I like to think it takes so long because Joyce’s mind still runs with old timey film tech. A little Joyce has to go in and unspool the film before cutting out a section and carefully pasting it back together.
As someone with a near eidetic memory (except for spelling, ’cause dyslexic [yes, related]), and surrounded by OCD types… I so wish I had this, and so glad I don’t.
I want to forget those 30 or 40 (or more) events that my brain keeps replaying at random moments. And yet, I can’t understand how so many people can forget or mix up events just a couple of years (decades) ago.
It is because those events hurt or or is something the brain wants to avoid happening again, so the brain keeps them around so it doesn’t get hurt again. Next time a memory comes up, how this next bit goes varies, but basically tell yourself this isn’t likely to happen again and try to back off the pain of it.
Definitely depends on the person (speaking only from my own POV as a trans person). I have a lot of coworkers who are trying but still slip up often. It’s general the older people who have memory problems. While it’s annoying, I also understand that having a bad memory isn’t the same as doing it out of malice.
I cured my mother. After I had surgery I went to see her in Arizona, Took a long hot bath, got out of the bath and started walking around the house naked. She kept going “put on some clothes!” I told her “why? just us girls” She got really freaked and said “PLEASE!” I told her “can we get my name, sex and gender right?” she said “Anything just put some clothes back on” the few times she started to slip up I just started taking my shirt off. Fixed that stuff right up. 🙂
Might also depend on how often they are with you and how much the habit got ingrained. If it is someone that used to see you a lot before but now only does during the holidays or a very rare phone call (birthday or something), I would expect it to take longer than someone you see every week or day. Since Joyce spent evey day with Jocelyne being her brother growing up, that is a lot of years to build up that habit, especially since they aren’t living together anymore. One food method might be to have a conversation with Joe about childhood stories of herself and Jocelyne eveyday until the correct terms become a habit. It would be better than talking directly to Jocelyne since the you doesn’t have a gender and you don’t commonly use someone’s name in a conversation except at the very start.
I also think that it makes a difference how flustered you are too. Joyce’s brain is focused on Dina and her sister being acquainted enough to share secrets, so it defaults without thinking to what she has called her sister for all of her life until now.
I dunno, I think it still depends. I’m a trans person and am usually great at properly gendering people all of the time, but there are moments where I’ll slip up even if I’ve always gotten it right before.
My mom used to slip up all the time misgendering me, but now she gets it right 98% of the time, but there are still times when she might get it wrong. It’s clearly not out of malice, it’s just an honest mistake.
I feel like if it’s clear someone’s not doing it on purpose and is genuinely trying their best and improving over time, it’s not too big a deal. Even if it’s still uncomfortable for me, it’d be even more uncomfortable to make a big deal about it when someone’s trying their best.
I had a coworker that didn’t change their name when they transitioned and I always had to put effort into getting their pronouns correct when they came up in conversation (but not when they were standing there in person). If I had gotten distracted I could have easily slipped up even 6 months later. I believe they did change their name but only after quitting the job, so I never got the chance to see if that made a difference to my brain.
I find the time it takes me to get the groove is related to how long I’ve known someone.
Someone can be at the very start of their transition and still boy-moding but if I’ve just met them it’ll click right away. If I’ve known someone a long time I need to practice a lot more (I’ll literally practice talking to myself about memories I have together).
It’s harder to incorporate new info if I beat myself up (go into freeze mode like Joyce) than it is if I own that I’ll make mistakes while I’m processing.
I’ve found that remembering their new name can be hard if it’s someone you’ve known for long, but the actual gendering goes pretty quick.
I can’t quote it directly, but there was a tumblr post that put it in words so well, with that you have to recontextualize your entire memory of the person. It’s not “when they were a boy/girl”, it’s just “before New Name transitioned”. As long as you’re stuck in seeing them as having had the wrong gender at one point, you will continue to slip up.
At least in English. You have to worry only about speaking in third person.
In other languages though…
(My friend came out as a boy, and my brain was “okay. We change verb forms for masculine now. Okay. We do that for everyone!”, so I had to look out and not use masculine forms for myself…
Given a pass by the commenters, sure. But some of us respond to these mistakes with 20 lashes of self-flagellation and frankly it kinda helps with not doing it again, so…
It is way easier for me to not misgender someone I’ve met post transition (in fact I’ve never misgendered someone I met post transition) rather than someone whose transition I’ve been through. For someone who has transitioned twice I’ve even gone through the pronouns in the order I’ve been introduced. Habits are really hard to break and my agender lack of understanding of gender doesn’t help.
Joyce would still be at the point where she has to mentally correct herself given she’s only just learned this today. So the slip up when she’s not really thinking and just reacting makes sense.
What’s important now is how she handles the error.
Honestly I sympathize with this. If you get used to referring to somebody a certain way it can take time to reprogram. And it feels awful to slip up. But the solution is not to pretend you didn’t make the mistake Joyce, geez!
Seriously. I get that it’s well-intentioned–and it’s definitely preferable to the transphobic assholes–but after a while, it’s exhausting trying to manage other people’s guilt. Especially when some of them make it all about their feelings instead of yours. A quick self-correction is preferable
It’s an interesting debate because misgendering does happen but the line between honest mistake and bad faith is so thin, as well as processing guilt or apologizing too much. It’s just so easy for transphobes to take advantage at every aspect of the interaction. How does it feel when a loved one vs a stranger misgenders? What if it keeps happening? Is it okay if it’s an honest mistake, how do you decide when it’s too much? I don’t think we’ve really found an elegant solution yet.
Oh definitely fair. I would never pull some apology barrage nonsense, past a certain point you’re clearly just doing that for your own benefit. I remember the one time I got called out for slipping up I just said sorry one time and made sure it was as genuine as I could make it.
…And then I agonized over it for weeks in private. Which might not have been the healthiest way to do things but you know what? The next time I heard her deadname (she was really slow to update her caller ID for some reason) I had reprogrammed myself so effectively I literally didn’t know who was being referred to. So clearly agonizing over your mistakes is the best way to go about things!
Not that it happens much, but when it does my default is to say the correct pronoun and say sorry just the one time after the mistake. I think that’s reasonable, I haven’t had any issues at least.
Ahhhh but THAT one goes right back to the Venerable Bede, who recounts how it was boosted from Old Gaelic by Saxon invaders. A random fact brought to you to celebrate The Internet Never Lies Day 2024.
The term goes back to the Pedantic Wars between Turkey and Greece. Frozen Turkeys were cooked in boiling Greece and the loss of life was catastrophic. Sadly, the act kept repeating throughout the period because Hold My Beer.
If that was the only thing she did then that’s one thing but according to Joe she’s apparently now actively trying to forget she even made the mistake at all by purging her memory… that doesn’t sound really healthy.
some earthlings seem to try to force making it more natural for themselves by basically gaslighting themselves into thinking it was always this way for them to begin with, to varying degrees of efficacy
Joyce will replay the mistake in her head over and over and over and over, catastrophizing it worse and worse with each pass. She’s basically trying to overwrite her mental CCTV footage to prevent that from taking root.
Source: I do the same thing, but it doesn’t always work. It usually wears out eventually, but some core embarrassing moments will pop to the front of your mind at random years later.
My personal experience was that it was really hard for me to reprogram my brain for the first person that transitioned while I knew them, and I kept fucking it up for weeks. The second one was someone I had known for much longer, but it was very quick. Almost like the first experience wasn’t about training my brain that this one person changed their gender status, but rather about training my brain that gender status could be changed in general.
Everyone’s brains are different, though, and I’m certainly not going to claim to have a model neurotypical specimen.
Probably still thinking, “Lil sis is taking this better than I thought.” Like she’s understandably still tripping up (*it’s been 2 minutes) but like you said, she’s trying to correct herself so she’ll do better in the future.
Probably that this could have been much worse. She knows her sister is mostly out of the bubble, but they both grew up fundie and that sort of culturing is hard to shake
I think today’s strip and yesterday’s are happening simultaneously, but we see one after the other because it’s a comic strip and cramming two separate conversations into four or five panels would be a visual cacophony.
It’s a lot easier when one has only known someone as their experienced gender, but if they didn’t know (or were closeted) when one was introduced, then fuck-ups can happen. Neural pathways take time to realign, and it can be particularly bad if they have some strong association as the wrong gender in one’s brain.
Like, for example, being the person who got one pregnant.
Dina: Personally, I have only needed to edit my memories once, to erase large portions of my first and only viewing of The Good Dinosaur. This only took a few seconds. Perhaps I could recommend a few techniques?
As a trans person, this is the right reaction, imo. It’s been minutes since she found iut; I wouldn’t expect perfection immediately, and she’s very apparently trying to correct herself without immediately complaining about how “hard it is to adjust.”
Tomorrow I may eat my words, but in the moment, she’s trying and doing pretty well.
Absolutely, it does take some time, but you have to draw a hard line in the sand. You will get people who after ten or fifteen YEARS who will try and play that card, just no.
Joe – This would cause the biggest freak out all round
Jennifer – The chain mail of missent boob pics might continue?
Danny – Sal would like a word
Robyn – Imagine her horror at sending boob pics to a teacher. Imagine her increased horror when they are used as a cautionary tale by being projected up onto the screen in class.
Walky – All good, until she replies “sorry, those were meant for Joyce”.
I’m torn between sympathizing with Joyce because of how much this reminds me of me, and hating Joyce because of how much it reminds me of parts of me that I hate.
Had to google up that stuff. I stopped reading Garfield around ’86. When I found myself kvetching about it (not unlike how David kvetches about 9 Chickweed Lane), I left it behind me.
I already look like I say shit like “pronouns are for sissies.”
Coworker who was the main source of the anxiety has gotten me used to it and the understanding that the effort is what matters. Doesn’t stop me from feeling like a heel lmao
It’s good, figuring out how to edit memory. I don’t think she’s being inefficient at all. Unless Dina was being sarcastic and referencing Joyce’s capacity for cluelessly brash overconfidence…
But assuming one CAN edit memory, it’s a good skill.
Right now I’m trying to edit out someone I’ve known for the past 33 years. Sometimes you just need a blank space where a person used to be, you know? White noise to fill in the gaps where voices and words have evaporated away from.
“The creature within me is gone.
I am free of it.
And the pain.
I am also:
quite blind.
An equitable trade, Doctor.
Thank you.”
—”Operation: Annihilate”
“How happy is the empty vessel’s lot:
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Each prayer unanswered, but each wish resigned.
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep:
Obedient slumbers that can wake,
and sleep, rather than weep.”
—Adapted from, “Eloisa to Abelard”, by Alexander Pope
Nah Dina probz ain’t being sarcastic, she’s just indirectly referencing many times Joyce has needed to correct herself when interacting with others as she does away with her indoctrination like this
I strongly suspect much of the difference you’re noticing is because of Dina’s reaction.
If Joyce steps in it with Sarah or Dorothy, she’ll get an immediate snarky or tactful correction from them. But Dina mostly doesnt give responses in the same way – so if Joyce says something ignorant in front of Dina, she’ll get a deadpan or coldly disapproving expression and very little dialogue.
The release of tension you would normally experience as the audience member doesn’t come. Joyce is left to panic and try to cover it up, and the drama heightens instead of lessening.
I honestly don’t fault Joyce for this one, if you have called someone by a certain name or pronoun for 18 years, you might slip up just from muscle memory; especially if you’re still training yourself on the new name. Heck, some trans people even misgender/deadname themeselves by accident, because if you go by a name/pronoun for more than one decade, it’s hard to stop responding to it.
It’s entirely possible Dina never even knew Jocelyne by her old name and pronouns, so she never had to do the mental switch like Joyce does.
According to the tags, this sequence is Dina’s first meeting with Jocelyne, so apparently they met sometime offscreen and we’ve got no idea how that went or how Jocelyne coming out to Becky went.
I know. While the main course of action is to cringe with Joyce’s reaction to accidentally misgendering her sis, I’m mostly squeeing that they’ve only been dating for, what, about a few weeks in comic time, but he knows her so well already!! Given, Joyce was confiding in him way before this, BUT STILL!!!!! Who knew that under all that misogynistic-spewing braggadocio was a kind and caring boyfriend?
Jocelyne told the people she felt safe to tell in the order she felt safe (and had opportunity) to tell them. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, she didn’t owe Joyce dibs on the information.
Correct, but at the same time I can’t blame Joyce for feeling how she feels. She just needs to handle it maturely. If this is all she does then she’s still handled it pretty well.
Funny story, a month back I had a dream where I could not remember my own name. Just started giving old Internet handles to this girl who wanted to know who I was. Then 20 minutes after I woke up the dentist called and I gave them my old boy name without thinking. Probably this was just because I’d been very focused on writing for a few days and spent all my time being different characters in my head. But anyway I legally changed my name some eight years ago, when I had been pretty sure I was trans for eight years before that. You’re never immune to misgendering someone, but trust me, it’s always super obvious who means well and who doesn’t no matter how they use terminology.
There’s the autism “oh god I did a minor social faux paus, I now will be crippled by shame for the next year, give me a minute while I compress all of that into the next two minutes so I can digest it as fast as possible”
Just keep a journal, but write things down as you want to remember them. Then, when you go back and look at old memories, you’ll be like, “Oh yea, I remember that!” and remember it the incorrect way you want to remember it.
Don’t do this with really bad experiences because pretending you weren’t traumatized doesn’t actually help you not be affected by trauma. (From my experience, anyway.)
This (except the rewriting memory part) is exactly how you learn pronouns. It’s okay, Joyce.
Yes, being misgendered hurts even if it’s by accident, but i cut those who’ve known me my whole life the most slack. My parents have not met a trans person before me, AND they’ve probably talked about me more than anyone else in the world, so it is the hardest for them to change their speech patterns.
They’ve gone from not noticing misgendering at all (not cool, i did speak up about them please trying harder) to overly emphasizing the correct pronoun, to “she said……i mean, HE said” and now to mostly getting it right and self-correcting if not. And this is good enough for me, from them.
Rephrasing her sentence with “SHE told you” is exactly the way to go. Try not to lean into the last panels so much, most trans people are very ready to move on from the misstep once the corrected version was said out loud, and don’t want you wallowing in apologies and reassurances that you really really see them as their gender. Self-correct, move on.
And yes, practicing helps. You can practice when talking about her to other people or to yourself. Just keep phrasing it until it no longer takes effort! <3
Yeah, it’s weird though because they interact like they’ve met, rather than just a phone conversation Dina happened to be there for, and it’s hard to figure when that might have happened.
Oh I did the same thing when my sister came out to me. Most trans folks do give others a bit of grace when it comes to new pronouns tbf Joyce youre okay
Yeah, I went to a friend of a friends Halloween party and was not aware of their new pronouns (I of course apologized profusely and was lucky to be invited back the same year for a Christmas party)
Oooo, yeah, been there. It’s extra horrible if you used to think that gender and biological sex were synonyms and that people “can’t just choose to be whatever they want,” because the only way you got to THIS place is then realizing just how bigoted you were acting. You can’t just roll with it and be like “Well, oops, sorry, I meant ‘she,’ ha ha I’m new to this.” It feels like you just accidently dropped a racial slur.
At some point this comic’s gotta acknowledge that OCD/some other anxiety disorder is at least a good of an explanation of Joyce’s eccentricities as autism lol
Oh, it could for sure be both as well, and that’s maybe even a more likely explanation than either individually. Just, you know, we’ve gotten a lot of explicit “Joyce has autism” acknowledgements from the story, and not a lot of “Joyce has severe OCD” acknowledgements.
A lot of her most prevalent “autistic” traits are also things that read pretty well as compulsions, and they often come out most strongly in response to some anxiety trigger.
Like, this comic reads much more like Joyce having a compulsion because of moral OCD than an autism thing or a fundie-neurosis thing (with the acknowledgement that both of those things would have contributed to that). Or the insistence on accuracy in how her bible stuff is drawn, or spending time ironing out inconsistencies in the text are pretty obsessive. Even the classic “No foods touching” is pretty obsessive/compulsive.
Idk, just smth I’ve been thinking about since the autism diagnosis referral plot, and this one’s the first one that’s really OCD since then.
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“MAYBE IF I FREAK AND BLURT OUT THE RIGHT THING LOUDLY ENOUGH IT WILL OVERWRITE THE ERROR”
THE PROFILE PHOTO PROPHECY HAS BEEN MET
ALL HAIL, ANA BECOMES CHRONISTIC ONCE AGAIN FOR A BRIEF MOMENT
the strip comes first?
what’s it gonna be
a rock paper scissors and a
ONE TWO THREE !!! XD
SHIRLEY CHRONISTIC IS BORN
Don’t call her Surely.
The time traveler has arrived, as it has been foretold.
SYSTEM ERROR MEMORY REFORMATTING IN PROGRESS 10% COMPLETE
I like to think it takes so long because Joyce’s mind still runs with old timey film tech. A little Joyce has to go in and unspool the film before cutting out a section and carefully pasting it back together.
Wearing an old-timey straw hat, a vertical striped red and white vest, and a very fake mustache. To banjo music.
Hammer dulcimer music.
Plus those arm thingies. You know, garters for biceps.
Gotta keep the shirt sleeves from sliding down and covering up the hands.
My work uniform has those because they’re too cheap to give us winter and summer shirts!
My parents used a pair of those as their engagement rings
Ragtime piano.
Or draw over each frame with a Sharpie?
at least she didn’t BSOD this time XD
perhaps Dina can give her some pro tips? ^^
*plays “reconstruct” by Photay on hacked muzak*
At least she’s not throwing herself at Jocelyne’s feet to apologize and lament her failure and how she’s a bad sister and will get it right forever…
Ohdip. I got Sal? Finally, I’m cool!
Congratulations!
Congrats!✨🥳
Woops! Accidentally reported this comment 😱. Sorry! (Missclicked)
Joyce mentally edits out all moments where she makes a mistake?
So for her this comic progresses in real time, then.
As someone with a near eidetic memory (except for spelling, ’cause dyslexic [yes, related]), and surrounded by OCD types… I so wish I had this, and so glad I don’t.
I want to forget those 30 or 40 (or more) events that my brain keeps replaying at random moments. And yet, I can’t understand how so many people can forget or mix up events just a couple of years (decades) ago.
It is because those events hurt or or is something the brain wants to avoid happening again, so the brain keeps them around so it doesn’t get hurt again. Next time a memory comes up, how this next bit goes varies, but basically tell yourself this isn’t likely to happen again and try to back off the pain of it.
i feel this so hard
is one of the reasons so glad I discovered a med regime which has proven at all effective T_T
Most neurotypical types are pretty dang good at self-editing memories, given time. Mebbe a bit more difficult for neurodiverse types.
HURR HURR HURR
Oh dammit you beat me to it.
Of course I’m five hours late so I can’t really complain.
[*mumble grumble raggum fraggum*]
I kinda feel like Joyce can be given a pass here on the misgendering. Like it’s been minutes at most?
Yeah, nonbinary here, and I would not be offended either as a reader or as Jocelyn. Give her brain a bit to compile here.
From us binary t folks its really irritating It annoys me as much now as it did in 2000.
My view was 90 days, anything after that and you are just being a dick.
Definitely depends on the person (speaking only from my own POV as a trans person). I have a lot of coworkers who are trying but still slip up often. It’s general the older people who have memory problems. While it’s annoying, I also understand that having a bad memory isn’t the same as doing it out of malice.
I cured my mother. After I had surgery I went to see her in Arizona, Took a long hot bath, got out of the bath and started walking around the house naked. She kept going “put on some clothes!” I told her “why? just us girls” She got really freaked and said “PLEASE!” I told her “can we get my name, sex and gender right?” she said “Anything just put some clothes back on” the few times she started to slip up I just started taking my shirt off. Fixed that stuff right up. 🙂
Incredible work
Positively Pavlovian Dana W.
Sometimes you work with what you have.
Might also depend on how often they are with you and how much the habit got ingrained. If it is someone that used to see you a lot before but now only does during the holidays or a very rare phone call (birthday or something), I would expect it to take longer than someone you see every week or day. Since Joyce spent evey day with Jocelyne being her brother growing up, that is a lot of years to build up that habit, especially since they aren’t living together anymore. One food method might be to have a conversation with Joe about childhood stories of herself and Jocelyne eveyday until the correct terms become a habit. It would be better than talking directly to Jocelyne since the you doesn’t have a gender and you don’t commonly use someone’s name in a conversation except at the very start.
I also think that it makes a difference how flustered you are too. Joyce’s brain is focused on Dina and her sister being acquainted enough to share secrets, so it defaults without thinking to what she has called her sister for all of her life until now.
I dunno, I think it still depends. I’m a trans person and am usually great at properly gendering people all of the time, but there are moments where I’ll slip up even if I’ve always gotten it right before.
My mom used to slip up all the time misgendering me, but now she gets it right 98% of the time, but there are still times when she might get it wrong. It’s clearly not out of malice, it’s just an honest mistake.
I feel like if it’s clear someone’s not doing it on purpose and is genuinely trying their best and improving over time, it’s not too big a deal. Even if it’s still uncomfortable for me, it’d be even more uncomfortable to make a big deal about it when someone’s trying their best.
yeah i usually give grace to my relatives who’ve been calling me different stuff for 20+ years lol im just happy they support me at all
I had a coworker that didn’t change their name when they transitioned and I always had to put effort into getting their pronouns correct when they came up in conversation (but not when they were standing there in person). If I had gotten distracted I could have easily slipped up even 6 months later. I believe they did change their name but only after quitting the job, so I never got the chance to see if that made a difference to my brain.
I find the time it takes me to get the groove is related to how long I’ve known someone.
Someone can be at the very start of their transition and still boy-moding but if I’ve just met them it’ll click right away. If I’ve known someone a long time I need to practice a lot more (I’ll literally practice talking to myself about memories I have together).
It’s harder to incorporate new info if I beat myself up (go into freeze mode like Joyce) than it is if I own that I’ll make mistakes while I’m processing.
I’ve found that remembering their new name can be hard if it’s someone you’ve known for long, but the actual gendering goes pretty quick.
I can’t quote it directly, but there was a tumblr post that put it in words so well, with that you have to recontextualize your entire memory of the person. It’s not “when they were a boy/girl”, it’s just “before New Name transitioned”. As long as you’re stuck in seeing them as having had the wrong gender at one point, you will continue to slip up.
At least in English. You have to worry only about speaking in third person.
In other languages though…
(My friend came out as a boy, and my brain was “okay. We change verb forms for masculine now. Okay. We do that for everyone!”, so I had to look out and not use masculine forms for myself…
Given a pass by the commenters, sure. But some of us respond to these mistakes with 20 lashes of self-flagellation and frankly it kinda helps with not doing it again, so…
An hour, at most.
A lifetime of habit inertia doesn’t turn on a dime.
It is way easier for me to not misgender someone I’ve met post transition (in fact I’ve never misgendered someone I met post transition) rather than someone whose transition I’ve been through. For someone who has transitioned twice I’ve even gone through the pronouns in the order I’ve been introduced. Habits are really hard to break and my agender lack of understanding of gender doesn’t help.
Joyce would still be at the point where she has to mentally correct herself given she’s only just learned this today. So the slip up when she’s not really thinking and just reacting makes sense.
What’s important now is how she handles the error.
Give her a sec.
Honestly I sympathize with this. If you get used to referring to somebody a certain way it can take time to reprogram. And it feels awful to slip up. But the solution is not to pretend you didn’t make the mistake Joyce, geez!
Honestly, sometimes it is. Like, a lot of trans people would rather move on from it than endure the apology barrage.
Seriously. I get that it’s well-intentioned–and it’s definitely preferable to the transphobic assholes–but after a while, it’s exhausting trying to manage other people’s guilt. Especially when some of them make it all about their feelings instead of yours. A quick self-correction is preferable
It’s an interesting debate because misgendering does happen but the line between honest mistake and bad faith is so thin, as well as processing guilt or apologizing too much. It’s just so easy for transphobes to take advantage at every aspect of the interaction. How does it feel when a loved one vs a stranger misgenders? What if it keeps happening? Is it okay if it’s an honest mistake, how do you decide when it’s too much? I don’t think we’ve really found an elegant solution yet.
Oh definitely fair. I would never pull some apology barrage nonsense, past a certain point you’re clearly just doing that for your own benefit. I remember the one time I got called out for slipping up I just said sorry one time and made sure it was as genuine as I could make it.
…And then I agonized over it for weeks in private. Which might not have been the healthiest way to do things but you know what? The next time I heard her deadname (she was really slow to update her caller ID for some reason) I had reprogrammed myself so effectively I literally didn’t know who was being referred to. So clearly agonizing over your mistakes is the best way to go about things!
Not that it happens much, but when it does my default is to say the correct pronoun and say sorry just the one time after the mistake. I think that’s reasonable, I haven’t had any issues at least.
TIL a new word that I have definitely engaged in. u_u
“Until” is Johnny-come-lately. “Till” goes back to Old English.Til or ’til is a misapprehension of English teachers
Oops, left out a part. “Until” only goes back to the 14th century.
That’s not the word they were using at all. TIL is an abbreviation of Today I Learned.
Ahhhh but THAT one goes right back to the Venerable Bede, who recounts how it was boosted from Old Gaelic by Saxon invaders. A random fact brought to you to celebrate The Internet Never Lies Day 2024.
Wouldn’t it be Brythonic at that point? Not that Bede would call it that, but he wouldn’t call it Old Gaelic either.
And yes, this is me Missing the Point.
The term goes back to the Pedantic Wars between Turkey and Greece. Frozen Turkeys were cooked in boiling Greece and the loss of life was catastrophic. Sadly, the act kept repeating throughout the period because Hold My Beer.
“Till” can also be a cash register or point-of-sale machine!
“TIL” = Today I Learned
I don’t think she’s pretending she didn’t make the mistake? Seems like she’s just correcting herself by saying the sentence again the right way
She also seems to be trying to force her brain to get used to referring to Jocelyne as the correct pronouns so she doesn’t make the mistake again
Reminding me of Hannelore writing “Tilly” on the blackboard 1000 times.
I asked her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen.
Ha! Good one!
If that was the only thing she did then that’s one thing but according to Joe she’s apparently now actively trying to forget she even made the mistake at all by purging her memory… that doesn’t sound really healthy.
some earthlings seem to try to force making it more natural for themselves by basically gaslighting themselves into thinking it was always this way for them to begin with, to varying degrees of efficacy
A character said it, so it’s definitely an immutably true fact of the fiction.
Well the expression isn’t helping lol
“According to Joe…”
That’s so weird. Pretty sure he’s not in her brain. Think he might just be exaggerating for comedic effect.
Not 100% positive though.
Joyce will replay the mistake in her head over and over and over and over, catastrophizing it worse and worse with each pass. She’s basically trying to overwrite her mental CCTV footage to prevent that from taking root.
Source: I do the same thing, but it doesn’t always work. It usually wears out eventually, but some core embarrassing moments will pop to the front of your mind at random years later.
My personal experience was that it was really hard for me to reprogram my brain for the first person that transitioned while I knew them, and I kept fucking it up for weeks. The second one was someone I had known for much longer, but it was very quick. Almost like the first experience wasn’t about training my brain that this one person changed their gender status, but rather about training my brain that gender status could be changed in general.
Everyone’s brains are different, though, and I’m certainly not going to claim to have a model neurotypical specimen.
Aww Joyce
Correct the slip and go forward
Or do whatever that is. That’s an option too
Process it calmly Joyce, no one is rushing you.
She caught, and corrected herself without prompting. She’s also trying to reinforce the memory so she doesn’t slip again. That’s honestly pretty good.
I wonder what Jocelyne is thinking since she’s probably like… a couple feet away at most?
Probably still thinking, “Lil sis is taking this better than I thought.” Like she’s understandably still tripping up (*it’s been 2 minutes) but like you said, she’s trying to correct herself so she’ll do better in the future.
Probably that this could have been much worse. She knows her sister is mostly out of the bubble, but they both grew up fundie and that sort of culturing is hard to shake
I think today’s strip and yesterday’s are happening simultaneously, but we see one after the other because it’s a comic strip and cramming two separate conversations into four or five panels would be a visual cacophony.
Joyce is allowed a little well-meaning-yet-not-quite-there-yet grandma energy, as a treat.
Anyway. Can’t wait for her to find out Ethan’s known for months and months LOL
Accidental misgenderings suck.
It’s a lot easier when one has only known someone as their experienced gender, but if they didn’t know (or were closeted) when one was introduced, then fuck-ups can happen. Neural pathways take time to realign, and it can be particularly bad if they have some strong association as the wrong gender in one’s brain.
Like, for example, being the person who got one pregnant.
ah yes, the binary stratification of gender (and roles thereof) as long-ingrained into our society is very much a pervasive form of indoctrination
as Socrates once said, “give me the child until they are seven and I will show you the adult”
Dumbing of Age Book Fifteen: Anything You Say in the Next 15 Seconds is Wasted As She Edits Her Memory So That Didn’t Happen
It’s a process.
I mean, she’s going about it slightly correct, in that you notice and correct yourself. Just usually not this long.
gotta reboot her
this happens all the time
*loud dial up modem noises*
*extremely loud static while the tv antennae are adjusted*
“Have you tried turning her off and back on again?”
“Well, I can get her turned on, easily enough, but turning her off is tricky.”
Welp, time to light Joyce on fire for her slip-up.
Not the misgendering thing, she accidentally made Jocelyne a brunette in her mind somehow. It’s gonna be really awkward when she looks over again.
{Operator voice}
Please hold as we connect you to the next available agent
*Tally Hall’s Banana Man plays on hacked Bluetooth*
I was expecting Spanish Flea, or The Girl from Ipanema.
These aren’t the Joyce faces I was expecting from this, but they’ll do.
Dina: Personally, I have only needed to edit my memories once, to erase large portions of my first and only viewing of The Good Dinosaur. This only took a few seconds. Perhaps I could recommend a few techniques?
Joyce: Her Her Her Her hEr HEr heR HURRRRRRRRRR
Dina: When you are listening, of course,
New Joyce freakout face unlocked! Maybe even several of them.
Dina: I learned this like twenty minutes ago.
As a trans person, this is the right reaction, imo. It’s been minutes since she found iut; I wouldn’t expect perfection immediately, and she’s very apparently trying to correct herself without immediately complaining about how “hard it is to adjust.”
Tomorrow I may eat my words, but in the moment, she’s trying and doing pretty well.
Absolutely, it does take some time, but you have to draw a hard line in the sand. You will get people who after ten or fifteen YEARS who will try and play that card, just no.
Plain and simple reason – Becky.
Needs more rinsing and repeating.
Dang, I really did want today’s strip to be Dorothy’s cleavage pic. xD
great pfp for this comment
eh give it a couple more in-universe minutes,
what goes up into The Cloud™ must come down eventually XD
Aging popcorn here.
Eh ya can always give it to the pterodactyl XD
Hey, Pterry has a name, you know.
The longer it takes the more likely it seems that she sent it to someone else by mistake
Trying to go through the options:
Joe – This would cause the biggest freak out all round
Jennifer – The chain mail of missent boob pics might continue?
Danny – Sal would like a word
Robyn – Imagine her horror at sending boob pics to a teacher. Imagine her increased horror when they are used as a cautionary tale by being projected up onto the screen in class.
Walky – All good, until she replies “sorry, those were meant for Joyce”.
Walky: … I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. This was always gonna happen… just thought I’d get a few good years out of her first…
Oh no problems there. Ya got the “I’m straight” rebound lined up in-queue.
Maybe she’s sending it right now.
There’s always the second Patreon.
We’ve had first Patreon, yes, but what about second Patreon?
ERROR: Joyce.exe has run into a problem. Would you like windows to send a crash report?I’m torn between sympathizing with Joyce because of how much this reminds me of me, and hating Joyce because of how much it reminds me of parts of me that I hate.
I continue to be disappointed that Dina’s hat doesn’t match her expressions.
To be clear, this is not disappointment in Dina. She is delightful. Her magnet is eating cereal sexily on my PC as I type this.
unfortunate that Willis stated he makes “concentrated effort not to Howard The Duck her dinosaur hat”
but yes, the Empress of Evolution is nonetheless very wonderful <3
WADE the duck
from u.s. acres
Wow I haven’t thought about that duck and his suspiciously sentient floatie tube for years and years.
Had to google up that stuff. I stopped reading Garfield around ’86. When I found myself kvetching about it (not unlike how David kvetches about 9 Chickweed Lane), I left it behind me.
LOL i knew who you were talkin about
but of course my ADHD ass forgot their name XD
Like Zeetha’s amulet does?
Zeetha’s amulet at least has an in-universe explanation (of sorts). And it works remotely.
Oh my god I feel this.
I already look like I say shit like “pronouns are for sissies.”
Coworker who was the main source of the anxiety has gotten me used to it and the understanding that the effort is what matters. Doesn’t stop me from feeling like a heel lmao
It’s good, figuring out how to edit memory. I don’t think she’s being inefficient at all. Unless Dina was being sarcastic and referencing Joyce’s capacity for cluelessly brash overconfidence…
But assuming one CAN edit memory, it’s a good skill.
Right now I’m trying to edit out someone I’ve known for the past 33 years. Sometimes you just need a blank space where a person used to be, you know? White noise to fill in the gaps where voices and words have evaporated away from.
*Plays white noise on the hacked waterfall*:
https://youtu.be/NWlFKrzvsm0
Correction. Somebody that I used to know. And no longer do.
You said that you could let it go.
Exactly. In the words of Shuhada’ Sadaqat (née Sinéad O’Connor),
“This is the last day of our acquaintance.”
I been quoting Star Trek to myself for inspiration:
KIRK: I want names!
VALERIS: I do not remember.
SPOCK: A lie?
VALERIS: A choice.
—The Undiscovered Country
Or, to quote Spock alone:
“The creature within me is gone.
I am free of it.
And the pain.
I am also:
quite blind.
An equitable trade, Doctor.
Thank you.”
—”Operation: Annihilate”
“How happy is the empty vessel’s lot:
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Each prayer unanswered, but each wish resigned.
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep:
Obedient slumbers that can wake,
and sleep, rather than weep.”
—Adapted from, “Eloisa to Abelard”, by Alexander Pope
Nah Dina probz ain’t being sarcastic, she’s just indirectly referencing many times Joyce has needed to correct herself when interacting with others as she does away with her indoctrination like this
What on earth is it about Dina specifically that causes Joyce to just -repeatedly- put her foot in her mouth.
She caught herself quick that time though.
it’s not Dina, this literally just Joyce by default XD
I strongly suspect much of the difference you’re noticing is because of Dina’s reaction.
If Joyce steps in it with Sarah or Dorothy, she’ll get an immediate snarky or tactful correction from them. But Dina mostly doesnt give responses in the same way – so if Joyce says something ignorant in front of Dina, she’ll get a deadpan or coldly disapproving expression and very little dialogue.
The release of tension you would normally experience as the audience member doesn’t come. Joyce is left to panic and try to cover it up, and the drama heightens instead of lessening.
All hail hypno-joyce
It’s okay Joyce, i’m trans and i still misgender myself on occasion, and i’ve been out for 7 years years!
I honestly don’t fault Joyce for this one, if you have called someone by a certain name or pronoun for 18 years, you might slip up just from muscle memory; especially if you’re still training yourself on the new name. Heck, some trans people even misgender/deadname themeselves by accident, because if you go by a name/pronoun for more than one decade, it’s hard to stop responding to it.
It’s entirely possible Dina never even knew Jocelyne by her old name and pronouns, so she never had to do the mental switch like Joyce does.
According to the tags, this sequence is Dina’s first meeting with Jocelyne, so apparently they met sometime offscreen and we’ve got no idea how that went or how Jocelyne coming out to Becky went.
Joe is a quick study.
Love how much this shows they really know eachother 🥰 Feels like a relationship grounded on healthy, well founded, decisions ❤️
I know. While the main course of action is to cringe with Joyce’s reaction to accidentally misgendering her sis, I’m mostly squeeing that they’ve only been dating for, what, about a few weeks in comic time, but he knows her so well already!! Given, Joyce was confiding in him way before this, BUT STILL!!!!! Who knew that under all that misogynistic-spewing braggadocio was a kind and caring boyfriend?
I mean, Joyce is not wrong in being flabbergasted that Jocelyne told Dina and not her first.
I hope this isn’t just forgotten down the line, because Joyce misgendered her sister… 2 mins after finding it out.
Jocelyne told the people she felt safe to tell in the order she felt safe (and had opportunity) to tell them. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, she didn’t owe Joyce dibs on the information.
Correct, but at the same time I can’t blame Joyce for feeling how she feels. She just needs to handle it maturely. If this is all she does then she’s still handled it pretty well.
Funny story, a month back I had a dream where I could not remember my own name. Just started giving old Internet handles to this girl who wanted to know who I was. Then 20 minutes after I woke up the dentist called and I gave them my old boy name without thinking. Probably this was just because I’d been very focused on writing for a few days and spent all my time being different characters in my head. But anyway I legally changed my name some eight years ago, when I had been pretty sure I was trans for eight years before that. You’re never immune to misgendering someone, but trust me, it’s always super obvious who means well and who doesn’t no matter how they use terminology.
I’d make a “Have you tried turning her off and on again?” joke, but it seems like Joe is getting better and better at turning Joyce on.
Joe does not want to turn Joyce off. Joe is trying to be very careful not to be a turnoff. (Which sure does make the I.T. joke harder to work with.)
Astounded no one’s mentioned how Joyce did the Clone High Hands of Sincerity
Nothing bad ever happens to the
KennedysBrowns!There’s the autism “oh god I did a minor social faux paus, I now will be crippled by shame for the next year, give me a minute while I compress all of that into the next two minutes so I can digest it as fast as possible”
No Joyce! Chew your shame! Manageable bites!
I know this was said as a joke, but honestly I’m stealing it for self-talk lmao
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuup…
…Starting to seriously think I should seek a diagnosis, because I definitely know that feeling.
Never hurts, but at the same time these aren’t exclusively autistic traits. It’s complicated.
RSD is not just for autistics, autists just have it worse.
it’s a work in progress okay ?
She knew Jocelyn as her brother for 18+ years, she needs to give herself a break.
Beaucoup of Joyce Face
The time it takes to reboot a phone after an update never gets shorter.
Oh dear. Joyce doesn’t deal well with… things. I can relate.
“Now editing all associated memories, backups, associated copies, and meta-data. Please stand by.”
Man, if I could edit my memories to forget all my misteps, mistakes, and embarrassments, I’d be golden.
Just keep a journal, but write things down as you want to remember them. Then, when you go back and look at old memories, you’ll be like, “Oh yea, I remember that!” and remember it the incorrect way you want to remember it.
…basically self-gaslighting.
Don’t do this with really bad experiences because pretending you weren’t traumatized doesn’t actually help you not be affected by trauma. (From my experience, anyway.)
been there, done that T_T
This (except the rewriting memory part) is exactly how you learn pronouns. It’s okay, Joyce.
Yes, being misgendered hurts even if it’s by accident, but i cut those who’ve known me my whole life the most slack. My parents have not met a trans person before me, AND they’ve probably talked about me more than anyone else in the world, so it is the hardest for them to change their speech patterns.
They’ve gone from not noticing misgendering at all (not cool, i did speak up about them please trying harder) to overly emphasizing the correct pronoun, to “she said……i mean, HE said” and now to mostly getting it right and self-correcting if not. And this is good enough for me, from them.
Rephrasing her sentence with “SHE told you” is exactly the way to go. Try not to lean into the last panels so much, most trans people are very ready to move on from the misstep once the corrected version was said out loud, and don’t want you wallowing in apologies and reassurances that you really really see them as their gender. Self-correct, move on.
And yes, practicing helps. You can practice when talking about her to other people or to yourself. Just keep phrasing it until it no longer takes effort! <3
Joyce Face took a while, but we got there.
First learning is last learning.
I imagine she told Becky on purpose, and Dina just happened to be around
“Oh, by the way, my girlfriend teleported to my location about 45 seconds ago. So now she knows, too.”
“Um. Aight.”
Yeah, it’s weird though because they interact like they’ve met, rather than just a phone conversation Dina happened to be there for, and it’s hard to figure when that might have happened.
I need an animated GIF that cycles through Joyce’s expressions in panels 2–5 on continuous loop kthxbye
When my little sister came out, there was a moment where my brain worms said “Mention the Brian Regan gender bit, that’s hilarious.”
She was great and took it in stride.
Honestly since this isn’t happening AT her sister, this is still p dag good as a response goes.
I’m going to give her credit, she caught herself and I’d trying to fix the issue, plus she is still well within the adjustment period
Good for her in catching it, especially when she JUST learned her sister’s pronouns. 🙂 She’ll get it.
I foresee her also going to bat for Joss at her fam since the Joyce rage is stronk.
Oh I did the same thing when my sister came out to me. Most trans folks do give others a bit of grace when it comes to new pronouns tbf Joyce youre okay
Finally, the awkwardness we were all anticipating before this encounter started! I _knew_ things were going a bit _too_ smoothly! ☺
Joyce.exe is installing important updates
And there’s bound to be bugfixing required. That’s very normal. As long as she keeps doing the updates, things will turn out fine!
ooo, I did the exact same thing one time. Very embarrassing.
“The good thing about being embarrassed is that one day you won’t be, but you’ll remember that you were.” – Terry Pratchett
Yeah, I went to a friend of a friends Halloween party and was not aware of their new pronouns (I of course apologized profusely and was lucky to be invited back the same year for a Christmas party)
Oooo, yeah, been there. It’s extra horrible if you used to think that gender and biological sex were synonyms and that people “can’t just choose to be whatever they want,” because the only way you got to THIS place is then realizing just how bigoted you were acting. You can’t just roll with it and be like “Well, oops, sorry, I meant ‘she,’ ha ha I’m new to this.” It feels like you just accidently dropped a racial slur.
At some point this comic’s gotta acknowledge that OCD/some other anxiety disorder is at least a good of an explanation of Joyce’s eccentricities as autism lol
OCD is a common comorbidity to Autism because reasons
Oh, it could for sure be both as well, and that’s maybe even a more likely explanation than either individually. Just, you know, we’ve gotten a lot of explicit “Joyce has autism” acknowledgements from the story, and not a lot of “Joyce has severe OCD” acknowledgements.
Yeah, I think that’s because the story is trying to convey that Joyce has autism and not that Joyce has OCD.
Why exactly?
A lot of her most prevalent “autistic” traits are also things that read pretty well as compulsions, and they often come out most strongly in response to some anxiety trigger.
Like, this comic reads much more like Joyce having a compulsion because of moral OCD than an autism thing or a fundie-neurosis thing (with the acknowledgement that both of those things would have contributed to that). Or the insistence on accuracy in how her bible stuff is drawn, or spending time ironing out inconsistencies in the text are pretty obsessive. Even the classic “No foods touching” is pretty obsessive/compulsive.
Idk, just smth I’ve been thinking about since the autism diagnosis referral plot, and this one’s the first one that’s really OCD since then.
Those can also be autistic things tho.
yee, there is very much overlap, neurodivergence is much more fluid than may seem to be suggested by labels conceived of fairly recently
Joe is really smitten, isn’t he? So perceptive.