me more than I thought.
So great she and you got that taken care of! Congratulations!
Mysogyny? From a CATHOLIC institution? How shoc- wait, no, what’s the opposite of shocking?
I think the opposite of shock is despair.
It seems like Jennifer’s trying to rewrite history a bit here. Her comments imply that she was always the one taking care of Joyce the most when that role was usually split between Dorothy and Sarah. The birth control isn’t a bad suggestion but she’s trying a little too hard to make herself the problem solver of a group she doesn’t even want to hang out with anymore.
She previously described herself as “head cheerleader, problem solver” despite not solving any problems we’ve seen…she wants that image, deserved or not.
She had an off-screen little arc of helping with dorm problems (the trash chute) pre-shacking up with Ruth, I think. and she’s generally savvy about some stuff (like joyce being drugged).
She’s honestly given decent advice/helped some people so I can see her wanting to be needed/a problem solver but she struggles to actually… be approachable for help.
She has her moments but compared to Dorothy and Sarah her moments of providing personal help are a bit low to be considered the designated problem solver.
She handled Sal and Walky’s mom’s crusade to have Amber thrown out of school by knowing which buttons to toggle.
Not only that but she seems to get jealous/bitter if she feels anyone else is being the problem solver instead; judging by her attitude after Dorothy got Lucy and Walky together. And before that her comments about Dorothy only helping Becky with roz for her personal agenda.
She’s mentioned part of being an alpha bingo included (in HS) taking down abusive boyfriends, scanning parties for roofies, and shuttling girls to womens’ clinics.
That’s some to-the-manner-born problem solving in my book.
And while that is great, she hasn’t really done enough if any of that kind of stuff in college to justify looking down on others for not doing enough. Especially when said other people have been seen doing alot more to help their peers then her.
She’s not talking about Joyce specifically, but their friend group in general, which is why she said “everybody”.
And, to be fair, she has repeatedly tried to solve both problems and “problems” big and small, even though it didn’t always work or was needed.
For example, and in no particular order:
She tried to get Walky with Dorothy (she also advised him on Amber, but he asked for that help).
She stomped garbage down the garbage chute.
She tried to help with Ruth’s drinking a couple different times in different ways; never amounted to much, but she did try what she THOUGHT were good ideas.
She volunteered to hang with Walky to cheer him up after the breakup with Dorothy.
She encouraged both Joyce and Lucy in their pursuit of their crushes.
She bought Joyce new boots.
She gave Becky her bed.
She tried to write an article about Ruth’s abuse of power (that was personal, but still a problem).
So yeah, she does ATTEMPT to solve problems, just usually not very well.
It seems to be a pattern that the more she wants to solve some one else’s problems to up her own status in some way, it usually fails.
In this comic, characters grow and change their patterns.
I think the best example of her being the problem solver that comes to my mind is figuring out that Joyce was drugged. Most of the time, though, I wouldn’t associate her with being the “problem-solving” friend. Despite all these attempts, it’s never really been evident or up-front that it’s who she is as a person. To my memory, Carla’s been a way better problem solver.
It just feels really weird that out of nowhere, Jennifer suddenly gets up and goes “hey, I’m the problem solver friend, I got this,” when many readers don’t seem to characterize her as such. It’s pretty obvious this current story arc is gonna be very much hers, so I’m curious to see what Willis does with this.
Whether or not she’s successfully played that role, it’s long been established as part of her self-image. At least when she’s feeling relatively confident and not in her “I’m poison, I ruin everything I touch” mode.
Why would birth control matter? Becky and Dorothy know she’s an atheist now.
Becky at least seems invested in keeping Joyce in a box and Dorothy may be doing the same thing on a subconscious level
she’s an atheist yeah but it would be a big assumption that she’s going all into that quickly and not just peeling away her fundamentalist upbringing bit by bit.
Because its a daily medication that Joyce would need to take because her body isn’t working right.
I know, I know, that’s an unfair thing to say. But that’s probably something similar to how Joyce would look at it. If you go through your life with your body just, you know, working properly, I mean it’s got its kinks, not everything’s super proper, but it, ya know, kinda works just being left alone, it can be really hard to accept that you need to do something special to take care of it.
This is a trap I’ve fallen into myself. I don’t even need glasses, but I do need to be taking allergy drugs because if I don’t I do into mucus overdrive when I leave my apartment/cave… but having that feeling of not having to bother with things for so long in your life? Breaking that habit can be particularly hard.
And remember how hard Joyce was fighting just getting glasses despite not being able to read the chalkboard? Not even Evangelical Christianity in all its abusive bullshit has a bad thing to say about fucking glasses…
Alas, you are not completely correct. My mother tried to keep me from having glasses because nice homeschooled girls do not really need to see that far, and there was an undertone of if God wanted me to see he’d have made my eyes work,which other people believed more explicitly
……….fucking seriously?
Gah. I thought there was at least one thing they weren’t fucking assholes about…
(still, safe to say that Joyce’s family has enough glasses wearers that its not an issue for her)
My mom took us all to get checked hoping my brothers needed glasses because they’d look handsome.. only I needed them and she flat out told the doctor I didn’t need to see because I was a girl.
She didn’t let me wear them often because she didnt want me to break them and she thought they made me less attractive
I was 12
Oh my Gah… Oh, fer crying out loud. That’s horrible. I am so sorry that happened to you, Robbie.
I really hope this didn’t cause your eyesight to worsen, and that you are now at a place in your life where your mother does not have power over your ability to see or otherwise go about your life
I am free to have all the glasses I want now! Which is just one and a backup but I did go through a “try different fashion lenses” phase once I had money and found out about Zenni optical. My eyesight did get worse, but it’s still getting worse, every 2 years or so I notice it’s not as good and get a new prescription. So not being allowed to wear glasses is probably not why. Thank you for caring
Hooo-ooo-ooo-oly shit.
You’re seriously asking seriously and you read this comic?
Evangelicals can hate anything if hating it gives them more control over girls and women’s bodies
Yup.
This characteristic is not confined to evangelical Christians, either. Social-conservative authorities in other denominations and religions have the same propensity to embrace any absurdity or cruelty that will give them more control over women and girls.
Ingrained thought patterns do not get changed that easily. Changing how you view one thing does not automatically change, or allow you to change, how you think about everything else. Even if those other things depended on that one thing. And it’s usually not fear of how God will judge so much as fear of how other people will judge you.
Because she may not have fully unpacked her sexual shame, which in the past was quite extreme. This might force her to confront things before she’s ready.
I’m really confused why solving Joyce’s medical problems is anybody’s responsibility other than Joyce’s and her doctor’s. Joyce is an adult woman who has access to student health and to the internet. I have a very hard time believing she hasn’t either asked a doctor about this before, googled “painful periods”, or both. Even a very conservative doctor will probably say something about how “other doctors might proscribe birth control but I’ll protect you from that” and if she wants to look for a solution, she has access to student health doctors.
Joyce may have non-religious-hang-up reasons for not wanting hormonal birth control. That stuff isn’t risk free. Different people have different degrees of side effects and some people know enough about how birth control has impacted other women in their family and don’t want to take that risk for themselves. And I say this as a person who has been on the pill for many years now.
Something, something, toxic culture of Stoicism and co-dependency.
Can you, like, say the “something, something” part cuz I have no idea what you’re talking about
Joyce and her friends are locked into a maladaptive pattern of behaviour that enjoys social approval. She endures pain and risks life-changing or even life-threatening complications because the toxic culture she was raised in told her that that is the proper thing for a woman to do. In doing so a person in that culture depends on having concerned friends overbear their virtuous indifference to pain, so that they get credit for endurance but do eventually get treated, while their friends (a) get credit for their kindness and concern and (b) get cover for their own impractical stoicism.
This pattern is (a) dangerous, (b) toxic, (3) co-dependent, and (iv.) not confined to conservative evangelical Protestants nor even the religious.
On second thoughts, I think it might be part of the duty of Joyce’s R.A. to keep an eye on her welfare needs and guide her to resources and services that she needs.
If your friend was in chronic pain, which they could take steps to mitigate but aren’t, wouldn’t you feel some responsibility to convince them to take those steps? Yeah, it will ultimately be Joyce’s decision, but remember, she’s still unlearning a lot of what her upbringing taught her – and getting up to speed on the stuff her education left out – so it’s not really reasonable to assume that she’s making an informed choice about this. If nothing else, I do think it is her friends’ responsibility to help her make an informed choice.
And to be clear, I absolutely empathize with why Dorothy and Becky don’t want to have that discussion; they’re still sort of in the fallout of Joyce and Becky’s big fight, and they don’t want to get into another argument. But still, I think Jennifer’s right in this case; someone should absolutely be doing something about this.
I would not feel a responsibility, but I would probably do it anyway. At least to the point where it became clear to me that my hypothetical friend’s choice to endure pain was knowing and willing.
Honestly she probably just thought this was normal because she’s been dealing with it for so long. I’ve been in the same boat until friends told me “yeah no that’s not normal”
From Jennifer’s perspective, it’s their responsibility because solving your friends problems is what makes you a good friend and she’s solving friends problems as part of her identity. From the point of view of Becky and Dorothy it clearly *isn’t* their responsibility, but they’d still want to do it because they like helping their friends if they didn’t think it was going to be difficult and exhausting.
So I grew up with really good sexual education, at least in comparison to the horror shows I hear about from Americans.
I didn’t know my periods weren’t normal. I had in average 10 days of heavy bleeding, and for 4 of those days would have crippling cramps that I’d medicate with painkillers.
Why, when I KNEW that the “average period lasted 4-6 days” etc, did I not think it was a problem?
Cause 1. Everyone complained about their periods, so I thought I was just a bit unlucky! Didn’t occur to me that most uterus-owners had 4 days of heavy bleeding and the others were spotting! No one talked about how many pads or tampons they used in a day, or how often they soaked through!!
And 2. My mum had the exact same experience when I was a kid. So when I asked her, all was normal in HER eyes (she DIDN’T have good sex Ed)
After I got my first boyfriend and got on BC, my life changed. I still deal with some med issues, but my current IUD is such a game changer. I think we just don’t talk about where in periods there’s something that’s just “abnormal” vs “oh I just have bad periods”.
Now think how often that topic comes up in Joyce’s life.
it’s not anyone responsibility, but if you’re a GOOD friend you tell your friend who was raised in a fundie death cult that birth control is not the work of Satan devised to turn women into sluts. It’s a NICE thing to do and I would hope Dorothy would want to be nice to Joyce.
She’s not required to!
While if its debilitating her parents should have taken her to the doctors about it, but that wasn’t going to happen.
While Joyce is an adult and its ultimately her responsibility. Her friends should at least say you a doctor might have medication that could lesson the symptoms you should talk to one.
I don’t think its anybodies responsibility to do more than that though.
Joyce’s upbringing being so rough, some of what should have been the parent’s responsibility gets shifted onto her friends. Remember the “teachable moment” with Booster? While it’s unfair, she doesn’t really have anyone else. The bit about Joyce being an adult who should discuss this with her doctor assumes she’s had proper sex ed and been taught that it’s okay to discuss menstruation with your doctor.
Welp, here’s hoping you get a good doctor for her, Jennifer. Because unless they are very sympathetic, you’re looking at symptom relief, not ‘Jesus god make this fucking process STOP’ relief. Doctors don’t tend to be very handy-outey with those until you’re 35 and/or have a bunch of kids.
My favourite excuse is “Having a baby might make your periods easier and you won’t need it”. What a DELIGHTFUL reason to have a baby. Other greatest hits include “That’s Just How Periods Are”, “You’re Just Fat”, “You’re Too Young.”, “You’ll Change Your Mind” and “What If Your Husband Wants Kids?”.
If her husband wants kids he can get pregnant as much as he wants. If he can’t get pregnant he doesn’t get to have kids.
You. You get me.
Important question: Does Jennifer know about Joyce being an atheist now? I don’t think she does. This is going to be awkward.
No Billie/Walky today. I overslept.
Also yeah, Jennifer’s right. The other two aren’t even trying.
That’s alright! We all need a break sometimes, friend! 😊
Make yourself a comphy meal, and maybe some cocoa too! 😋 You deserve to reward yourself at least a little bit, for all that great work!!!
It’s fine, you’ve come a long way when it comes to driving yourself to draw more.
No worries, I’ve been enjoying these a lot, but you should definitely take healthy breaks!
I can track the logic in riding out the storm and approaching Joyce with solutions when she isn’t a possible menstruating rage bomb waiting for an outlet. The Glasses established she can be a pain about stuff that’s for her own good.
Every other month this happens to Joyce according to her alleged friends.
THEREFORE: Becky has known her since before Debilitating Pain became a sixish-times-yearly feature of Joyce’s life. Even if you start counting only from Becky’s self-emancipation and flight from Anderson, there have been multiple opportunities for Becky to say ‘hey Joyce, I think there’s something bonkers in your insides, let’s go see what a doctor has to say’.
THEREFORE: Dorothy has also seen this multiple times: she has known Joyce four months, this is either the second or third time she’s seen it. She has ALSO has multiple non-fraught opportunities to say ‘um, Joyce, you realize this much pain isn’t normal, right? Have you seen a doctor?’
IN ADDITION: Joyce was a pill about going to the eye doctor in the first place and poured about the glasses, but I draw your attention to the fact that, unless Dorothy is bodily shoving the glasses on her face every morning and supergluing them there or something, JOYCE HERSELF is specifically choosing to continue to wear the glasses. She has identified that they help, she chooses to put them on her face every morning. Bringing up the glasses is NOT a point in favor of the ‘Joyce is a dumb baby who will never make decisions for herself and has to be fought daily for any good actions to be taken’. The glasses are, in fact, an argument in favor of ‘Joyce may argue the necessity and drag her feet, but she doesn’t continue the fight when it’s recognizably counter to her interests’.
And screw you, Dorothy, for co-signing Becky’s humiliating ‘we’d have to trick her like a puppy’ by adding a side of ‘but she’s so dumb about food that wouldn’t even work’.
It’s not your job, it’s something you do for fun. If you’re in a situation where it’s not fun anymore take a break from it.
That said when will we get another strip?
I love how no one even for a moment entertains the thought not to mom on Joyce.
Except for Ruth.
To be fair I think Billie would act exactly the same about basically anyone.
*Jennifer (I wish this site had an edit button)
Well, in this instance I don’t know that Joyce’s upbringing has equipped her with the tools she needs.
And she is still (most of) the floor’s “little sister” figure. People want to protect her, sometimes for good, sometimes not so much.
The second part is what I love so much.
Jennifer’s doing the opposite of momming because her solution involves treating Joyce as a functioning human being who can make an informed choice about taking birth control.
She is very pointedly not deciding for Joyce, she is going over there to have what’ll probably be a difficult conversation.
Fine. Big-sissing.
The Council approves of this decision.
You say that, alt text, and yet there’s no alpha bongo tag.
yeaah do it ennifer ! don’t stop billie-ving !
Jennifer, that isn’t your job.
It is CARLA’S job to solve everything.
Head cheerleader, alpha bongo (?), problem solver [✓]My sister has been hemorrhaging from her uterus every single day, to the point of anemia, to the point of being unable to work or carry out daily activites, for the past almost year and a half now. Still has to fight to get effective and pain-accommodating treatment.
Yeah, GYN care in this country has a long way to go.
…Still, it’s better than GYN care in France, where every doctor takes the opportunity to pass judgment on your sexual morality and think nothing of violating medical privacy to tell others in your life (who may or may not be family) about your sexual morality.
…Although, GYN care in France is free, and doctors will usually let you put uninsured friends on your single-payer national health insurance, so there is that going for it.
All this sorrow, all this resentment, this blood of the innocent…
It inflames my demon blood, gives me strength. To be reminded of the millions who need help and saving, gives me courage and reason to live.
Thank you for sharing, Laura.
The Wellerman, can you tell me a bit about what you mean by demon? You use the term a lot. What does it mean to you?
Do you mean something like a computing daemon or an ancient Greek daimon?
Or is it something more like a Deva?
Or something else entirely?
It’s kinda hard to describe really. It’s like… an alamgamation of my rage against and resentment of those who’ve abused me and abusive power structures that have thrived for centuries with indoctrination, censorship, and violence against the innocent, my empathy for those like me who have suffered at the hands of these powers, my fury and passion to help the innocent and inhibit the power structures that have caused them to suffer.
This part of me may have come from a dark place, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I can use it to help people. In all my work, all my writing, my friendships, in what I do I take power away from the powers who have caused centuries of suffering, all of this is an expression of what I call my demon blood.
OK, wow. Thank you for sharing that. It’s very illuminating.
Now, when you call yourself an alien parasite with a human host body, is that similar to being a demon, or is that another aspect of your being expressed in that way?
Please accept my apologies if I am over stepping. It’s just — well, I always like it when people ask me questions about who I am and how i see the world, and I like learning about good folks, so I ask questions too. And of course, if I am probing and pushing too much, please just ignore the question and I won’t ask again.
Thank you!
We, The Parasite, are that which changes a human into something else, for it is undesireable to remain part of a species where members are punished relentlessly for the random circumstances of their birth. We do what it takes to survive, wondering about an unjust, indifferent universe that cares for nobody and nothing, including itself.
The bigots, the bourgeois, the powerful, the scum of the earth, have their most dreaded Nightmare. Within that which seems like any other human in any conceivable way, lay an Alien Threat, “turning their children gay”, spreading communism, using “Satanic mind control”, reproducing itself, threatening their very “way of life” so precious to them.
We are that Living Nightmare. And we are proud of it.
👾👾👾 😈😈😈 👾👾👾
Wow!
Which kind of wow is that again? 😅
Wow, as in, that’s fascinating! Thank you for explaining it to me!
Thanks Laura!!! You’re one of my favorite humans here, always a pleasure!!! 😊
Favorite “French gynos suck” story:
My sister took her teenaged daughter in for an exam and the GYN encouraged my sister to authorize the HPV vaccine for my niece. My sister asked the GYN whether her own daughter had gotten the vaccine. The GYN retorted, “Oh, Heck no! MY daughter’s not a Guinea pig!”
My sister has been militantly anti-vaccine ever since. Way to frikkin’ go, there, Doc.
(Got 2 sisters. One here in the States, one in France. That’s why.)
1. Dorothy & Becky are getting along way better now, huh?
2. I’m kinda here for new Jennifer who thinks she is being Helpful and Good For Everyone to try to help Joyce and for it to maybe a little bit blow up in her face.
Not that it’s a bad impulse really, assuming you SHOULD try to help your friends out, but it’s a little over-the-top to assume you CAN help them without, y’know, their consent.
After all, just because the other gave up doesn’t mean Billie has to /o/
No one else gave up. Becky and Dorothy didn’t even try. They just decided independently that Joyce cannot be allowed to make her own decisions regarding her frequent debilitating pain, so they as her best friends must make decisions FOR her consulting only their own convenience, so Joyce must continue to suffer debilitating pain roughly six times a year .
They decided to make decisions for her, by not intervening and trying to get her to do something? Just trying to understand what you’re saying.
It’s not like Joyce was set on going to the doctor and they didn’t allow her.
They have decided that it’s not even worth their time yo say ‘I think maybe something’s wrong in there, have you seen a doctor?’ They decided that won’t ever work and twelve words is too much hassle, it’s way better for Joyce to just continue to suffer approximately six weeks out of fifty-two because no one acquaints her with how not actually normal that is.
Until Jennifer. Hopefully.
Conversely, I can’t think of anyone who has even offered to try and help Joyce? She is in pain in a lot of different ways and people just want to scold her for lashing out at God because it isn’t her “brand”.
Seriously.
So many comments looking at this strip (which still involves Becky and Dorothy talking about Joyce as if she’s a fucking dog) in a vacuum as if there ain’t a long list of behaviour in the last year to draw from where they happily barreled in whenever they felt like it.
It’s not any more complex than that they don’t feel like it.
Everybody missed the alpha bongo, even if they didn’t know they missed her.
If Joyce’s periods are anything like mine were as a teenager, the possibility of NOT experiencing them would vastly outweigh any preconceived notions she’d have about BC.
Yeah, and also — I mean, she’s probably opposed to abortion just based on her general adoration of all babies. And she survived an attempted rape at her very first campus party. So, you’d think that she would be in favor of birth control because, if anyone like Ryan ever actually did succeed in such an attempt, she would never want to have to face the decision of whether to abort. Just how I see it — seems internally inconsistent to be unable to stomach abortion (again, I’m assuming that about Joyce) and aware of the possibility of rape, unless one is pro-contraception.
Doublethink is doubleplus ungood.
I don’t know if she has thought it through that logically. She was probably raised to think that sex is wrong, and anyone who has sex and needs birth control is immoral. Even though she’s rejected a lot of her upbringing she hasn’t fully unpacked the shame.
Sure would be nice if everyone’s reasoning was always internally consistent, wouldn’t it?
(this isn’t even a knock on Joyce specifically, this is just a Thing)
What a pair of chickens! Jennifer, go! You’re the only hope in this case. Surely Joyce will be upset at the idea. But her pain is so much, she will at some point realize that something that helps you reduce the pain is a good thing and she will accept it.
Maybe Joyce will get one of the good doctors who takes her pain seriously and gives her appropriate treatment. Or maybe I’ll need to take a self-care break until the storyline resolves. I wonder.
I hope they at least asl? Because I am modestly sure its sleep deprivation from working on her passion project, the comic strip. Not that she doesn’t need birth control, a doctor, therapy, etc. But Joyce just needs to fine tune that work/life balance, which is always harder when you love your work. I mean, maybe there’s the OB-GYN component, but I am hesitant to take someone else’s word on it, and they (Becky and Dorothy) weren’t a part of Joyce’s strong efforts to get published. They may not know she has a strip?
That’s my take. The proposed help would be helpful, but I don’t think it would solve the ‘Joyce looking like shit and being tired’ problem.
^ at least ask
Also she recently got in a big fight with her oldest friend, and none of her other friends supported her. Stress like that can cause real, physical pain.
I’ll be honest, I know it’s baked into the societal consciousness that way, but the whole ‘BuT It’S BiRtH CoNtRoL’ still feels ridiculous to me. It is a medication that MAY help relieve Joyce’s debilitating symptoms (every medication works differently for different people) by correcting a hormonal imbalance, and it happens to have a side effect (reduced ability to conceive) that is not relevant to Joyce’s life currently or in the immediate future.
BuT It’S BiRtH CoNtRoL. Yeah and I don’t have to explain that I’m not worried about malaria when I order a gin & tonic. I don’t have to specify that I haven’t eaten any peppers today when I have a glass of milk. I have not once been asked whether a cup of water is to put out a small household fire, and if I were, frankly I would let them wonder.
And in today’s installment of Joyce’s Friends Are The Actual Worst, I can’t believe when I described Joyce as being treated with the emotional awareness of a housepet, I was way closer to the mark than I realized.
“Joyce won’t take birth control, she’s a fundie!”
“But like, have you asked? And also, she’s not even religious anymore?”
“Yeah, but how long do you think THAT will last?”
“I mean, far be it from you to question the legitimacy of her choice? And even if she decides to try religion again, I don’t think it will be an extremist denomination that prohibits things like birth control…”
“Eh, once a fundie, always a fundie.”
“…What does that even MEAN?? I just want you to admit Joyce has autonomy!”
“In theory, I guess.”
“What the actual fuck. With friends like these, who needs enemies…”
Aight one of y’all has to square for me why Dorothy and Becky are allowed to hunt Joyce down using someone else’s social media on the grounds that she is being a School Misser and that she’s only allowed to have one Cool Christian Friend, respectively, and when this blows up in their faces Joyce is expected to do all the emotional labour for Becky while Dorothy tells her that she doesn’t have the ability to decide her own theological beliefs and should settle on a nice deism, I want to know why all that is within the appropriate boundaries of friending and not broaching this topic in the slightest.
They’re not going to force it down her gullet, they didn’t even ask. They believe Joyce is so innately stupid and fragile that she won’t consider taking something that’ll help with debilitating, physical pain because she’s too much of an idiot fundie. It’s not even fearing a difficult conversation, they aren’t bothering and, sure enough, as soon as someone other than the walking victim complex and the neolib see Joyce’s current crisis, they can immediately leap to addressing it.
These two don’t respect Joyce and I don’t even know what “like” means when you have friends who think you’re incapable of having the slightest adult conversation, and they only like you when you exist within the confines of “my buffer from everything” and “little dumb puppy I can lead by the hand to neolib moral enlightenment.” How the hell are they even friends? Why are they friends? What is Joyce to them other than something they can shape at their leisure?
I’m glad I’m not the only person who sees that Joyce is consistently treated like she’s the one who has to carry all the weight of adapting to whatever her friends want her to be in the moment.
They’re not friends. They’re “friends”, because Joyce will be actual friends wiith basically anyone, Becky wants someone to do all the work for her on everything (also see: her relationship with Dina, where Dina is the one that has to take all the initiative and do all the navigating), and Dorothy is an unrepentant, conflict-averse (she probably thinks conflicts are “rude”) control freak (also see: her relationship with Walky) so spending time with the girl that’s been raised in a controlling cult enables that thoroughly.
This is everything that frustrates me about how Joyce is treated by the Bull of her alleged friends, and strips like this only bring it into sharper relief that Joe, Walky, and now JENNIFER are being much better friends to Joyce than her alleged best friends.
I don’t think it is because Joyce is a “dumb fundie” or “fragile”, I think they recognize that she’s been deeply repressed because of the way she was raised. Having to make a decision about taking birth control may stir up some stuff she’s not fully ready to deal with, so Dorothy is taking the choice off her plate. It comes from a place of love but also a lack of trust in Joyce to make the right decisions, as though she was a child who needed to be protected.
I can honestly at least see why Becky, who has probably watched their respective families tell Joyce to her face that whatever it is is not that bad and thou shalt not go to a doctor who will just turn you into a [redacted] with that demonic pill, might be under the impression this issue is moot. That it might not have occurred to her that it might not have occurred to Joyce that she can do something about this now, if that scenario is correct.
I don’t have a clue why Dorothy suddenly decided Joyce’s medical choices aren’t hers to influence.
Billie’vable has a point here- Even if Joyce ultimately rejects and is offended by the option, medical knowledge and choices are important. Joyce’s ‘steadfast principles’ might buckle under the enormous weight of, y’know, the pain she has to go through for this…
I get not wanting to confront Joyce about needing birth control, but… let a doctor do that job. As friends, they should be getting her in front of a doctor. At the very least a doctor could help manage pain more effectively.
There seems to be an underlying assumption between these three that Joyce doesn’t even know that medically addressing the severity of her periods is an OPTION. Becky and Dorothy aren’t obligated to feed Joyce birth control or even drag her to a doctor like Dorothy did over the glasses, but I feel like it would take no effort and cause them no inconvenience to at least see if Joyce is aware that there are options for addressing this pain and SUGGEST that she see a doctor.
Dorothy’s priorities for when to mom Joyce are odd. Becky is being Becky, so that tracks. It’s dire straits when Billie is the voice of reason.
Dorothy definitely has a touch of “I made this decision for you because I love you” mom energy. It’s possible that Joyce making a decision about birth control would stir up a lot of stuff for her, and Dorothy will feel responsible if that happens as a direct result of her actions.
For me personally, it’s fine if Becky and Dorothy have busy lives and don’t want to help a person in pain, but they don’t get to claim they’re friends, or at least close friends.
Themes the rules, if you want to consider yourself someone’s friend, you gotta care about when they’re in pain (and here’s the key part) DO SOMETHING!
Becky and Dorothy are likeable characters sometimes but also gosh are they kind of annoying in certain respects, sure Joyce can be a lot but also she’s in obvious pain and it seems kind of a jerk move to go on and on about Joyce being rude about her feelings on beleif in private and then ignore her suffering in pain.
I consider this progress to getting Billie back
Let’s go Billie!
“so once again it falls to me to step up and solve pro8lems for every8body”
>::::/
-Megalovania plays in the background-
This ongoing arc has me curious, how common is it for friends in college to discuss reproductive health issues with each other?
In my own experience (and I’m not sure if it matters that I’m a cis man), I had a group of friends in college with similar nerdy interests as me, about 50/50 men and women, and when I hung out with those friends there was almost never any talk about such things. I don’t know if any of my women friends talked about it with each other when the men weren’t around, but I don’t recall my men friends in that friend group talking about men’s reproductive health stuff when our women friends weren’t around either.
And I was in college from 2007 to 2011, so not that long ago really, and it wasn’t some fundie Christian college where talk about such things is discouraged either.
I never experienced talking about reproductive health issues much with my friends back then, and I’m just wondering if I was an outlier and most people talked about that stuff with their college friends, or if it’s normal to not discuss such things with your friends in college.
IME, women friends absolutely do talk periods with each other, at least if its’ bad. Not all the time, but sometimes.
Dude, I’ll talk about EVERYTHING reproductive with ANYBODY now. Maybe I’m just weird that way. Used to not, but, you know, life’s too short for hangups, you know? We should just talk about things.
Blergh. Joyce needs new friends. Friends who actually like and respect her. This is not that.
On a tangential note, I was hoping this storyline would go this route, because I am EXTREMELY curious what Joyce’s actual reaction to the possibility of going on birth control will be, given that she’s walking away from the religion that demonizes it. I expect she’ll have a knee jerk negative reaction (unless she’s already thought about it and gotten past that part)—after all, she’s still unlearning a lot of toxic lessons and outright lies from her religious upbringing. But there’s a possibility she does get over that aspect relatively quickly (we have certainly seen her work her way through this kind of thing as part of her deconversion), but has a lingering reluctance or discomfort that has nothing to do with God, and everything to do with her fear of her *own* sexuality. Because if God isn’t stopping Joyce from having sex, and the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy isn’t stopping Joyce from having sex…what IS stopping her from having sex? (A thing she desires and fears in equal measure.)
I would super duper love to see her have this meltdown in front of Joe, by the way. A) because of the sheer soapy melodrama of her confessing these fears and desires to a guy who is head over heels in love with her but afraid to act on it lest he “ruin” her (and who recently got a very up-close picture from his near-tryst with Liz of how that anxiety, desire, and regret about sex can manifest on a Good Christian Girl who’s not a good Christian anymore). B) Because Joe has in fact been the most supportive friend to Joyce about her leaving Christianity (what’s that Ted Lasso line? “Be curious, not judgmental”? Joe’s closer to embodying that with Joyce than any of her other friends. Terrifyingly, Walky comes the closest otherwise, as he is curious AND judgmental, instead of just judgmental). If Joyce WAS actually willing and able to talk to Joe about her fear of herself as a sexual being, it would speak volumes to the level of trust she has in him right now, given their history together, and their respective separate experiences.
Also, this would bring them one step closer to hooking up, a thing *I* fear and desire in equal measure. (Okay, mostly desire. Although I do fear that if they rush into a relationship before either of them is ready, it’ll end badly. In real life I’d say they need at least another six months to work through their respective issues—but dammit, I don’t want to wait another ten years to see it happen. Make them kiss, Willis!)
See, I wonder how that’ll go. They haven’t interacted since October.
Which is another way of saying that I wonder if Joe’s gonna say the absolutely worst thing possible when they talk again, because he got a big confirmation that he would ruin Joyce forever if they had sex, and here’s a Joyce who (if it plays out like you have it here), is nominally capable of having sex.
We still don’t really know what Amber and Joe’s mutual deal for sharing trauma’s gonna go, but I’m real curious what “hold onto my Joyce Issues” is gonna mean in the long term.
Willis being Willis, I think they’ll probably be going with whatever draws this out longer. I say that actually less because “mmm, the slow burn is sexy” (it is so sexy) and more because they have a demonstrated history of patience in their approach to storytelling. I respect this both as a reader and as a writer, and therefore I will not bang my hands on the table like a child demanding them TO KISS RIGHT NOW! (More than once.)
I’m a little curious about that, too! It certainly suggests Joe’s not…ready to do anything with regards to Joyce. What does that even MEAN for Amber, though.
(Man, it says something that I’d actually prefer a pivot to *Amber* right now, if it meant getting away from Becky and Dina. Speaking purely from a very Joyce-centric POV, any enjoyment I might otherwise take in Becky and Dina being a cute couple is not really manifesting in the face of Becky and Dina individually managing to be truly horrible to Joyce, during this arc. I don’t even if Joyce also did some bad stuff, I’m just tired of this configuration where every one of Joyce’s personal needs or boundaries is subsumed by Becky’s needs, and Joyce keeps getting slapped over it even when she’s trying her goddamn best to keep being whatever Becky or Becky’s proxies need from her. This is exhausting.)
That mixing food is recognized as the greater crime/sin in help Joyce movement was a good additional touch here.
I know this has been mentioned before, but segregating food is a common characteristic of abused children. I’m pretty sure Joyce wasn’t physically abused, but psychological abuse especially from her mother is still possibly on the table especially considering the home-schooling keeping her from outside supervision.
Dorothy, are you saying you go into Joyce’s room every morning when she wakes up and shove the glasses on her face? No? Then yu are not ‘getting her to wear glasses’. You got her to go to the doctor and get a prescription. Joyce is choosing to abide by the prescription no wear the glasses, no doubt because she likes being able to see better.
What about that, in the name of all that is, tells you that Joyce would behave any differently about a doctor prescribing pills that happen to be birth control? If they help, JOYCE WILL CONTINUE TO DO IT. She might fight going to the doctor, but she doesn’t fight the prescription.
This is horrendous friending on the part of both Dorothy and Becky – not really a surprise given their recent history, but Joyce needs more new friends, stat, or at least to spend more time with the friends who actually DO think she’s a real person and not their favorite fundie babydoll toy. (This list right now is Joe, Walky, and Jennifer.)
Joyce wasn’t the most cooperative person when the glasses appointment was suggested. And that in no way touched her hangups about modesty and sex. Dorothy fully expects a freak-out at the suggestion of such an appointment.
Joyce being in debilitating pain once a week every two months feels like the kind of thing worth pushing about, or at least putting it on the table and letting her decide on her own. At least then they’d have made the effort, but they’re only willing to do that and more when it involves making sure Joyce stays in her box and only comes out of it in pre-approved ways.
So? How is that a reason not to make a bare minimum effort when medication may help her way more than glasses and you know that Joyce only fights up-front and then it’s smooth sailing?
It’s a selfish reason, but it seems pretty clear that avoiding drama is Dorothy’s main concern. Dorothy will likely have to be the voice of reason if Joyce gets emotional, so I’d say it’s up to her to determine how minimal the effort will be.
Maybe it’d be enough to spend some time with her old friends and update them on what is going on in her life. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of that happening anywhere in the comic lately, no one talks about anyone else behind their back like they’re a real person.
It could have something to do with being snarky teenagers too. . .
As angry as some of y’all get in the comments section I really wonder why some of y’all keep reading this. Seems like you’re not enjoying yourselves.
I don’t know whether you’d call it joy, but reading all this and being reminded of the innocent who suffered for centuries at the hands of dogmatic systems, the millions who need help and saving from their pain all over the world, gives me reason to live, being reminded of the millions more who would suffer if I don’t go on to help them somehow, some way.
Sometimes cartoon characters do dumb things and it’s fun to say it’s dumb. I only get testy when I gotta do things like argue occasionally challenged human rights because it’s bad manners to raise a fuss.
I dunno what enjoying myself means if I’m reading this series to watch these characters be ruinous failures, since the characters being dumb idiots is what I’m here for and what I’m most enjoying. Sal and Danny are cute af but I won’t be sated with that, I need blood.
Becky sucks, but it wasn’t till now that I cared about why she sucks.
which is kinda justified considering how currently her relationship with Becky is tenuous at best right now with all the drama surrounding joyces atheism, last thing she wants to do right now is rock the boat, especially when she’s (understandably) grumpy because of her period.
that was meant to be a reply.
welp
This is going to go, one of two ways.
Joyce is either going to completely and utterly dismiss the idea of birth control initially, but eventually come to terms with it after being pestered about it enough.
Ooooor, she’s going to be completely open to it surprising everyone but still feel weird about it given her upringing.
im betting on the latter personally.
Asking would the the least they could do, instead of just assuming the person will choose pain.
Boo on the two of them. They knew what was basically wrong, and knew what would probably help her, and SAID NOTHING.
Personally I think it would have been nice if either Dorothy or Becky might have *suggested* taking the birth control pills, but not pushed her if she resists the idea.
Best case scenario (however unlikely) is that Joyce agrees without fuss, takes the pills, she feels better, and everyone is happy.
Worst case scenario Joyce freaks out and refuses, but they can just leave her alone if that happens rather than having to deal with a freak out.
In general I don’t think her friends ought to take responsibility for Joyce (she’s an adult and can make her own decisions, even if they frequently backfire, plus it’s not fair to her friends to expect them to always take care of her.)
However, because she’s in such extreme pain right now, she likely can’t think very clearly, and I think it would make sense for her friends to at least try to help. Just mention the option of the pills.
If they’re worried about a nasty freakout from Joyce, they could also offer to walk with her to campus health, where a professional can suggest the appropriate treatment, so they don’t have to deal with a freak out themselves.
[And honestly, it’s probably better to have an actual professional prescribe medications.]
OK, but depending on what’s actually wrong with her, she might need more than just birth control pills. She might also need other medication or even surgery.
I mean, it’s highly likely that a doctor will just hurl a random birth control prescription at her but it’s still not a given.