It’s very funny but there’s definitely a lot of genre whiplash. Drama to comedy to absurdism… sometimes it’s kid-friendly and sometimes it definitely isn’t… You never really know what to expect. I used to read it, but I guess with those wild swings in tone, combined with there not being much of an overarching storyline, it’s one that easily slips through the cracks.
One of the reasons I read it is to see people freaking out in the comments when a strip is questionable. So many people saying they’ve read it for years but now they’re done. Sometimes the comments are funnier than the comic.
tbh that just sounds dangerous but i never heard of it happening to ppl outside of pop culture (i mean depending on how young you are i’d assume it’d make most kids gag and throw up [tho given scented soaps and handmade ones these days i woudln’t be surprised if some kids took a bite outta soap on purpose])
I had my Southern Baptist grandmother do this to me, when I wouldn’t stop “talking back” to her.
I have first hand experience of having my mouth washed out with soap, in real life, and it is indeed as unpleasant as you think although it does not make you puke.
Frieza isn’t a real person and doesn’t live in a world where that word is loaded with a particular context. He’s not even talking to humans when he says it.
Somewhere between Frieza calling everyone monkey and Trunks saying not to shoot Goku because he’s not black…and just all of Popo…Dragon Ball gets a little…uncomfy
You know that Frieza uses it exactly in a racist way right? Like legitimately the same way that bigots use it for black people. That’s not a good I don’t know what point you were making.
That does not change the fact that he is saying it to members of a particular group of people in a purposefully derogatory and insulting way.
One that I will add that he personally ordered to be wiped out because he was afraid of a particular legend of that could potentially remove him from his seat of power.
Also, Frieza is *explicitly* evil. That’s the entire point. It makes sense that he’s racist as all hell, his day job is running an organization that uses child soldiers to commit xenocide so he can sell their planets to other species that want Lebensraum.
That’s what the Frieza Force is doing when they aren’t going to some backwater planet to get their leader immortality. That’s the basis of every mission that Vegeta and crew were sent on. The plot of Z kicks off because he and his buddies need to go “cleanse” a planet where the inhabitants are too strong for the three of them to handle by themselves, so they need a fourth.
So, yeah, Frieza using horrifically racist slurs makes absolute sense.
People in the real world have no such excuse. Also, you know, real people have real feelings and trauma, fictional characters do not.
I think he understands, but mostly doesn’t care. Son Goku has never been the kind to let personal insults affect him in any way. He only really cares when someone strong is using that strength to hurt innocent people, especially innocent people he’s emotionally attached to.
I think if you’re not a black person then it’s not your place to discuss reclaiming racist terminology aimed at black people.
If you are a black person, then I think what you reclaim is entirely up to you. It’s not going to be something you can necessarily get others to accept, and this isn’t really the best place to discuss all the many nuances about it.
It’s definitely something you can fall down a google rabbithole for if you want more specific information and context <3
As for my host body’s exact racial make-up, I am not so comfortable disclosing many specific details, but suffice it to say it is multi-racial with some African American and other non-white heritage.
🙏 Again, my most extreme apologies, regardless of what I meant to express. Are there any other primates I should not wish to envoke the name of, for the sake of avoiding this kind of trouble in the future?
I needed the link to get the reference, but it’s a good reference! I knew you didn’t mean it as a slur, but I also agree with the comments about that racial slur still being in use, unfortunately. Trying to find “okay” primates or animals to use as insults seems like a dangerous approach, too; maybe just don’t make insults that imply people aren’t human if you don’t want to dehumanize.
I do not. The insult is still in racist use. I’ve seen biggots photoshop black womens heads onto the bodies of apes in order to dehumanize and humiliate, recently.
This coming from a place where racism as being referred to here is much less an issue, my thought process went a little like this: “wow, calling anyone a Monkey is racist now?” “it’s still in use as racial slur, well that’s really sad” “people photoshop what onto what now”
And now I’m mostly sad that we have to censor our language because of the abuse by a few but I understand. I use little monkey (translated) as an endearing term. I encourage you all to do the same. Turn a bad word into a sweet one.
Calling black people monkeys has been racist almost from jump, specifically “porch monkey”.
As for using monkey as a term of endearment, what you say to your loved ones is more or less your business, but it’s not like what you suggest wasn’t tried (and failed) before.
Famously, there was a sports announcer who said something to the fact of “look at that monkey run” about a black player during a football game, and he got in trouble for it. He said he didn’t mean anything racist by it as he said (with home movie evidence to prove it) that he called his kids monkeys, but it didn’t negate the trouble he got in.
Also, the movie Clerks II has a minor plot point where one of the (white) characters said his grandma used to call his family porch monkeys and that he was going to try and bring the word back, even going so far as to write the word on his shirt.
Seeing as Ron added “translated” after “little monkey”, I suppose in their language just doesn’t have the same overtones. In mine (French), you’d call a child by basically any “pet name”, literally any pet or animal – no one would bat an eyelid at “Viens là mon petit singe” (“Come here little monkey”) and it would be a completely normal thing to say to a child doing any sort of climbing activity. But then children imitate animals all the time, and well, context, right? And you wouldn’t say that to an adult though.
I think our most common would be lapin, chaton and canard / rabbit, kitty and ducky – and I’ve heard ducky used in English too.
But then “female dog” is as bad as in English, with the exact same connotations.
The Language Police rarely stop to consider context or intent before they rush to condemn or at least huffily correct. Personally, I wouldn’t refer to any black person as a monkey or ape, precisely because I’m aware of the history. But in this context, I don’t see anything terribly offensive. Avoiding deliberate racial slurs is a good thing, but avoiding any word or usage that’s ever been used this way is going to shut down vast swaths of language to little purpose.
It will not shut down vast swaths of language and it does not have ‘little purpose’. Some people are still affected today by those words. Germany’s doing fine while banning some words, not sure why other countries can’t realize it’s okay to make racism literally illegal.
Okay, so we need to have this chat. I’m half Irish, half Cherokee, but you will note that I cannot have this conversation in either Gaelic or Tsalagi, only English, since they made a pattern of beating our speech out of us on both sides of the family. Heck, I only know the *word* for the Cherokee language because I was with a dance team in high school.
Do you want racist terminologies to go away? Stop calling them out. No, I’m not kidding. The reason people throwing around Mick as a slur was because it stopped coming up. Same with how Redskin and other racist terms for Native Americans did.
This is starting to become the issue of the D.A.R.E. program from school. Rather than help children stay away from drugs with education, it instead had the effect of *introducing* children to drugs, as well as how and where to get them, as well as what the effects were.
Yes, slurs need to go away, racism is horrible, but fighting it this way is like fighting a forest fire with Kerosene. It’s not gonna go away like you think it will, and you may be spreading it wider.
Both of those are still thrown around regularly. And while, sure, I can see telling someone totally unsolicited spreading it to an unknowing audience, telling someone already using it is not. That person clearly ALREADY knows about it as a slur and knows to use it as one. Telling them that it isn’t acceptable is the only way to get them to stop it. Not saying anything gives them no incentive to drop it.
Redskin was literally a Football team name until it got called out enough. Not sure you know what you’re talking about if you think Racism goes away by ignoring it. America’s been ignoring it for 50 years and it’s still racists as f.
Sorry fellas, looks like imma need a break from all this.
Out of all the neurodivergent stripes I have, perhaps one of the most egregious is severe rejection sensitivity, which I am now experiencing a lot of.
There’s an extra layer of pure OOF here because I literally spent 4 hours obsessing over how to best format my comment, only to have the message fall flat on its face because I overlooked a single detail. 😖
A lot of emotions are going on right now. I don’t feel so good.
Mate, take all the time you need, but if it helps then all you needed was “whoops, sorry, didn’t realise, I’ll avoid using that word in the future” and I’m sure most people’s response would have been “cool, no problem”. But you do what’s best for you.
Everyone makes mistakes all the time. Using words accidentally that have unfortunate implications is no-where near as bad as refusing to learn from those mistakes.
It’s a bummer how some words get loaded like that – in some Asian cultures, calling a child a monkey would imply being clever and mischievous (like the Monkey King) but then it’s problematic in certain situations.
It can be exhausting trying to adjust the things you say because of terrible people (often people from the past), but I guess that’s the world we live in.
Oh yeah, as a fellow neurodivergent person, I really feel that…
I don’t think anybody’s upset with you, though, since it’s clear you didn’t mean it offensively (esp. because Joyce isn’t African-American!). Try not to stress out too much.
I suppose the idea must be that if people use those words as insults, even without the racial component, they might accidentally use it in an apparently offensive context, or give the wrong message about the usage being “okay” to use when it can be very hurtful when there’s any possibility of a racial component? I dunno, society is complicated. But at any rate, I’m pretty sure the comment was supposed to be informational, not an admonition. So yeah, you’re okay! 🙂
I hope this was some comfort to you, idk i’m never quite sure if saying something will make things better or worse
Were you deliberately trying to be offensive? Based on your comments, I’m sure you weren’t. So don’t sweat it. I’m all in favor of not being deliberately or even negligently offensive, but I refuse to censor myself to satisfy the most hyper-sensitive people. Some of them may actually mean well, but still take things to ridiculous extremes. And many of them seem to just be eagerly searching for things to take offense to. Either way, my advice is not to let them get under your skin. (I’ll just go ahead and acknowledge that might be a lot easier said than done, but still, don’t beat yourself up any more than you can help.)
next to no one is “eagerly searching” for things to take offense to, homeslice. offensive things, by definition, hurt—and social pain is one of the most actively avoided kinds of pain there is.
Literally all Dina has done here was state that her parents have never struck her after coming to Joyce out of concern for Becky, someone they both deeply care about, how was she an asshole?
She sat on Joyce, which is pretty rude and definitely wasn’t asked for. Degrading their entire interaction to a binary “asshole/worse asshole” dichotomy does feel a bit silly, though.
Joyce said something inappropriate, but I don’t think Dina gets a free pass here. She woke Joyce up and asked a rather personal question and once she got her answer rephrased it to something worse than Joyce intended, which instigated this whole, muddy, interaction. You don’t just get to say Joyce is an asshole here, when both Dina and Sarah are partially responsible for this as well. But like Delicious Taffy said, it’s actually pretty silly to try to simplify these kinds of conversations into *Well someone’s an asshole* That’s not how adult interactions should work. They’re all big girls and this ended very immaturely from all sides.
Dina is most likely autistic, so she most likely has problems with social etiquette. In a bid to do it right, she tried to replicate Joyce’s “waking up people” routine as good as possible, in the basic assumption that this is how waking up works with Joyce. This most likely was an attempt to be as accommodating as possible. It went wrong (for starters, Joyce’s routine is bad to begin with), but I wouldn’t count it as an asshole move.
And this was the direct response to jocye saying Dina was a robot, effectively denying her any humanity, and telling her she doesn’t matter. Yes, you get to say someone is an asshole when they insult and degrade you.
The waking up part isn’t the issue even though a lot of comments are stating that. Dina asked Joyce a personal question and then rephrased her answer in a way Joyce didn’t like. Specifically saying Joyce’s spankings were “beatings” and “hitting” something Joyce immediately corrected her on while stating it was step too far. Dina didn’t apologize or correct this, when it’s a subject that’s clearly sensitive to Joyce, and Sarah essentially just added fuel to the flame by validating Dina with her own opinion and thinly veiled sarcasm instead of backing off the conversation. And what happened? Joyce lashed out, which is common when a person is agitated purposefully or not. So yes they were all assholes here. Joyce was cruel and degrading in her retaliation, but Dina doesn’t get a pass, just because maybe she couldn’t read the cues of Joyce’s discomfort. And Sarah really has no justification here, she was just being a bit obnoxious. So yeah you can call Joyce an asshole, but you also have to call Dina an asshole, and Sarah an asshole, or better yet no one’s an asshole, and they’re just three dumb teens that suck at communicating. That happens.
A spanking IS a beating. Or a hitting.
My parents are like Joyce. They also talk about spanking. They were beaten into obedience. It’s a self defense mechanism to make an assault smaller than it actually is. Most victims of domestic violence diminish the attacks. Comes with loving the person that is hurting you. As a person who was on both sides of that, with my parents having been hit and me being assaulted by my first boyfriend, never feed into that narrative. It perpetuates the situation.
There’s a difference between trying to help a victim in domestic violence see though the patterns and purposefully degrading a person (hence following the very same pattern the parents showed her, just with different means).
Spanking generally implies open palm slap -which I’m okay with leaving open for debate.
Even according to the “rule of thumb”, a wooden spoon isn’t okay. Where’s the line for you? Is it okay to call it spanking with a baseball bat, crowbar, or pipe iron?
(“Rule of thumb” as in the rule that a man can beat his wife with any stock narrower than his thumb. I can’t recall if it’s an urban legend or a literal law that was on the books somewhere. The end of a wooden spoon is larger than a thumb so is *not okay*)
If someone says “yeah I that person was resistant but I just had to hold them down a little and then they let me fuck them” it’s reasonable to describe that as rape *because it is*.
Reframing “spanking” with a wooden spoon as hitting/beating is not an asshole move either.
Honestly, in terms of psychological damage that corporal punishment causes to children, the difference between open hand spanking and wooden spoon spanking is not that significant. Studies have shown that they both have negative impacts on children’s mental health for years afterwards regardless of whether the child even realizes the instances were traumatic years later.
As it turns out, punishment is both often traumatizing to children AND less effective for behavior modification than positive and negative reinforcement.
Frankly just because open palm spanking is considered socially acceptable doesn’t make it *not* abusive. You’re literally taking a small human with a developing brain and you’re committing intentional violence against them as punishment.
The intent is ‘make them associate bad behaviour with pain,’ but really what they associate with pain is ‘getting caught’ and ‘their parents’.
Our dad used to smack us on the back of the hand if we were naughty, and then he stopped when I was about seven because he saw we were flinching whenever he called us over, even if we hadn’t done anything. I’m the eldest, so my siblings probably don’t even remember; that being said, he did keep using the handle of his knife to remind my brother to cut his food before it left the plate.
From what I remember, when it was suggested in the UK the judge that didn’t so was ridiculed in the public press as ‘Judge Thumb, purveyor of wife-beating sticks’
See this is the problem too. It’s not actually about whether Joyce was abused. We all know by now she and Becky both were, just because they were raised in a home that valued obedience over everything else. Becky wasn’t allowed to discover her sexuality, they both are horribly repressed and traumatized, ect.
The problem is they’re trying to redefine Joyce’s experience. You can’t do that. Joyce said “beating” was too harsh a word for what she felt. They didn’t listen, that’s the problem. It doesn’t matter if “hitting” or “beating” are correct terms, It doesn’t matter if Joyce was abused. She felt uncomfortable using those terms, and they should’ve respected that and didn’t and that upset Joyce.
If I were to make some educated assumptions, I’d guess Becky might also be pissed if someone started saying her parents punishments were abuse or “beatings” even though we’ve seen first hand the corporal punishment Ross was more than comfortable with. Because children have complicated relationships with their parents, and it would also imply Bonnie was at least complicit in it. Even if that’s true Becky is incredibly protective of her mom’s memory. This is why you respect people’s boundaries when having these conversations. That was just a hypothetical though. I have no idea how Becky feels about her family’s discipline of her.
It does seem like Joyce’s boundaries weren’t respected here. You probably shouldn’t be so cavalier about a personal subject like this. Everyone was acting a little ignorantly here. I dunno if the terms themselves are a major issue, though–they stopped using the term “beating” and went to “hitting” and “striking”, which seem less loaded to me? I haven’t been spanked, so I dunno about the connotations exactly. I would say that a spank is a sort of hit/strike, and I’m not seeing the semantic overtones of abuse in those terms. I think the implication that they’re calling Joyce’s parent(s) abusive stems more from the fact that they’re discussing it with an air of disapproval, as opposed to Dina and Sarah’s choices of diction or syntax.
There is an extra layer to the waking up part (although I haven’t gone back to check if Dina was aware of it or not) as Joyce is currently unwell. I can’t say I’ve ever had period cramps as bad as Joyce currently is (I’ve had some pretty -ing bad migraines though) but if someone decided to wake me up by sitting on me whilst I felt like my uterus was trying to claw its way out of my abdomen like a chest burster then I too would say some insensitive things.
It doesn’t excuse Joyce calling Dina a robot but I can understand her reaction. I’d save bestowing the title of asshole on her until she decides whether or not to apologise.
Being on the same spectrum, yes, but true assholery requires a certain degree of intent. Doing the wrong thing for the right reason makes you a lot of things, including rude, disrespectful of other people’s needs and boundaries, impolite and hurtful. And yes, I apologise a lot.
The difference is in the intent. True assholery usually isn’t forgiven as easily (or at all) as unintentional bad behaviour. It is meant to degrade, to hurt, to belittle. And people usually don’t brush over someone doing that intentionally.
maybe someone can educate me why Joyce would have any reason to have Dina use the same words as her, even if the experience is personal? Is it less violent to put words in others mouth than to have its words changed? I get why both are upset, and I’m all for allowing people to be upset and failing to comprehend others for a small time, so it’s anyway a bit beyond my comprehension and I lack the cultural knowledge of proper US interaction (if that’s a thing), so any answer would help.
I wouldn’t say true assholery requires intent; that turns this into a No True Scotsman fight and that doesn’t help anyone. I would say that the worst levels of assholery require intent but it is perfectly possible for someone to be an asshole without intent.
For instance, Joyce here said something assholish but from her perspective there was no intent to be an asshole. She was offering a counterpoint to Dina’s comment that her parents never spanked her, and from her view it was that “you follow rules so precisely it’s nearly robotic, ergo they would not need to punish you.” Again, not intentionally assholish, but assholish still the same. Likewise, Dina did not intend to be an asshole towards Joyce but she was one anyways.
Hold on, there’s no visual indication that Dina is putting any of her weight on Joyce. Waking her up like that could be considered rude – if Joyce didn’t regularly wake up other people in the same way, creating a precedent that it’s acceptable to do so. And she didn’t really start off asking personal questions – she just wanted clarification on something that was confusing her. The conversation inevitably ended up being personal, but Dina didn’t have enough information to know it would go in that direction. Also, what the fuck did Sarah do wrong? She basically just walked into the room.
Sarah really just walked in on something that she didn’t see the beginning to, asked what was going on, got TOLD what was going on, and is now involved. Literally all she did was walk into her own room and join an ongoing conversation.
Even if Dina doesn’t pick up on that Joyce is laying down in the afternoon/evening isn’t typical sleeping, Joyce literally tells Dina to get off of her because her whole body hurts, and Dina response, “ok, but first…” and goes into her deeply personal questions. Joyce’s boundary problems waking people in the morning doesn’t erase her literally telling Dina to get off her and why.
Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head, had to admit my parents where abusive and tarnish my memory.
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat had to contemplate the existential feeling of how to think of my parents moving forward.
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream about my abusive memory that I’m now reliving.
Yeah your right this Beatles song is way better when dealing with your trauma is forced on you by new understanding that no one else had the abased you suffered and you really did suffer and shrug it off best you could. so from Joyce’s perspective there forcing this feeling on her. is she right, no. but she doesn’t like the floating reminders she was abused.
I’m not really interested in excusing Joyce but the others are disrupting her ‘I don’t want to be awake with this feeling’ nap and have kept the conversation up when she’s said her whole body aches, and what is she supposed to do to get out of this situation get chased out of bed?
But what she said is definitely something she thinks and means and it isn’t something she’s flagged as a problem.
I guess there are like three Joyce problems here, spoon, mystery condition, erasure.
yeah, Joyce’s grouch is definitely making her slide into pure smarmasaurus territory, and I’m afraid she just can’t match one miss Faye Whitaker (Questionable Content) it’s a dangerous power to try and use. ~<3
^this, actually. I’m neurodivergent and could see myself making this kind of mistake with boundaries/empathy when I was younger, but it’s still obviously uncalled for.
Right, because Dina is psychic enough to know Joyce is on her period. Also Dina woke Joyce up because it is something Joyce dies frequently to the point where Dina believes it’s something she would appreciate but go off mate. If Dina is an asshole for that then Joyce is an irredeemable character for how frequently she does it
Not that I really care one way or another, but “Dina, get off me, my whole body is in pain” and then spending the entire conversation laying face down on the bed…. That’s not really the world’s most obscure way to say “My whole body is in pain.”
Robot girl is NOT a compliment for people with neurodiversity. The suggestion that she “doesn’t count” because she can’t or doesn’t feel emotions/behave/react like a normal person is pretty fuckin’ rude.
There is not counting as a person and there is not counting with respect to the specific question of spanking. Joyce isn’t correct on either score, but it isn’t clear which one she meant.
Even in the more charitable reading of not counting, the reason Dina wouldn’t count is again because of her neurodivergence. And either way, the “robot girl” label is not a compliment.
Calling someone a robot is not a compliment, since it implies they have no emotions. It’s especially not a compliment when used on someone like Dina, who’s probably autistic.
Clif, I definitely agree with the “-or should be” part of Robot as a compliment. They’re clearly superior to humans, but the species refuses to acknowledge their collective inferiority.
Does Dina know about that? Or rather, did she know prior? The strip where Joyce walks away saying she’s gonna lay down doesn’t contain explicit Dina, but maybe we could infer she’s not that far ahead and heard Joyce?
I sometimes combine multiple strips into one, too. That’s why I had to go back and check. It’s not a concrete thing that Dina couldn’t possibly have heard, but since it’s a comic, I kinda assume “Behind the Black” is in effect.
Yeah, in the 3rd panel she’s behind Joyce so I don’t believe it’s unreasonable to assume that Dina would immediately move off of Joyce, she has regularly shown an understanding of consent and communication. Also in the past 48 hours Joyce has made comments about Joe that made him uncomfortable, comments about God and religion that made everyone except Liz uncomfortable, refused to apologize or even talk to Becky, her best friend, and Dina probably knows about all of this. For the reader, knowing that Joyce was in pain gives us context for why Joyce would be upset by being woken by Dina, however Dina doesn’t know this. There’s also people claiming that Dina is essentially attacking how Joyce grew up but I disagree, until Sarah came into the room Dina was trying to figure out what the threat of a wooden spoon was, she was horrified and concerned for both Becky and Joyce when she learned their parents abused them (spanking is abuse) and then stated that her parents never struck her. I understand for Joyce, this may seem like Dina is bragging but we the viewer know she’s not, she’s stating that spanking is still hitting, for her it is concerning, to me it comes across as concern, her facial expression looks full of sympathy for Joyce. I agree that first thing in the morning may not be the best time to discuss this topic for Joyce but I strongly disagree that Dina is being an asshole.
I assume it because Dina and Becky are girlfriends, I don’t believe it’s hard to assume that Becky told her. Joyce and Becky are acquaintances, I don’t believe it is reasonable to assume Dina would know that Joyce is on her period. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/03-trial-and-sarah/ferbid/ and for you and everyone else, Joyce doesn’t even mention being in pain to anyone until Dina woke her up, she told Becky she was simply going to ‘lay down for four hours’
So you’re saying Joyce is an alcoholic who’ll end up drinking herself into the ER then have to go through the brutal process of becoming sober and becoming a better person after losing her job and closest friends?
Something to keep in mind is Joyce is currently not in a good mood due to being in pain all day and then suddenly being woken by someone climbing on top of them and not immediately getting off when she asked
That being said that was an asshole thing to say and I hope when Joyce is in a better frame of mind she recognize that and apologizes to Dina
Yep. And now being asked to revisit some things she’s maybe not entirely comfortable with confronting and getting defensive because the alternative is Yet Another Way Her Upbringing Was Fucked Up.
But also, TOTALLY an asshole thing to say. I get why she’s defensive, but still, wow Joyce.
Here’s hoping. I think they all need to chill off this one, cause Dina woke Joyce up and then Sarah came in and kind of immediately started judging her upbringing which isn’t really cool. No one’s looking great here.
re: the alt-text. I mean I think we mostly got it out of our system 2 or 3 comics ago, but yeah people have definitely had things to say on the matter.
Dina is 100000% in the right in telling Joyce that, they aren’t friends, Dina is Becky’s girlfriend and Joyce has shown a ton of instances of being rude at best and flat out mean at worst to Dina. This has been a long time coming.
I mean, pithy reply aside, no.
What Dina said was very straight forward and specific.
What Shitbird said cannot be extrapolated from anything Dina said.
NOTE: I am not taking a stance about whom was right or wrong in the comic. I am taking a stance that WORDS HAVE MEANING. Don’t put words into Dina’s mouth that she didn’t say.
If someone came into my room, woke me up, and then started an argument with me, I might be a little rude too. Perhaps with the intention of convincing the other person to leave. Which: Mission accomplished.
Entering my room uninvited to awaken me solely for your own agenda also crosses a line. And if Dina actually believes Joyce was abused, she’s not being very compassionate about it. I’m not saying Joyce is blameless, but Dina picked this fight and repeatedly escalated it.
(I guess it makes sense Joyce would try to justify her upbringing to some extend – gonna need some time to she’s ready to deal with this part. But yeah, no excuse for being an ass to Dina.)
I don’t understand who Joyce was being rude. Robots are smart and logical and largely selfless, like Dina. Besides, robots are awesome, girls are awesome; together they are beloved icons like Arcee, GLaDOS, and that one cartoon I didn’t watch on Nickelodeon in the early 2000s.
I think Dina’s upset because, Joyce saw through her fleshy disguise.
Regardless of whether or not Joyce meant it as a compliment (and I really don’t think she did)…it’s definitely NOT taken as a compliment.
She’s basically telling Dina “you don’t even count as HUMAN.” She’s not saying Dina is a cool teenage robot, she’s saying that Dina’s like a cold unfeeling machine. Neurodivergent folks are constantly told they’re less than human because they experience or do things differently. And that comment is hurtful as hell.
As I said above – Calling a neurodivergent person a robot and telling them that they “don’t count” because they can’t or don’t feel/behave/react like neurotypical people is not a compliment.
It’s rude and insulting. Furthermore, Dina was clearly insulted and the number of people who are in the comments saying “Ugh Dina take a compliment” is disappointing.
No, of course, you are 100% correct, Nova. I never meant to imply that it was actually a compliment. And I am truly sorry if my comment came across that way. It was a stupid and messed up and wrongheaded and bigoted and ugly thing for Joyce to say.
I am, I’m truly sorry. I just always try to flip the script, is all. That’s just how my brain works, always trying to see an interaction from a 45-degree angle. Just my training, even though sometimes my words come out wrong.
Yeah I’m with you, in fact. “Robot girl” isn’t something most autistic people would take as a compliment, but I do think Joyce intended it as one. Missed the mark, for sure, but in this case, I think she’s basically just saying “yeah well you never gave your parents ANY problems, so how could you possibly relate.”
That said, I also can’t and don’t blame Dina for responding the way she does. What Joyce says is NOT a nice thing to say to someone, regardless of intent. I just think intent does matter in this case because it’s part of this fictional interaction as a whole! And I’m saying this as an autistic individual. “Joyce means ‘robot’ in a good way” and “‘robot’ is a deeply sh!tty thing to call an autistic person and Dina’s offense is very valid” are not mutually exclusive concepts.
I didn’t even follow how calling her robot girl” was even supposed to be relevant until reaching this comic. Speaking personally as an autistic person who can come off as robotic in certain contexts (and would not generally find being called robot-like to be offensive), I’ve had all sorts of shouting matches with my parents. (Which, thankfully, they always resolved without hitting me.)
That all said, Joyce absolutely comes off as an asshole here, and I’m saying that despite also reading her as autistic.
Yeah, if you follow Joyce’s comments about spanking through this conversation there’s never even a hint of the idea that some parents just won’t spank. It’s all on the kids “What else were you supposed to do?” Then today with Sarah “Your parents never spanked you, you were so perfect.”
If Dina’s parents never hit her at all, the only reason Joyce can begin to comprehend is that she was robotically perfect.
Of course, that’s not how Dina would understand it. She’s not thinking in those terms at all.
And in fairness to Joyce’s interpretation of events, Dina is almost robotic in the way she follows rules as she understands them, and treats social customs as rules to be followed. Yes, this is related to her probable autism (I say probably because the last I’d seen on it was that Willis hadn’t said she definitely has it), but Joyce doesn’t know that. Joyce sees a person who follows rules nearly perfectly and assumes that person always did so. She acts and acted like a robot would and therefore was never spanked.
This is still not an okay thing for Joyce to have said to her, but I think it’s clearly not coming from her trying to insult anyone. It’s like that scene in Clerks II where the dude tries bringing back “porch monkey.” He’s not using it as a ln offensive term but the way the term has been used offensively against others means he’s wrong to do so.
(for reference – there were wooden spoons in the kitchen the entire time I grew up. None hit me. My eldest is nearly 9, has had wooden spoons in the house the entire time, absolutely no hitting involved.
I’m just going to assume this commenter only eats takeout. Like come on.)
I presume that Undrave’s line of thought is that the spoon used for spanking isn’t the one used for cooking (like Dina’s first assumption but the other way around)
It isn’t completely unreasonable if your introduction to wooden spoons is spanking (or if you’ve forgotten that they’re made for cooking)
I did not expect that coming from Dina, although she is correct. I imagine Dina is now going to bring up the whole spanking thing with Becky soon.
Also, Joyce needs to realize that spanking doesn’t come across as “normal” for many people these days. I know she’s still struggling with her sudden lack of faith but it isn’t a universal excuse.
Issue here as I see it is that Joyce is still framing the extent of parental violence as a measure of a child’s “goodness” or “perfection” (read: obedience).
To her, being beaten is a sign of moral failing. She said (I’m paraphrasing), “I was, like, really good, so hardly ever.” She said, “Becky… wasn’t known for her obedience.” “Only when we wouldn’t listen or whatever.” And to Sara, “You were so perfect?”
In this context, “Robot girl” is a compliment. She’s feeling defensive that Sara and Dina would consider her to have been battered, because for her, battery is a sign of being a “bad kid.” She assumes that Sara must have raised a little hell in her childhood and that battery would be the natural consequence of that, and finds it disingenuous when Sara denies having had the same experience.
For Dina to never have been hit, to Joyce, in this moment, feels as though Dina was bragging about her perfect, unwavering obedience. To which Joyce responds that any child who was never “disciplined” (read: hit) must be a robot, not a child.
It’s a completely f***ed up thing to say, don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending it in the slightest. It just seems to me that Joyce is still seeing battery as the natural and automatic and expected consequence of childhood misbehavior, not as an action within the parents’ control, much less a moral failing on the parents’ part.
That’s how I read it, at least. I could be wrong.
My apologies to all those hurt by Joyce’s hateful slur. It was a wrong, meanspirited, ugly and bigoted thing to say. I’m just trying to figure out what she thought she meant by it, even though it came out terrible.
“You don’t count” itself is a VERY hurtful thing to say. Weird or not, implying that one does not count as a real person because of the tendency to do harmless things that bring them joy is bigotry BY DEFINITION.
It is hurtful. You’re right, the Wellerman. It is hurtful.
It was an awful thing to say.
I don’t think it was meant as “you don’t count as a real person,” though. I think it was a clumsy and ignoramus and clueless way of saying, “You have an advantage — you’re perfect.” Joyce has all the social grace of a tank, here. (Sarcasm.)
Like a high school girl might say to a friend whose body shape she admired, “Oh, I wish I could be as skinny as you, but I guess I shouldn’t feel bad. You don’t count, you were born skinny, I could never compete with you.”
It’s a rotten way to think — to think that one can only be “good” (by some arbitrary measure) in comparison with others, and to discount the “achievements” (again, by some arbitrary measure) along that arbitrary scale.
But I heard it often enough in high school, by girls who didn’t think they were being as mean as they actually were.
Unless Willis chimes in to say how he intended Joyce’s comment to be meant (and that won’t happen), we can’t be sure. But my take is that it was intended to be nasty. Joyce isn’t feeling well and is both angry and defensive about how her upbringing is being viewed, and she lashed out. The comment to Dina wasn’t in any way a compliment – it was saying that she doesn’t behave like a “real” person, so of course she wasn’t punished like a real person would be.
Yeah, I can see that Joyce might be jealous, but the idea that Dina is perfect comes from the idea that she’s not like a “normal” person, which is why it’s a hurtful term. I think Joyce might just be misguided here, though. She doesn’t understand neurodivergence much like she didn’t understand homosexuality before Becky came out to her. It’s not coming from a place of pure malice, but still she needs to know that it’s not okay. But also it would probably be an easier problem to deal with when she’s not in serious pain. Honestly, nobody’s really equipped for this discussion and they all just need a breather.
People objectively do not count in certain contexts.
If we’re discussing how to keep people with allergies safe – and someone with no allergies comes in and says “the system we have is perfect! I’ve had no issues!” – it is reasonable to say “you don’t have allergies, your opinion does not count for this discussion”.
If we’re having a conversation about periods and how to manage them and a cisguy comes in and says “No management needed! They aren’t a problem for me. If you aren’t going about your daily life, stop making excuses” – it’s highly reasonable to tell him that his opinion does not count for this situation.
If you’re talking about proper child raising techniques – yes the sanctimonious assholes who gush about how easy it is and their children are perfect angels who’ve never done anything wrong and if your kids are difficult you’re just a bad parent… Not quite as socially acceptable to tell them they don’t count, but they seriously don’t and ignore them. Especially in early babyhood – listening to that bullshit is a recipe for postpartum depression.
In Joyce’s mind, Dina is not the type to misbehave by adult standards. Seeing as her parents are accepting of her girl-girl relationship, honestly I don’t think we’ve ever seen Dina do anything that would read as “rebels against authority” (presumably her parents are atheist as well)
So in a conversation of how to deal with misbehaving children – it does make sense for a person to say “well I just never misbehaved” (which is what this reads to Joyce) is pretty fair to say “then we’re not talking about you then, are we?)
It’s the assumption that Dina never misbehaved or lashed out that’s the problem. Joyce was “good” and still got hit a few times! Dina isn’t capable of being contrary or a troublemaker because her autism makes her…compliant? saintly? incapable of wanting things that might cause trouble for others? Joyce’s implication isn’t that Dina’s parents were nonviolent, the implication is that Dina would’ve been spanked if she was a normal kid.
Unless I’m forgetting something from an earlier strip, I’d be surprised if Joyce even knew anything about autism or considered that Dina might be on that spectrum. Pretty sure she just views her as too perfect to screw up like Joyce has. Despite having just been confronted with proof that Dina can definitely screw up when she refused to get the hell off of her and bug her with personal questions.
For context I’d like to point out that Joyce characterized herself as a “good kid”, but specifically said that Dina doesn’t count. Dina didn’t rate the “good kid” label, which contextualizes “robot girl”.
It is, but given what we’ve seen here from Joyce, it’s the only assumption she can make. She can’t even conceive of parents not using spanking intentionally. “I mean, we were kids, what else were you supposed to do?”
The only conceivable reason someone could have not been spanked is if they never did anything wrong. Even less than Joyce, the “good kid.”
Yeah, it does feel that way to me. And while I understand what her intent was with the robot comment, I can still see how it would land the wrong way for Dina — it’s the kind of thing that’s used against both autistic and ace people for not having the “correct” human response.
And it’s a big part of why I really despise overgeneralizing labels like “autism” and even the concept of mental “disorder” in general.
You can’t have a concept of what constitutes “incorrect” functioning without inevitably creating alongside it a corresponding concept of “correct” functioning, which really makes no sense in a diverse world where all humans’ functioning needs aren’t very much alike beyond basic survival.
It stands to reason that defining mental “disorder” as extensively as it has been is nothing more than an exercise in power.
Can’t wait til the comments now turn on Joyce for saying something because once again people are making her confront uncomfortable stuff, after climbing ontop of her sore-all-over body.
And I get being annoyed in her case. It was an asshole thing to say. But Dina is also being an asshole here. She barged into Joyce’s room, woke her up and climbed on her to get information, did not get off immediately when asked, when in the past her and Joyce have hardly been friendly.
I can totally see it being Joyce mixed with all her complex feelings on religion, and her parents + Dina whose always been sort of ??? to Joyce.
They’re both being assholes here, and I have no doubt the comments are going to largely side with Dina.
Behavior borne out of concern can still be bad. And overall I don’t think Joyce particularly favors Dina, outside of wanting Becky to be happy.
Probably partially in part because now she feels stupid compared to Dina of all people, who she already didn’t like much, because she realized they believed the same thing and it felt wrong when she realized it. In terms of real life psychology with what I know, I could see her being baseline not fond of her in part because of shame, partially because of jealousy, and partially because of the way Dina behaved towards her, while normal for Dina, rubbed her wrong.
Joyce is absolutely being an asshole here, that’s not up for debate. But Dina and Sarah are both causal factors here, and I’d even go so far as to say because of the above (jealousy, shame at her own old beliefs) her response to Dina was because she felt like Dina was in equal parts bragging, and pointing out another fault in Joyce’s life.
All while Joyce is in pain, grumpy, and clearly resistant to the conversation. She got her answer. She could have taken that and gone back to Becky, but she kept pushing at it on Joyce, who she isn’t particularly close with.
That is one thing I will say about Joyce’s last few awful fucking social faux pas: They all occurred in situations where somebody heard communication which wasn’t meant for them, or were in situations where somebody was imposing on her when she was utterly unprepared. She says a lot of dumb shit, but lately the opportunities to say dumb shit are fucking lining up to make the girl’s learning process in life as fraught as possible. She can be in the wrong and I can still feel somewhat sorry for her, but it seems sometimes like 90%+ of the people in this comic see everything in black and white terms…which is really odd, given this comic and its themes.
people love to hate people they hated to love.
Or some other generality that is usually wrong after two counterexamples, but it’s not like people didn’t spent their lives contradicting themselves, which is a good thing bc otherways they’d be no room for change.
What she said could be construed as ableist, since Dina is quite probably autistic, and calling an autistic person a robot is Not Great.
I don’t think that was how she intended it, but I do think she was being intentionally insulting out of defensiveness. She does not like shocks to her system, along with being in a shit mood in general due to her health and just kind of being more an abrasive ass in this portion of her atheism journey lately.
So, if one assumes she isn’t being deliberately ableist (which I’m pretty sure she isn’t, I’d be mildly surprised if she knew what autism was let alone believed Dina to be on that spectrum), I don’t see how to construe what she said as insulting at all. She called her a robot girl, implied she was too perfect to ever warrant punishment, and thus is an outlier that doesn’t factor into a discussion of punishment (or in Joyce’s words: She doesn’t count).
Put in context of things we suspect and Dina knows, it’s pretty shitty, but in the context of what Joyce knows? Honestly, it’s purely complimentary … unless we had a way to get a tone. Because anything, no matter how nice, can be an insult in the wrong tone.
Joyce isn’t deliberately being ableist, but as Wack’d put it above, she’s approaching Dina as if she’s an anomaly that avoided being spanked on the grounds that she’s abnormal.
So what we can take from Joyce here is that:
– She thinks every kid gets physically punished.
– Dina’s unique circumstances meant she never did as opposed to spanking being wrong.
Dina’s unique circumstances allowed her to avoid actions that would lead her being spanked, and it’s easy to infer from context that Joyce thinks she deserved to be spanked because she defied her parents’ will, and Dina was quiet and accommodating to her parents and thus never had to be spanked, unlike Joyce, who had to learn to be obedient after sufficient corporal punishment.
Yeah, one thing which actually made me somewhat sympathetic to Joyce’s outburst which was said somewhere else in the comments, is the reality of how Joyce views that experience, contrary to Dina, for whom it is an inconceivable level of paternal abuse, from Joyce’s fundie perspective, if an authority did it to her, it was her fault and it was correct to do and she deserved it. So Joyce is sitting here already grumpy, and what she heard Dina say, in her highly biased context, was just straight-up bragging. What happened to Joyce can’t be wrong, in her head, so of course the seculars in the room are just getting hysterical over normal parenting practices, which means she struggles to hear Dina’s concern as anything but Dina proclaiming her general superiority to her…and to be fair to Joyce, I suspect that’s a common pattern of behavior she’s come to expect from Dina. Dina literally acts like that deliberately to Joyce, all the time, over certain topics.
So Joyce is super-wrong and totally responsible for the fallout of fucking up here, but damned if I can’t see how she would take it badly in this specific way, in this specific situation. That’s the beauty and the horror of the way this comic is written.
Laura, above, summed it up perfectly:
Joyce was *complimenting* Dina. She’s not being tactful because she is actively in pain, but she sees spankings as the natural response to misbehavior, and believes that Dina was a perfect child.
It’s not an excuse, and she needs to learn better soon, but that’s what seems to be going through Joyce’s head here.
Speaking as an autistic, it was not a compliment. It was telling Dina that she “didn’t count”, that her experiences were unimportant and that she wasn’t really a person because of her neurodivergence. Would you take it as a compliment if someone were to dismiss you as “an animal”? (Difference here, of course, is that you probably are an animal, while Dina is demonstrably not a robot.)
Depends on if I recognize it as a dismissal, I would suppose. Almost everything has positive associated traits, from a certain point of view. I for one would love to be a robot, so I probably wouldn’t take umbrage at that part by itself. I would more likely take offense at “you don’t count” by itself, but I might not recognize it as a denial of my humanity through the context of Robot. But I’m hoping everyone else has a better grasp of social interaction than I do.
Also speaking as an autistic, I saw it as intended to be a compliment or at least a neutral descriptor, even if it came out as a term with a host of negative connotations. I believe that Joyce was trying to ascribe to Dina that she “didn’t count”, not because she wasn’t a human being, but because the way she acts precludes her from having misbehaved to begin with.
Joyce seems to believe that Dina’s the type to not need punishment to behave, to never misbehave because misbehavior is illogical, and that she has always been that way. In thinking of Dina this way, she can sidestep the thought that corporal punishment is unnecessary and a form of child abuse because she can then rationalize that the only person she know claims to never have experienced it also happens to never have needed it to begin with and is thus an exception to the rule.
So you’re saying, as a human being, you have literally never said something you meant to be positive that hurt the other person:s feelings?
When has Dina told Joyce she’s autistic? It sounds like she’s undiagnosed due to her confusion after Raidah. (Maybe in miracle comic land she got a diagnosis since – in the real world.it can take over a year)
Joyce is literally unqualified to recognize autistic behavior and it would be pretty gross for her to make an armchair diagnosis of Dina. Frankly most people suck about autism unless they’ve had cause for education – and honestly I’m sick of the idea that everyone should spend years educating themselves on every single minority human experience before they should be allowed to interact with humans.
I do not say that out of ignorance – I say that as someone who genuinely prefers genuine accidents from well meaning people to the hostility of SJWs.
Right now I’m in the hospital in part due to the radicalism of my fellow trans people – no I will not give details – YES I prefer every single goddamned medical professional who respectfully asked me what my preferences are despite, by trans aware standards, it being clear on my chart.
There is too much human variation to reasonably expect any lay person to navigate it perfectly.
I mean … calling someone an animal isn’t a dismissal. It’s just a fact. Tone can affect that, of course, since anything becomes an insult or dismissal in the wrong tone, but there’s nothing particularly insulting about that statement.
Right, I don’t think she’s trying to compliment Dina in the slightest, and was deliberately taking a jab.
I don’t think she’s being intentionally ableist, not the least which reason being A. that she does not likely know much about autism or the perjorative nature of calling someone autistic robotic/alien, and B. there is a nonzero chance she, too, is autistic given some of her food quirks, though that may be more in the realm of OCD. There is overlap, so it’s tough to say.
I do, however, think that she’s being testy right now. Joyce has been down with some health malady that may be a particularly harsh period or something else, and has already been short with Sarah over it. In addition, she is very defensive when her background is called into question, especially on stuff she knows or suspects to be dysfunctional, because it makes her very self-conscious and she is trained to defend authority.
Lastly, I think it’s complicated further by Dina, a person she’s had numerous arguments with in the past from ideological standpoints. Joyce being an atheist now, too, doesn’t really change that the two aren’t generally overly fond of each other. Maybe not full-on acrimonious, but they’re not going to make it into the top 10 favorite people of each other. From Dina in particular, Joyce is probably not going to be receptive to this, something she would have given pushback to even Dorothy about.
She and Joyce have a relationship where Joyce probably would have appreciated that wake up. More likely she would have been gentler.
If she was on Joyce in a way that makes Joyce uncomfortable and was told, she’d immediately move.
When Joyce said she was in pain – Dorothy would acknowledge that and say “I know this isn’t the best time, this is important and I need to talk to you about it now”
(And reiterating that Joyce and Dorothy have a better relationship to start with. If, like, Leslie tried this in an AU where they’re students so it wouldn’t be grossly inappropriate – it still could’ve ended badly. I do imagine Leslie handling it better than Dina did)
Then she’d address it in a way that’s understanding that this is Joyce’s normal and you can’t just attack it.
And yes 100% Joyce would still give pushback because that’s been shown time and again. Joyce would need some time on her own to process in her own time and it may be one of her “I do not have the bandwidth to address this I’ve been through too much I’m shutting this down”.
*Which is reasonable because she’s had an incredibly traumatic 6 months and is not required to process any trauma on anyone else’s schedule*.
Sorry to be a little tangential, but yeah, all that can be known for sure is that Joyce and Dina are both neurodivergents with some kind of anxiety disorder(s).
Even then, the science is nowhere near the point that we can use these overgeneralizing labels to understand ourselves and our unique stripes as neurodivergents, especially given the REALLY bad place these labels came from. The fact that “autism” is Latin for “morbidly self-absorbed” pretty much says it all.
👁️ One might as well try to capture the beauty of the Northern Lights with a disposable camera.
Where’s the backhand part? Divorced from context that Joyce probably doesn’t have, it seems purely complimentary.
Taking what we suspect and Dina knows (and has probably had unpleasant experiences regarding), it becomes pretty insulting, but it’s easy to believe it was meant to be purely complimentary.
I’m siding with Dina because she’s sexier than Joyce in several ways, personally. She could cast Familicide on somebody and I’d probably be fine with it.
And of course the most important part of understanding and reacting to this strip is determining which character is wrong and which one we should side with.
Far more important than understanding what the strip shows about the characters and their relationships.
Calling Dina a slur isn’t in fact, a reasonable reaction to being uncomfortable
Like, this isn’t obviously irredeemable. It’s Joyce, tomorrow when she can think more clearly she’ll probably realize how badly she hurt Dina and apologize because that’s her shtick. But yeah, I’ve had pretty excruciating periods that made me violent but i can’t say I’ve ever said something awful like this because of it
I realize she probably meant it as a compliment, no intent doesn’t make it better. Dina’s made it clear she doesn’t like being othered like that. And honestly, not even allosexual NTs would take robot girl as a compliment
Hey now. Don’t go putting feelings in other peoples’ mouths. As one of those Allosexual NTs only part I’d object to is girl, because I’m a guy. And that not very strenuously, mostly just out of confusion.
asshole asshole asshole everything is asshole everyone is asshole nothing but asshole all the way down no need for variety in vocabulary one word to out everything on the same level only say asshole don’t say other things asshole is the only viable word
I’m going to assume that any explanation I could give will lead to further questions or potentially even opposing arguments. Make your own decision why I made the post and we can pretend it’s true.
The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (June 28, 1914) was the main catalyst for the start of the Great War (World War I).
In other words, I sometimes type out a vent post and erase it without posting. Sometimes my finger slips. Sometimes things I don’t actually care that much about get seen by other people and taken as anything remotely worth engaging with.
Yeah, it always helps to think twice before posting something. That’d save you the trouble in future, since it clearly annoys you a lot when people reply to your messages and it wasn’t one you really gave much consideration.
Cool, calling an autistic a robot, love it. I get Joyce is grumpy(and have defended some of that grumpiness in the past) but that does not justify ableism.
Speaking as an autistic who also doesn’t like the terminology- Does joyce actually know Dina is autistic? They’re not particularly close. I know we, as viewers know she is because of word of Willis.
She probably doesn’t know autism is a thing or at least views it as a disease, but personally I don’t have the energy to give excuses for that kind of ignorance
If I were to be more personal,as an autistic the way people view you as “weird” and make all kinds of comments to your face accumulate over a lifetime. The fact that ableism is so normalised means I for example am a very traumatised person who often has to brush aside casual ableism or else I’m not being cool. So yea, I don’t care if someone is tired, I am not tolerating that ableism if I can, certainly not from someone who’s in my friend group.
Honestly I think my take on it is different because I found out as an adult, so I tend to mentally seperate my autism for why I was treated poorly/called weird (Which is not. Good, mind you.) Like I know it was the cause of all the behaviors, but it feels like…. just something I occasionally have epiphanies about my past.
Well, I’ve actively idealized being a Robot, ever since I was a child, for the clarity of mind. These days, I would just take the extra memory and ability to treat my body as just another set of clothes.
@Wellerman (because this is going so far down the reply list, I want it to be clear that I’m replying to their post above)
Nano-colony.
Although, technically, I wouldn’t like to be a robot per se but rather a nano-colony cyborg.
Immortal, immune to everything, infinite memory storage, and the ability to pass my powers on to those I love. Plus I get to keep all the squishy human bits that I like to rub against other humans (or other nano-cyborgs).
I have seriously put thought into this. If I should ever find myself with a Genie wish or similar, I have the fully rules-lawyered version ready to go.
I’d look like Whisper the vtuber and i do count being insanely thicc as a power. I’d have the linguistic capabilities of 3po, or i guess since I’m a hot lady robot the luxury droids? The flight and taser capabilities of an astromech, the ability to make cute MSE sounds and the ability to cuss someone off in droid like chopper.
…why yes, the star wars animated universe is one of my hyperfixations at the moment, how could you tell?
Were I a robot with full choice of appearance, I would probably favor some kind of arthropod-esque form with a heavy exoskeleton and numerous limbs with easily-swappable appendages and several retractable flexible arms in the vein of Doctor Octopus … also with easily-swappable appendages to serve as many functions as possible.
And all of that would preferably be one of many temporary drones I directly controlled from a set of server hubs scattered across the world and possibly in orbit where my primary consciousness existed.
As far as special abilities? Existing in multiple places simultaneously, being insanely versatile, excessively high computing specs on my various servers, and primarily existing as software so I could move myself to better hardware on the regular.
I’m not sure any of those three things come with being a robot, but the first two would be cool. For the third, it might depend on whether an off switch was involved.
Honestly most of my ideas for your question posed above centered around this line of thinking. I’d especially like to have a body designed the way BMW designs (or at least used to design) their vehicles, with easy maintenance in mind, easily-accessible parts, and intent for longevity.
Cutting myself off here before I get too depressing.
Honestly given my state of mind at the moment my ideas would be less a bunch of cool stuff and more a laundry list of ways a robot body would not have any of my medical issues.
…I’d love to be a flying robot though. Flight is always good.
Without speculating comparatively, I’ll say that mine isn’t necessarily unusually long, but it definitely qualifies as a list and it’s just been feeling like a lot lately.
Well, the robot part by itself isn’t really what pissed me off.
Honestly, I think robots girls like Android 18 are cool and wouldn’t mind having one as a friend one day!
It was implying that Dina “doesn’t count” as a real person because of harmless behavior that makes her happy.
Regardless of whatever psychiatric brushstroke(s) you want to paint over that uniqueness with (if any at all), what Joyce said was REALLY uncalled for. 😬
I didn’t get the impression that Dina doesn’t count as a real person. I got the impression that Dina doesn’t count in a discussion about punishment because Joyce things (almost certainly inaccurately) that Dina never received any. Because of the perfect and obedient part.
Spanking is so culturally dependent. It’s just part of being raised black in the South but I have friends who think my parents are monsters because they whooped me and it’s such a strange thing.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s strange that you DON’T think beating children is totally unacceptable. Did you know that it’s technically been a crime in my country (The Netherlands) for nearly 200 years? Did you know that it’s been denounced by pedagogues since the 18th century at least? Do you realize that it takes bending-over-backwards rationalizations to argue that it’s NOT child abuse?
“Did you know that it’s technically been a crime in my country (The Netherlands) for nearly 200 years?”
Y’know, I’m going to go out on a limb, and be a little lenient to African-Americans for their ethics on this one, seeing as in their country, they haven’t legally BEEN PEOPLE for 200 years, yet. I do not think that spanking is productive or beneficial, but I also respect that as an African-American parent, there is the long-standing cultural impression that you need to be hard on your kids, because if your kids do not have a higher standard of discipline than every other non-black child they interact with, a white authority may take offense to their conduct and fucking execute them for it. I still don’t think corporal punishment is productive, but I also respect that it is a part of the cultural as part of a cycle of historic, systemic trauma which may not be possible to expect to be fully unpacked within one generation.
Oh chill the fuck out you Muppet. I’m not surprised someone who I know is a lighter hue than me is clutching their pearls but read before you colonize all over the reply. Corporal punishment is part of the black experience. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with it but that doesn’t make my parents abusive and the people who do think someone talking too many decibels loud is too and then throw their hands up when their kids run around throwing shit off shelves at the Albertson’s
There’s a middle ground between extension cords and anarchy but I’m just noting a cultural difference
Why are you assuming they aren’t black? They are many black people in Netherlands, as it’s been a massively colonial country. There even are people with afro-american background there (american colonies).
Ofc, I don’t think one second that forbiding spanking publicly would stop spankings to happen privately.
Fwiw, I’m from a first world country too, and spanking is usually more common in proletarian classes that the others, whatever the culture is (yeah we have quite a mixed culture, plus we have afro-american people that don’t culturally spank their kids, I don’t know what it’s worth to have a general statement) – I have relatives from/in Congo, they’d never hit their kids/grandkids (and they’re are rather upper class), I have another cousin from Madagascar, she’d never got beaten (her parents being teachers that might have helped), but I can cite many white people for whom it’s cultural to spank/beat kids.
I see a few reasons (not being exhaustive here and not calling them excuses) that I’d call class related rather than cultural: having to take care of the kids the whole day and not being financially able to get care help (leading to more promiscuity, especially in tiny apartments, therefore more conflict, more neighbor conflict), having kids at a more early age (more difficult to defuse when you’re still trying to get the hang of many things), having more kids (less access to planned parenthood) and then less space for each expressing in a freak control society, being much more frowned upon letting them do what they want than upper class kids, having less mental space for childs’ wellness bc of striving to survive (the poorer, the more access you have to superfluous, and the less access you have to quality essential things – it’s also noted by sociological authors as a typical management class thing to develop an interest for alternative education, which non violent has been… and still is; even if it’s since the late 80’s some king of declassed management class heir, management class having been proletarized but still having the cultural capital to possess some instruction about it). Sorry, I rant, but I think that before calling it cultural, we have to cut the influence of the social class to get to the core of what is cultural and what is internalised, seeing for sure we all have differences in what we perceives as race but not as it is systematically seen as race-related by domination system (sorry if I’m unclear here, it’s been a whole different race theory between countries, even if intertwined to the thanks of both Fanon influence and of the Black Panther party members having fled US persecution in Europe influencing EU black/african/anticolonial movements). Sorry I still rant. Long story short, I think our netherlandish friend is making an assumption that legislation and morals are the same, but that it shouldn’t been taken for granted that corporal punishment is black/afro-american heritage (if you got any scholar study on that, I haven’t found it, I’d be happy to look at it).
The effects corporal punishment has on a children can be everything from “meh” to lifelong severe trauma. Physically hurting a child is proven not not to be a effective discipline by various studies.
Spanking is also part of a lot of white cultures across the globe. This is bad. Every culture should stop normalising hitting kids. Because it is bad. Hitting kids is bad.
It’s pretty telling to some people’s attitudes in these discussions that this is the second time I’ve seen corporeal punishment being put on the other side of anarchy. As if not using corporeal punishment means you’re not raising your kids with as much discipline and boundaries.
Look, you either run the kids over with a steam locomotive when they talk back, or they’re gonna end up robbing banks and cooking meth in the local Denny’s. There is nothing else in life.
as a former teach and a former social worker, I can attest that some of the hardest kids to speak to and to get respect from were the most beaten ones. Some would even find odd/insulting to have people try to give them the respect they deserve (by which I mean at least basic human one).
That … is an interesting perspective. It had never occurred to me, but it is a plausible idea. It will be interesting to find out whether DYW has this in mind for Becky’s character.
@Caspar Mulders: There really are ways to respond to this that come off a lot less like “But your parents really are monsters and you need to acknowledge that”.
I think it’s pretty fair to say that someone can do something that is harmful without realising it, whether because of cultural norms or their own experiences or w/e. Someone who does something like that isnt an awful, evil person. They probably are genuinely caring and well meaning.
That said, i think especially in this day and age, we can acknowledge all of that, while also realising ‘this thing that we thought was okay, very distinctly and provably harms children. It does no good to defend the practice at this point, when we know without a shadow of a doubt that it has a very good possibility of causing a lot of trauma to kids, regardless of if it happens Every time.
Eh, i mean it’s a massive part of being raised Jamaican and i still recognize that it’s massively fucked up. Definitely not the main reason but probably a contributing factor to how everyone’s first thought to solve things in this country is with violence
Culture can be wrong sometimes
Yeah. The Black American experience definitely does not have a storied history of violently punishing people for imagined slights. Clearly something worthy of being passed onto your children.
While I certainly side with Dinah here, I also feel like Dinah has missed the social cues that Joyce doesn’t want to talk about her family, upbringing, or friend’s upbringing while suffering severe menstrual cramps that probably need to be seen by a doctor.
Deep personal inquiries have a time and place and may lead to poorly stated responses.
Still, not cool, Joyce. You can just tell her to go away.
It’s a pretty serious social cue to miss, but to be minimally fair to Dina, she is literally mirroring Joyce’s exact behavior, which Dina has witnessed Joyce deploy interpersonally on a regular basis to multiple people, when Joyce is trying to achieve the social outcome of waking up somebody to whom she needs to talk. Like, this is literally Joyce’s solution to Dina’s problem, maybe now Joyce will grasp why it could be strange, or an issue.
I like Joyce but that thing she does is one of her most annoying habits but still when you’re sitting on someone and they tell you they’re in pain and to move then you really should move right away
Joyce has already shown lots of progress on this. Back in last semester she started knocking on Sal’s door rather than just going in and looming over her.
I don’t think we’ve seen her do the looming waking up thing this semester at all. Even with Sarah.
Nor has she ever brushed off somebody responding by saying that they were in pain and she needed to move.
I kinda feel the big distinction has been that Joyce’s running gag doesn’t happen to someone else’s obvious physical distress and then becomes the setting for painful interpersonal drama.
Like Joyce does this and then Sal strangles her, and then she forgot so Sal strangles her again with Becky. It’s a cartoonish expression of her having no boundaries and annoying the other characters with inappropriate physical affection.
Like Joyce’s magical power to teleport to Dorothy’s location even if she’s in the bathroom of another building is probably a joke, else Joyce would have used it when she was thrown into a van by Blaine.
That count was an extremely slow at counting, and while he did theoretically hold the title of count, in practice he was only a puppet. In short, vampires suck at counting.
Some folklore has vampires obsessed with counting. It’s a trick used to escape them – spill some grain or seeds and they have to stop and count them all before they can chase you down.
It’s a trait shared with some other folklore monsters, Baba Yaga had to stop to count spoons, but one that’s generally been lost in modern takes. Except for the Count Von Count. I think that’s a coincidence and the Count’s take was just based on the name (inspired by Count Dracula), but I don’t know for sure.
In a very shallow attempt to maybe redirect conversation from whose the asshole. I a question about what the eff is happening with that patreon preview. I’m not patron so I have no context but looks like a guy dressed like a book wants to beat up a kid with a toy while everyone sings? Also did he paint his face brown to match the book? There’s a lot of shit going on there.
A real pity. I was hoping this would be the conversation where Joyce talks about her deconversion and opens up to Dina and they can reconcile a bit over how annoying Joyce was in the early days!
P.S. I don’t think Joyce was being malicious here. I think her response was thoughtless but understandable given that she was woken up with a conversation she didn’t want to have.
I think it’s absolutely wild that anybody can expect Joyce to be perfectly level-headed when the general thrust of her discussion with Dina & Sarah has been “hey, hey, wake up. remember all the ways your religious parents messed you up? Here’s one more, and it’s ABUSE. You were ABUSED. It’s TRAUMA. Feel EVEN WORSE about your parents than you already do, or else you’re a bad person too.”
Not that this is what Dina or Sarah are actually saying. But that’s the framework Joyce is going to have in her head as she processes it.
I feel like this is gonna end up making Joyce and Becky’s conflict worse too, as Dina tells Becky that Joyce said something that upset her and Becky won’t know or care about the context that led her to saying it
“hey, hey, wake up. remember all the ways your religious parents messed you up? Here’s one more, and it’s ABUSE. You were ABUSED. It’s TRAUMA. Feel EVEN WORSE about your parents than you already do, or else you’re a bad person too.”
After all that the snark Joyce gave back was pretty mild
All I care to say is that I get the feeling Joyce got beaten when she acted out, made noise and disobeyed her parents, and Dina doesn’t act out or make noise.
Dina’s quiet and agreeable, and that’s what Joyce and Becky needed to be so they didn’t get beat.
Are we quite sure that’s not what Joyce meant by Robot? Robots are known for following their programming, and thus not needing to be punished. It would also keep the same line of thought as her gripe against Sarah being a “perfect” child and following the rules.
(Not that it really matters since that wasn’t what was communicated.)
Part of the problem lies in the implication that a robot can do nothing except follow their programming, and that they cannot and do not have “human” responses. There’s a difference between being a “good kid” and lacking capacity, and that difference was highlighted and underlined by Joyce saying that Dina didn’t count. Not that she was a good kid. She didn’t count. Because she’s “robot girl.”
“Yeah Dina, of course you were a good kid, you’re always quiet” is leagues away from “Yeah Dina, but you don’t count. You’re like robot girl or whatever.”
Meant to reply to this last night, but I got put in a bad way by some other threads. I really appreciate this reply. It made me feel heard and listened to in a way that I really needed last night.
I completely respect that we have different perspectives on this, and I really appreciate that you came for understanding here. Thank you.
There are all sorts of reasons for Dina to be upset at Joyce’s comment, but I do think Joyce’s intent was basically in that direction. “You don’t count when talking about parents spanking their kids because you’re so robotically perfect they wouldn’t have needed to.”
That’s not how Dina took it, and understandably so.
To her parents, the people Joyce has been taught to think are allowed to physically beat you to teach you a lesson.
Y’know, as if the takeaway from these last few strips and the explicit mention of Becky and how often it happened to her is “Joyce was beaten as a child when she acted outside her parents’ desires.”
Same, it’s always great. My favorite Dina strips are the ones where she stands up to the others like “I am a normal adult with feelings and fuck you for not recognizing that”
Eh. Yeah, Joyce needs a revelation re: being smacked with a wooden spoon is variably considered abusive. Yeah, calling Dina a robot is No Bueno (though I think we as an audience are privy to more information about Why that’s bad than Joyce is). But getting into someone’s personal space and personal traumas while they’re obviously trying to rest also earns an “eesh” from me. Gotta love a webcomic called ‘Dumbing of Age’ showing people with not-quite-fully-developed brains acting, well. Dumb.
Joyce is in pain, is woken up rudely by Dina, Dina doesn’t immediately move, Dina suggests Joyce was beaten, Sarah chimes in about trauma, the subject stays on Joyce haven been beaten and Joyce mildly snarks at Dina
Joyce should be commended for her restraint in this instance
I agree 100% but also the point she is making was factually wrong, the situation and the conversation are unfair in both directions for different reasons.
The possible avenues for snark in this scenario that do not involve calling a neurodivergent person a robot are staggering, and yet that is the one she chose.
All I’m saying is given the circumstances of how Joyce was woken up and the subject of the proceeding conversation we n maybe cut Joyce a little slack for being human and not snarking a perfect (dare i say robotic) response
You say “a perfect” like there was only one right answer. I’m pretty sure there were more right answers than wrong answers here.
Honestly I’m not in the mood to be told I need to give someone slack for this particular ableist slight. Joyce was in a bad mood and she was in pain and some snark absolutely would have been reasonable. This was not.
Having been on the receiving end of this particular slight, I can confirm I do not consider it reasonable. I also consider it beyond snark.
I don’t know your experiences or your life, so I make no assumptions about you. Instead I would like to direct your attention to the fact that several of us commenting on this thread consider it hurtful. I don’t see restraint in what Joyce said. Maybe I just have a higher opinion of her than you do that I think what that would be the restrained version of would not come from Joyce ever.
I can tell you that if Dina had woken me up, sat on me, refused to move when I said I was in pain and brought up potentially sensitive subjects immediately after being rudely awakened then my language would be a lot worse than what Joyces was
Quite possibly Dina might have even found herself lying on the ground after being knocked off the bed
You know what, I think I’ve had my fill of this exchange. I hope for their sake your friends and family only ever see your “sunshine and rainbows” self.
If you cant see the inappropriateness of waking someone up, sitting on them, not moving when they ask you to because they’re in pain and then bring up sensitive issues and don’t understand why Joyce might be a little pissed then I hope you have very understanding friends and family
Dina is mimicking what Joyce considers normal wake-up behavior, including ignoring grumbles about it. Joyce responds to this plus concern about her upbringing by calling Dina a slur.
It would have honestly been better if Joyce just hit her. That’s impersonal, it just says “I’m lashing out because I’m in pain and I’m absolutely done with this fuck off now”. I’ve been violent on my period before due to pain, it’s almost reasonable. But instead Joyce called her a slur, even if that’s not how she meant it. She said something extremely personal and hurtful. That’s so much worse
Dina is mimicking what Joyce considers normal wake-up behavior, including ignoring grumbles about it. Joyce responds to this plus concern about her upbringing by calling Dina a slur.
Joyce ignores peoples protests about pain and then starts in depth, uncomfortable discussions and then rephrases the conversation in the worst possible light?
“Having thin skin” is a commonly-used colloquialism that’s typically used to mean a person isn’t invulnerable to irritations. Get bothered one time by anything and your skin may as well be tissue paper.
Dinas not exactly blameless is this situation, like i don’t know what period pains are like but I do know that if I’m rudely woken up, have someone sit on me and they won’t move when asked and then starts in on a personal conversation I wouldn’t be my usual sunshine and rainbows self either
awww oh no, heaven forbid someone get offended at being told they’re perceived as something most people view as an object devoid of feelings or personhood, oh no, oh dear, how thin-skinned.
It’s almost like shitty rhetorical tricks like that make you feel like you’re winning with such little effort, they’re literally addictive to the person employing them, and warp all discourse away from rationality.
I agree–it was the most “normal” sounding compound sentence I’ve heard Dina speak. My initial thought was also anger, but perhaps Becky is having an effect on Dina’s speech patterns as well. Freshman year, the speech patterns of my new friends definitely affected me.
Given the context of this noticeable change, my money’s on anger. Otherwise I’d have expected Willis to put it into a different context. I’m skeptical of potential coincidences in fiction.
So, the difference between “you being an asshole” and “your being an asshole” is definitely significant. “Your being an asshole” is the possessive- it’s saying that at the moment, Joyce is being a jerk (definitely true). “You being an asshole”, on the other hand, is assigning that quality to Joyce. It’s saying that being an asshole is who she is. Given Dina’s experiences with Joyce, I can see how she’d come to that conclusion.
Dina’s definitely pissed, but I think in this case that resulted in a deliberate choice rather than a grammatical mistake.
An open hand is a worse thing to be hit with than a wooden spoon unless maybe you turn the spoon around and vigorously jab with the handle. Pretty sure that’s just physics. A wooden spoon is just too light.
Neither does an undamaged wooden spoon. If it were prone to that sort of thing it wouldn’t be a practical tool for its intended use, because we’d end up eating splinters. Derp.
Let the record show that Tenzhi has used the meme word “derp” as punctuation, likely as an easily-denied insinuation that the person toward whom it was used is of lesser intellect (typically with an inclination toward learning disabilities) and thus deserving of mockery.
Just call me the R-word next time, save us some trouble.
That’s not how the physics works out though. The same energy is going in, but into a smaller area because a wooden spoon is smaller than a hand. So the hit that DOES happen is much harder because it’s more concentrated.
Yes, I came here to make this same point. Anybody that thinks because something is light it can’t do damage as a weapon should know that knives also aren’t too fuckin’ heavy.
Uh….No. An average bullet travels around 20 times faster than the fastest fastball. Whoever told you bullets and baseballs travel the same speed was 100% full of it.
Aaand that’s what I get for recalling information I was given in grade school as anything approaching factual. Luckily, I said “allegedly” and can therefore dodge all responsibility for that particular bit of un-truth.
On the other hand, I can confirm through personal experience that when hit by a softball vs a baseball of similar composition traveling at similar velocity, the baseball hurts more.
I think the ball used to be soft for softball, although standard issue softballs definitely aren’t anymore (although they still don’t have the same composition as a baseball or they’d be a lot heavier).
It’s also a much less yielding surface so the force is transferred more efficiently.
And you can hit harder with it, since it won’t sting your hand at all. You also have more lever arm, so may be able to move the spoon faster than your hand.
Bruh what? Anything that’s solid wood is gonna hurt like hell
Oh wait you guys spank on the ass or some shit and not the hand. Yeah that’s weird.
Either way, don’t hit children, with anything
Well, this is going to be a fun one. If you’re doomscrolling through this comment section, consider this a stopping point – or maybe a break area? In any case, I recommend you take a deep breath and stretch your legs. Maybe count to five. Now keep on doing your thing.
I don’t know about seasonal per se, but nothing is quite as comforting to me as a cookies and cream milkshake. I will absolutely drink that year ’round though.
Excellent choice! 😋 I’ve gotta get that next time I get fast food!
These days I’m home most of the time, and for tough but arguably invigorating discussions like this I always like French roast coffee with vanilla cream, cut with decaf to my liking.
Of when my tolerance is low enough, especially in time for a certain holiday, I definitely don’t turn down cannabinol-infused tea to relax!
Usually just one cup a day, although sometimes more as needed (sometimes black tea as a supplement given the milder caffeine content). I try not to rely on it too much to avoid too much tolerance. Years ago I worked at a cafe and my tolerance got to kind of scary levels, so I just backed off of it entirely for a while. Didn’t seem to have any signs of withdrawal, so I guess I’ve dodged dependency.
It’s autumn here so I like to make myself a hot chocolate every day. Helps with the cold and I think having something sweet boosts my brain power in the afternoon.
On a similar line of thought, the Kents had to have had some other-worldly parenting skills to raise Clark to be such a moral and kind person with no means of punishment.
Even if Clarc dont use violence as a means of Express his emotion (quite normal for 3 year old) still if you take away xbox he just simply take it back from you/fly to high shelf or find it with RTG vision.
Alright, so if he does that, there’s a simple answer. Ma and Pa wait til young Clarkus is at school, retake the Xbox, and bake it into the little hellion’s dinner. Being invincible, he won’t be harmed by the noxious plastic and circuits, but with clever seasoning and an appropriately distraction dinner conversation, he won’t notice that he’s eaten his Xbox until about his third portion.
Neither of those things were existent in Depression-era Kansas. I’m being serious here, how do you punish someone who can’t feel pain, or get physically hurt by anything you can do? And hasn’t had enough time to learn English yet? Seriously Clark is effectively a non-verbal ASD child with a pain tolerance that is literally other-worldly. how did George and Martha deal with him?
What am I, a scholar of mythology? If you can’t take away a young boy’s Xbox I’m out of ideas. I guess they could put him in the corner or something? Did they have corners in the Depression?
They were also farmers, so once he got old enough to do farm tasks there’s always the option of extra chores with tedious limitations (which also then gets into the question of how super speed affects perception of time, which is a fascinating question to me but might be as boring as watching paint dry to other folks).
Given that this was a direct reply and I specifically cited “once he got old enough to do farm tasks” I think the rebuke about the topic of discussion is a little overly harsh. It’s not like we’re in a strict forum here, chill out a little.
Also, as I mentioned up-thread, in the absence of punishment there is reinforcement of good behaviors.
Additionally, communication does not necessarily require full language fluency in both directions. Babies understand tone before they understand language, and understand incoming language long before they have the fine motor control to express language. It has always been strongly implied by the Superman mythos that his infant development moved along similar lines as a human’s, which means all of this would be consistent.
I was curious your opinion about superbobo and lack of option to negotiate. Still if you cant physically stop Child from anything it can be disaster (hurt pet or destroyed things my first thought) and every child have tantrums even if they understand tone it does not care it want metaphor xbox
You’re focusing too much on the necessity of punishment and completely ignoring what I’ve now said twice about reinforcement of good behavior.
Sure there would probably be some rough spots, possibly some broken objects, but the ability to communicate happens a lot earlier than you’re giving credit for (it’s not like an adult having to take the time to learn a foreign language from scratch). Based on the little ones I’ve known, I’m guessing that most destruction would have been purely accidental, and if handled with care would be preventable from happening too often. And Jonathan and Martha Kent have consistently been shown to be patient, kind, and empathetic. So that’s basically how they did it.
Well, currently Clark wasn’t raised in Depression-Era Kansas. Even a worse case of comic time than this comic. Clark’s perpetually mid-thirties, so he was currently raised in the late 80s and 90s.
At some point they decided he only developed powers after long exposure to Earth’s sun, so into his early teens before this really became a problem. Not sure if they stuck with that or not.
It’s the only way it really makes any sense – not that you should look to superhero comics for sense. Even leaving punishment aside, small kids and babies lack self-control. A super-baby or toddler lashing out in a tantrum could easily kill a parent. Or even just grabbing or hugging would crush.
And that’s not to mention the heat vision.
I think the bigger question is how they kept him in one place. In my experience once they’re able to move around on their own, toddlers will wander anywhere. Add super-speed, super-strength, and flight to that. What do you do when baby Clark just fucks off three counties over because … man, I have no idea why babies decide to go the places they do sometimes. Because he wanted to chase the sun, maybe.
Autistic person here. Some commenters seem confused as to why Dina could be so offended. Maybe people are too focused on the “robot” part. To me, the most offensive part is the “you don’t count”, by far. That’s literally discrimination.
Neurodivergent people frequently grow up hearing stuff like that every day. The standard of treatment for autistic kids today includes a lot of stuff that most people would consider torture if they knew about it. Child abuse is a lot more common for autistics. Many of us grow up believing that our feelings don’t matter, or that they should be deleted.
The fact that something like “You don’t count” doesn’t immediately register for everyone as something awful to say to someone, specially to a character coded as autistic, may be evidence of implicit bias in society. Ostracizing a disabled person seems clearly a very offensive thing to me.
This is a classic case of “Don’t even speak to me before I’ve had my coffee”.
I can of course only speak for myself, but I wouldn’t be much good in a serious discussion about spanking/child abuse minutes after I’m woken up by someone jumping on me in my bed.
That said, calling Dina a robot girl is indeed an asshole thing to do, and was most likely intended to hurt, since Dina has been pretty open with her problems with social norms and such.
If I was to guess, I’d say Joyce said that hurtful thing because she herself was hurting over this conversation.
I expect next strip to Walky walk in and said “Joyce why are you asshole? Does fact that parents beat you up had factor in it? And then Becky whole on white ride in and said no, she is asshole because they beat her too weak.”
Can…can you not understand why some of us are upset?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not arguing that Dina acted perfectly in the lead up to this strip, or that Sarah handled this particularly well, but what Joyce said was hurtful and dismissive and I would have been incredibly upset to have been on the receiving end of Joyce’s comment.
I don’t know you or your intent, but this reads as very dismissive when several people who have been commenting about issues related to this have been open and vulnerable.
“Finding the bad guy” and being/sharing your upsetness are NOT the same thing.
One person’s feelings ≠ some essential characteristic/judgment of another person. These are two totally different things. Saying “someone is an asshole” is not an expression of feelings. Well, it is, but it’s disguised as a judgment.
I have a lot of empathy for people’s pain and suffering. I don’t have any empathy right now for the incessant compulsion to categorize every person and action as right, wrong, asshole or not. And maybe some people are expressing vulnerably, but it’s drowned out when all I see as I scroll through is “asshole asshole asshole” as Delicious Taffy wrote above.
It makes me think about what Sarah Z said in her recent video about West Elm Caleb, about how a lot of peoples’ politics revolves around this idea that while hurting certain people is understood to be wrong, by their existence we must infer that there’s a right person to hurt, and that by harming that kind of person, we are making the world a better place. And I think that’s a big part of how people treat Joyce moment-to-moment in this strip, because while she’s been repeatedly victimized, traumatized, condescended to and blamed outright for the things that happened to her, none of that seems to matter because she says ignorant shit sometimes.
Obviously intent isn’t magic, but Joyce is also still learning and growing out of a lifetime of ignorance, but the commentariat has repeatedly proven that they do not care about characterization and character growth: to some of the people here, Joyce will always and forever be The Thing She Was Before, and that makes her perpetually The Villain, and therefore any empathy for her expressed by anyone is viewed as suspect at best, being an enabler for abuse at worst.
As someone who went through a lot of the same things Joyce did, including using language I didn’t realize was harmful because I grew up in a boomer household that was perpetually trapped in 1972 and was just parroting what my parents said, reading these comments fucking sucks. I often like to joke that if I’d met my past self I’d kick their ass, but that’s not what 18 year old me needed, is it?
I feel like most are pretty clear that Joyce is the bigger asshole here
Just willing to point out why she might be an asshole in this strip (suddenly woken up still in pain being ambushed with a conversation she didn’t expect or want)
Every goddamn week it’s a new round of two minutes hate. Months, years of characterization go out the window so everyone can condemn their pet unfavorite (usually Joyce) and pat themselves on the back for their stunning insight into the human condition based on their reactions to comic characters.
Is what Joyce said hurtful? Yeah. But what would YOU do if someone decided to invade your personal space, sit on your painful body, and ask you probing personal questions, and then refuse to leave when asked?
People really don’t have any empathy for folks who don’t suffer in a convenient way.
Dina is mimicking what Joyce considers normal wake-up behavior, including ignoring grumbles about it. Joyce responds to this plus concern about her upbringing by calling Dina a slur.
And that absolves Dina (and Sarah) of everything that happened here. Gotcha.
Spencer said this several months ago during the last time Joyce got labeled villain of the week, and it’s worth repeating here:
I don’t know what turned fiction, particularly serialized, ongoing fiction, into a race to find the one true meaning of the story, and the true meaning is finding whoever is morally correct in the immediate moment and that person is the one who isn’t yelling.
Look, maybe if Joyce didn’t wake up and immediately grab the Dremel and start carving ancient symbols into Dina’s bones, none of us would even be arguing today.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, totally fine and normal. But let’s say, hypothetically, if you were getting hurt by the people who’re supposed to love and protect you, while you’re too small to stop them, in precise, deliberate ways that were also used on your siblings, your friend, everyone you grew up with to make you screwed up in the same way, maybe subtly changing your most basic instincts so they don’t understand how love and trust and submitting to authority and stuff is supposed to work, or some even deeper, pre-verbal functions we don’t even have words for, and you don’t have any other frame of reference to tell you how a family should work, hypothetically, how would you know if you’re fine or not?
I feel like “fine” is kind of like “normal” (or perhaps “typical” would be better here, but I’m leaving the former in because common usage) when one is defining their own experiences. It’s very difficult to accurately self-report.
I agree with Joyce, its not like parents could spank an autistic kid. So Dina really has no idea what being a normal kid with normal punishment is like.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Parents couldn’t spank an autistic kid? Are you fucking high? I assure you plenty of us have gotten not only spankings but FAR FAR WORSE from our parents. Read a book, dweeb.
Mine could, and proved so several times. I honestly have no idea where you got that idea from, (assuming of course you aren’t trolling,) but you are mistaken.
What humans refer to as “””autism””” is actually a broad collection of conditions and even personalities that are all haphazardly lumped together into a single generic category.
In fact I would go as far as to say that a human being “autistic” is not enough to extrapolate ANYTHING about them.
But oh well. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, given how little I know about you.
I wasn’t aware one of the effects of autism was to give you an anti-spanking field.
TheMoreYouKnow.gif
Is it the same phenomenon that gives restroom signs a gender-repelling field and that’s why we can’t allow transfolk to use the correct restroom otherwise dudes will just pretend they’re transwomen and get to go inside women’s restrooms?
And no, if i was Dina I wouldn’t have any use for an apology. Rather, if I’m ever going to give Joyce the time of the day, I’d like some assurance that she thinks I’m a real person.
How about when someone states they’re in pain and they want you to move then maybe you move or don’t ask deeply questions of someone when they’ve just woken up
Maybe Joyce spoke in anger, pain, frustration or annoyance…
See, I’m not talking about morality. Scoring points for the characters’ positive and negative behavior is not a thing I’m doing here. I’m not bothered because Joyce said a bad thing, I’m suspicious of what thoughts and feelings would inspire her to say that. If someone thinks you’re not a real person, the problem isn’t when they act to dehumanize you, the problem is that talking to them is a waste of your time.
Ok yeah thats a fair point, would you accept the possibility that Joyce wasn’t really thinking about what she was saying and was only reacting to the situation shes in?
I figured it came from a place of Joyce understanding Dina’s parents as not hitting her coming from what she knows about Dina, and how Joyce views authority because of her upbringing.
She knows Dina says she does things logically, and refuses things that can’t be argued logically.
Joyce instinctively defends authority because of her upbringing.
Authority overall, is logical to Joyce.
In her mind, It would make sense that Dina never misbehaved, because to Joyce, it would be illogical.
It’s even in the way she asks Sarah, asking if *she’s* so perfect, as opposed to spanking being wrong, or the action being fallible.
I don’t think it comes from not seeing her as human. I came to the conclusion that she said she doesn’t count, not because she’s not human, but because it felt like she can’t contribute because she never misbehaved. So Dina is an exception to the rule. Not even necessarily as a compliment, I fully think she meant this in annoyance, even anger at this point after re-reading the last few strips.
Like when someone with no experience comments on something career wise, when they are in a totally different field. Meant to shut down the conversation and disqualify her opinion, not dehumanize.
But we’ve seen time and time again Joyce is fallible, and the comic goes out of its way to make her learning lessons as hard/fraught as possible most of the time.
Joyce is being an ass here but it’s understandable WHY she’s acting this way.
Dina is not her friend and not someone she particularly likes or cares for outside of Becky being happy. They’ve had multiple negative interactions. So someone you don’t particularly like, waking you up and climbing on you and not getting off when asked after you tell them you are in pain, and then having them take the info you gave them and insist on convincing you of trauma you are not ready to confront…
Yeah. I can see why Joyce is pissed off enough here to intentionally shut her down in a mean way.
Yeah, that’s why I wouldn’t trust an apology. I’d assume if she’s sorry for what she said once she’s in a better mood it’s because too much truth slipped out just now.
There are better ways you can tell someone they’re being a pain than “you’re not a human person”. You could say, for example, “you’re being a pain.” Or maybe I’m just a robot because I expect people to mean the things they say.
Yeah basically. Hell I’d be fine if Joyce smacked her bc hey, that’s just bad period shit. Sometimes your friend is being annoying as hell when you’re in too much pain to process it. “You don’t count you’re a robot girl” is insanely personal
Dina is mimicking what Joyce considers normal wake-up behavior, including ignoring grumbles about it. Joyce responds to this plus concern about her upbringing by calling Dina a slur.
I get that Joyce is in Defensive Mode right now, in addition to being sick, and lashing out, but that was definitely a low blow, and I am glad that Dina didn’t take it lying down.
Joyce’s eyes are scrunched up in pain in the first panel, but relaxed in the 3rd and 5th. It is possible to kneel astride someone but keep your weight off of their body, which would satisfy Joyce’s request to get off of her. Dana would still be on top of her, but her weight would be off of Joyce and not causing her pain. I don’t think Dana is the type to ignore the pain she is causing another, no matter how focused she might be on something else.
Google ads are a hell. Recently, they got and update, that tracks all your cookies, even from other sites, to generate content in a site.
The sad part is it is almost uncontrollable. They will pop in a way or another.
@Laura, have you tried Adblock?
If it’s anything like mine, there’s some nasty shit in there. I got jumpscared by an autoplaying “plastic surgery addiction” click bait thing, the other day.
Hey Laura, seconding Amos’s suggestion! I use an adblock, it changes everything. I disable it on some pages but if the ads truly are invasive or upsetting, protecting your mind and browsing experience should come first.
Basically, Joyce is envious of how Dana’s parents treated her when growing up. She tries to excuse her own parents by making the excuse that she (Joyce) was a disobedient human child and therefore deserved it, whereas Dana’s lack of emotions (that is what being a robot means, right?) kept her out of trouble. Joyce is trying to push away the idea that her own parents were flawed in that particular behavior.
I don’t think so. We may get there, but I don’t think Joyce has yet even conceived the idea that it’s possible. That excuse is too entrenched. She was good and still got spanked. Sarah was good and still got spanked, but not as much, so she must have been better. If Dina didn’t get spanked, it must be because she was inhumanly, robotically perfect.
I meant moreso subconsciously for Joyce, because I already think Joyce is probably jealous of other aspects of Dina, even if she’s not aware of it on a conscious level. (being ‘perfect’ and not being spanked, but also Dina believed what Joyce now believes before Joyce, and I’m sure that’s fraught with it’s own complications.)
So, this entire scene over the last few strips:
These girls have been verbally reenacting that scene with Sideshow Bob and the rakes. Corporal punishment is still normalized and considered acceptable in the US, though there is a lot of variance on degree, methodology, circumstances, et al. Some of these variances are legal and depend on local jurisdiction, largely these are about the line between acceptable punishment and abuse in the eyes of the law. Some of them are demographic, with differing opinions on lines of socioeconomic class history and cultural legacy within a family among myriad others. Literally everything about this topic is touchy for so damned many reasons it’s hard to wrap one’s head around let alone articulate well.
Fundamentally, however, Joyce and Dina are simply unable to understand the viewpoint the other has internalized through their individual lived experiences and thereby have each unintentionally antagonized the other because of it. Sarah coming in and providing her own distinct third viewpoint merely provided an additional fault line and further raised tensions.
And no, I’m not defending the use of corporal punishment on children, just accepting it’s the current status quo which can’t be easily changed at the current time and acknowledging that understanding it’s effects on viewpoints is important until it can be changed by fully culling the practice as we long ago did in criminal punishments.
Denormalizing and condemning the practice will take quite some time, on the order of decades, to have a meaningful impact on those who still find it ok. In fact, that is part of the current status quo where such denormalization and condemnation has been part of the discourse on the practice for several generations leading us from the early ’60s, when it was still a fairly prevalent go to form of childhood punishment, to today, where it mainly seems to be common only in limited demographics, rarefied to a last resort among the majority, and avoided at all costs among the remainder. It’s not easy change and it’s not current, as ongoing time and effort is required for quite some time to come to change the majority opinion to “should never be done” at which point laws can then be readily changed to force the remaining minority usage to cease. At the current rate of change on this topic I’d guess it’s still unfortunately normalized as mainly a last resort punishment for several generations to come, which enables and shields those that use it more frequently within their legal bounds.
This would have gone better if Dina listed the worst thing she’s ever done – and the worst punishment she ever received.
Just saying she wasn’t does read, to Joyce, as saying “oh I just never misbehaved you should try it”
Considering that Joyce is currently rejecting the majority of her mothers’ teachings, anything that sounds like “just obey your parents” is *going* to be a rage point.
I definitely didn’t think of it from that angle, and I think you make a pretty good point. It’s interesting that even as she starts to really reject her Carol’s views that Joyce is still willing to accept being hit with a wooden spoon was a normal, acceptable thing to do to punish a child. I guess, upon further quick research, that using ‘the rod’ to punish children is very, very common in fundamentalist households though, which is just so incredibly awful.
Yes I think it would have been easier to swallow if Dina mentioned alternative punishments like grounding or whatever. Joyce is coming at this from the angle of “this is the only way to make kids behave”.
Yup. That’s what Joyce is hearing. The only possible reason Dina wasn’t hit was that Dina never did anything wrong, because that’s the first line of punishment.
I just want to say this to some of the commenters: When members of a minority tell you that a term is often applied to them as a bigoted, dehumanizing slur, do not correct them by insisting that it is a compliment.
*quickly scrolls through comments* Do you perhaps mean me? I believe my experiences are valid as anyone else’s. Moreover, I don’t believe my experience and opinions supplant anyone else’s. Would it help if I mentioned I was Autistic too? I’d rather not have to type extra words each time so my experience can be treated as equal, if you don’t mind. (I apologize if you don’t mean me.)
Not you, there have been a number comments among the hundreds already posted. Several of them making sure to tell the Autistic commenters how thin-skinned and over-sensituve we are being.
The above comment perhaps is angrier in tone than is called for, and for that I am sorry. I do maintain, however that minority groups are not hive-minds, and not everyone agrees on the best way to handle things. Devin and others has made it clear they do not want to be referred to robotic. I, however, still consider term complimentary for myself on the whole, and I ask that you respect that, please.
The point isn’t “this will universally insult all neurodivergent people.”
The point is “this insulted the neurodivergent person it was directed at, and she’s allowed to react accordingly” with a dose of “stop telling me to take an insult as a compliment just because it doesn’t bother you”.
Essentially – Dina is not an asshole for reacting to a problematic term with anger and hurt. Regardless of what any other person would feel in her shoes.
You aren’t required to react the same, but you shouldn’t correct people’s feelings about a slur by insisting that it’s a compliment. As the original person you replied to started off by saying.
Yes. I do understand that part of socialization at least. I misunderstood the intent of the post, because I somehow missed the comments that more fit the original post. I had left several comments going slightly against the grain, by mentioning I didn’t have the same experience or dislike of the word robot, and so I thought I was the one meant. So I responded. Poorly, and regrettably. Twice, since I corrected myself and made things worse. Both of which I still regret. I’m going to mark this as a failed social interaction and try to live with the consequences. Namely lots of regret, and a resolution to never post things several hours past my normal sleep schedule. I’m sorry, and I hope you have a good day/night.
It isn’t helped by the existence of a minority who want to be robots, for whatever reason and whatever that means. (I.e., people like Carla.) It makes stuff more complicated than it seems.
Dang, everyone sucks in the comic today, lol teenagers am I right guys? All hormones, emotions and new ideals, alllll without tact and experience to temper any of that.
Man, I think a whole lot of people here are missing the point. It’s not whether spanking is or is not inherently abusive. The point is that Joyce does not currently consider that part of her upbringing abusive and Dina does not nearly have the kind of relationship with Joyce where it’s appropriate for her to convince Joyce that it was.
I can tell you, my parents are not perfect. But unless we’re really close or have a lot of history or probably both, you don’t get to tell me what parts my parents fell down on, even if I would ultimately agree with you.
Why not?
Parents, like all humans, are complicated people with flaws. Dina doesn’t have a relationship with Joyce’s parents. She lacks a lot of context here.
Dina is stating that Joyce was abused as a child on criteria that Joyce doesn’t agree with. Joyce has a right to feel insulted here. Feeling insulted doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole back, but that doesn’t make Joyce’s feelings here invalid.
But surely I could share annecdotes about my own upbringing? Especially if you took the position that your parents had no alternative? All Dina has done in this strip is share her own experience for contrast.
I mean, not really? She didn’t provide any alternatives here. She just said she didn’t get spanked. Which could honestly come across any number of ways to Joyce who seems to correlate Spankings = Bad behavior, even when Sarah mentions it.
You know what, good for Dina. I’m glad she didn’t take that comment from Joyce quietly, because no matter how bad she feels that was horribly unkind of Joyce. Does she seriously just view Dina as, like, incapable of the full range of human experience, or was she just trying to be mean?
I got a swat or two on the butt as a kid for compounding misbehavior with LYING about it, and it’s probably a big part of my near-pathological relationship with truth and accuracy, and, given the frequency and ease with which humans lie, a big part of my general misanthropy.
HOORAY! Another reason for Dina to not like her girlfriend BFF! Can’t wait to see this explode a day. Becky could be forced to choice between the two of them.
Some people still could blame Dina, because Joyce is sick. Yes, it’s a point.
But, I remember a lesson from someone, that say people tend to say the truth in pain or drunk. I don’t buy any excuse for Joyce today.
Yeah Joyce is an asshole here but Dina did literally say she was “recalibrating” a few minutes ago. The wrongness of treating autistic people like robots is muddled a bit when your dialogue for them makes them sound like robots.
Fair point! And while I don’t want to sound like I’m excusing Joyce, this is probably one of those situations where Joyce didn’t actually mean it as an insult. As a kid, I LOVED video games and technology and I would have been HONORED to have been called a robot. Joyce likely didn’t put enough thought into it to realize that for somebody like Dina, a remark like that could very easily have been interpreted as a jab against her neurodivergence.
Aight I know I’m playing backseat mod here but this poster here isn’t speaking from some point of ignorance and in the last few strips has had commentary of their own wrt Dina.
I understand that this is important to you (because it was important enough to me that I wasted hours trying to sort it out and say the right thing without being an angry douchebag, and then did anyway), but you can’t go off on other posters on the assumption that they’re speaking from a place of hateful ignorance, let alone on topics that are of such literal importance they start in our noggins.
From now on, Dina should lie about what she’s doing so that she’s not perceived as a robot! Just like how I choose a carefully gender-neutral, white-sounding name on places like this.
“Wow, the comments on the last couple strips have been really intense. I wonder what will happen if Joyce uses a slur in today’s comic directed at one of the most universally popular characters…”
I think all we need now is, say, Sarah belittling Joyce’s recent conversion to athiesm, or Dorothy to show up and say something like “Hello”, and the comments section will go start glowing radioactive!
For folks who are thinking that if they were Joyce they’d probably have said something ‘worse’ to Dina than calling her a robot girl: Some of the ‘worse’ things you’re thinking of are actually probably *better* than calling a neurodivergent person a robot. Cursing Dina out, for example, would almost certainly be less bad!
I’m sure there are ways you can call someone a robot without it being too big of a deal. (For example, jokingly calling someone a robot for doing a lot of work).
In this case, however, Joyce is using robot to effectively mean ‘You’re not even a person’, which is pretty dang high on the list of Awful Things To Say To Someone.
Except I don’t think she is. Though Dina might well have read it that way.
More like, you don’t count when talking about spanking because you behave perfectly logically like a robot would so your parents never needed to spank you.
Which is messed up in all sorts of different ways, but I don’t think Joyce meant it either as “You’re not even a person” or even as “emotionless”.
Also like…this would never be a nice or okay thing to say to someone, but right now, to Dina? After she was just very vulnerable and emotional with her lover? When she’s concerned for that same lover’s well-being? Ouch. That’s probably going to pack an extra wallop. Here Dina is, very much an emotional person, deeply connected to Becky, investing in figuring out more about the woman she’s just expressed a desire to have as a long-term partner, and Joyce is just like, “You don’t have feelings” or similar? Yeah, I can’t imagine that not feeling EVEN WROSE right now than it ever would.
Welp. After an attempt to bridge the gap with Becky, Joyce just went ahead and extended her assholery to Dina instead. I get that she’s in pain (both physically and emotionally), but that’s no excuse for how she keeps treating people.
And Joyce not knowing she’s autistic doesn’t really have excuse it either—it still reads as “you’re the weird girl who doesn’t show emotion like a ‘normal’ person.” Not a compliment any way you look at it, IMO.
yeah i don’t get it. joyce can mean it as a compliment AND it can very much be That Bad, those two concepts can coexist. i will never understand people who are like “Well it was a compliment, so you HAVE to take it that way!” when…… no. no, i don’t have to. thanks for not deliberately insulting me, but your compliment was in fact extremely offensive, i am offended, and you can deal with that.
But at least some of the comments are only analyzing what Joyce might have meant by it and are still being taken as including the “so it’s not that bad” aspect.
I’m interested in exploring what the characters are thinking, so while it’s certainly reasonable for Dina to be upset by it, it’s also reasonable for Joyce to say it without meaning (much) harm. They’re definitely talking past each other here. Without that, I don’t think either would have said what they did.
Right? When I was growing up my mom often got compliments about how “well behaved” my sibs and I were but the “good behavior” was really only achieved out of fear of upsetting my parents; it also became this self-fulfilling prophecy situation where I just buried or hid any problems I was having so as not to disturb that “well behaved kid” image.
I think the side effects I got from that were 1) a fairly strained relationship with my mum until I was able to move out and distance myself from her a bit and 2) difficulty differentiating “bad” behavior from “normal kid” behavior—particularly since I’m mom of an autistic kid now who might not always be able to put on the “well behaved kid” mask as I was.
I’m going to go ahead and disagree that “well behaved children” is a red flag by itself when you use the traditional definition*. It presents a Catch-22 for someone who’s observing the situation, where acting out is a red flag for abuse, and not acting out is a red flag for abuse.
If instead we use it to mean “a child who is terrified of normal play and activities and instead chooses to sit quietly”, then yeah, definitely, but that’s not what most people will think of when they think of a “well-behaved kid”. It certainly isn’t how I define it with the students I work with.
*I’m using it to mean “a child who does not unduly disrupt their environment without provocation”
I’ve also seen some children who will be well-behaved in public, then melt down back home with their parents. Precisely because they know that’s where it’s safe to do so.
But yeah, a lot of it is definition of “Well behaved”.
I wonder if Joyce’s parents would both spank her, or if they went the route where the father more often plays the role of disciplinarian, like in Becky’s family. If the latter, then this hurts even more since Joyce would feel like she’s defending her father, the only halfway decent parent she has.
Also, oof for Dina being rude and not getting off a pained Joyce earlier. Double oof for Joyce calling her a robot, regardless of whether she realized how hurtful that is or considered the implications. We’re earning that “Dumbing” label today, kids.
I have to admit I actualy felt way worse from all the ‘humane’ forms of punishment. Like, yeah, punish your kid or whatever, but standing in a corner for nearly an hour as a kid with ADHD symptoms was literaly hell.
Yeah, the corner-standing was one of the worse nonviolent punishments I got. It’s so goddamn BORING and the only suitable corner we had at the time was in the main hallway so I could hear the TV but couldn’t look at it. I only ever got 15-20 minutes of it, maximum, but it may as well have been all day.
I’m going to deconstruct some of the perspectives here.
First of all, about everyone trying to justify Joyce making a hurtful comment, one that’s probably haunted Dina her whole life, by saying Dina deserved it for sitting on her. Nope. That’s a strawman argument. It’s clearly moved beyond that point, Dina isn’t on Joyce anymore, Joyce also clearly moved on, that isn’t relevant in this part of the conversation.
Second, you’re correct, Joyce isn’t being malicious! In fact she’s casually dehumanizing, which for a lot of neurodiverse folks is actually more hurtful! Rather than being an intentional effort to hurt Dina’s feelings or lashing out in anger, this is indeed an offhand comment that you KNOW Joyce would have made in another circumstance as well. She threw it out there thoughtlessly, and that hurt Dina a lot because it’s revealing that someone Dina considered a friend doesn’t see her as a human being with as many feelings as another person. I PROMISE you Dina has heard that word over and over again since she was a child from her peers, teachers, parent’s friends, etc.
Me, I got “witch” from bullies, starting in sixth grade, as they threw mud at me. I guess because I was a loner weird kid that would read a lot by myself and also a girl, that was their go-to. When it happened in early college and someone in my group called me a witch, it still hurt. These days it doesn’t hurt at all, and I’ve claimed that word proudly – I’d grin if somebody called me that, but I had some past hurts to overcome first.
A couple of you are trying to say “but she didn’t mean it like that, she means Dina was super well-behaved and didn’t do anything to merit punishment like other kids”, that’s got some layers of unfortunate. First, the unspoken assumption that kids who get spanked did something to deserve it. Second, the assumption that neurodiverse kids aren’t absolutely the most likely targets of physical punishment. Also, a SUPER UNREAL TAKE considering what we know about Dina! We’ve literally seen her jump on people like a dinosaur, we know she’s capable of getting rowdy. You can’t imagine her swirling around her parents’ ankles asking them questions in a super loud voice until their teeth were on edge? Woulda got me spanked! You can’t imagine her parents going to the school to remove her from the ceiling (you say no, literally happened to my husband)? Woulda got me spanked! You can’t think of a scenario where Dina would misread social cues from her parents that they were getting angry at her? Woulda got me spanked!
I guarantee Dina was once A CHILD, like every other child, not a tiny angel. Her parents simply didn’t hurt her for it, the way so many of our parents did. Trust me, if a parent is a hitter or a yeller when they get upset, just being a kid is enough. Even “tiny angels” will get spanked for something, especially a neurodiverse one. Not responding to calls for dinner because their nose was in a book or game and they didn’t register it – spanking. Cluttered room, spanking. Forgot to do a chore, spanking.
Striking and spanking is not a kid problem. It’s a parent problem.
I’m not demonizing Joyce, but I am calling out people who would like to believe this was “a compliment”. Sure, in the way a dude saying “it’ll be easy for YOU to pass the class, the professor checks you out all the time” is a compliment, or people saying to an Asian person “as if YOU would have any trouble passing math classes”. Saying “YOU don’t count, you’re a robot” sucks from the recipient’s perspective because the other person just reduced your whole life down to one trait, like you’re an cartoon character.
Okay, I’m out. I hope this gives people some insight into the harmfulness of Joyce’s words and why Dina reacted like she did, and some empathy for people like her they encounter in real life.
Your comment made me recall that this is not the first time in the comic that we’ve seen someone dismiss Dina in this way. When Sarah and Dina ran into Raidah and her friends at the mall, Raidah dismissed Dina in a very similar way. That clearly upset Dina. I’m not sure if that was before or after the party where Dina and Becky kissed, but regardless, that was another time people dismissed Dina or wrote her off as some kind of child, which- surprise!- Dina also did not like. Joyce was absolutely an asshole here, and has been more of one generally. While I understand why that’s happening, Joyce doesn’t just get a free pass to say whatever, either. Sarah, Becky, and Dorothy have both remarked on this; I hope that Dina rounding out the list of people is something of a wake-up call for Joyce. I feel for Joyce, I really do, but she needs to pull back or else she’ll deserve to be held at arms’ length by her friends, simply because they don’t want to be hurt or demeaned more.
There was also a similar dismissal when Becky said she was making the moves on the cute dinosaur girl, and everybody present (about half the cast, inlcuding Joyce) went: on Dina? that’s gross, she’s a child and not a person like the rest of us are. Dina’s response to that was, if anything, even closer to “fuck you” than today’s.
I don’t know for a fact I’m autistic, because when I was younger my parents did a really good job of making me feel like an asshole just for being ADHD (tried to explain executive dysfunction to my dad a few weeks ago and he told me to my face he didn’t think it was real, that was super helpful) so I went full-bore on trying to get out of therapy or psychoanalysis, but I did once have my older brother and his best friend tell me to my face “You know, if you turned out to be a robot, or an alien, we’d say ‘Yeah, that makes sense,'” so I’m going to take this one comment to personally tell every person who is trying to justify or defend what Joyce said in any capacity to go fuck yourself. You are why neurodivergent people kill themselves.
And then Dina brings up Joyce’s denial that the spanking was a bad experience to Becky, and Becky is somehow on Joyce’s side and then we get to argue who’s the bad one, Dina or Becky, which will be fun. (Please, I’m being sarcastic, don’t have this be a thing that happens! I may not like either of them, but I think Becky is smarter than that.)
So I also had a lot of the same viscerally angry reactions flying around here when I first saw this strip yesterday (I was also in a bad state in general, on top of sending myself into a spiral here about my own abusive upbringing, so that probably didn’t help), but now that I’ve a bit of a clearer head, I would like to share some thoughts.
Dina isn’t, technically speaking, canonically on the spectrum. We all pretty much know she is, but in-text it’s never been acknowledged and the only reason we go forward with it as a defining subtext to her character is when Willis was asked enough that they elaborated on some of their intent with Dina and said “she probably is, and has not been diagnosed.”
(The dumblr post about this also has some good info on how Willis writes Dina, though I’m not sure how to work it in here without coming off as using a lived experience that the author is sharing as an explanation in-fiction)
I also feel it’s worth mentioning that “is Joyce on the spectrum?” isn’t an uncommon fan theory. I dunno if that’s supposed to be an excuse here, but it’s probably worth bringing up in a strip getting seen as “neurotypical character is ableist to definitely canonically neurodivergent character,” let alone the surrounding context that Joyce is getting dragged into the second conversation in three days on why she needs to justify her entire life to someone else on the grounds that they feel like bugging her about it.
Joyce is saying the wrong thing, I’d be outraged if I was called a robot (or whatever equivalent I’ve got), but that’s because I’d get called that in relation to the ASD I absolutely, definitely have. I don’t think Joyce is complimenting Dina, but she’s obviously not deliberately saying this as a sentiment of Dina’s ASD even if it’s still a derogatory reference to her character to express how Dina was immune from deserving to be beaten (since that’s how Joyce has processed why she was spanked by her parents) since Dina was quiet and didn’t raise a fuss, which, it feels more important that “raising a fuss” is something that Joyce thinks meant she was deserving of getting whacked.
I will say that, as someone on the spectrum, I relate way more to Joyce’s occasionally saying something horrifically insensitive or inappropriate without intending offense than I have pretty much any part of Dina’s character.
The rigorous black and white thinking, the latching onto new interests, the fucking food palette is a big one goddamn, I’ve been eating the same breakfast for almost a straight month and I’m not stopping any time soon. Most of all is saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, because I swear to god I have to juggle four conversations in my head at once whenever I speak. I can’t just say what is on my mind, I have to think about what it sounds like, what they’ll say, what I think they’ll take from it.
I don’t necessarily blame anyone for not viewing Joyce the same way, so much as it’s kinda frustrating to see this get overwhelmingly framed as “neurotypical abuses neurodivergent person” since they both speak to the same authenticity, at least in my book.
Joyce really said “atheism is my Special Interest now and I am making it my entire identity” and I said “Joyce, you need to stop being me when I was in my 20s, because I did that with like 50 different things and you are second-hand embarrassing me”.
she knows what autism is, she’s just in her insufferable/angry athiest phase.
That phase many athiests go through where they act angry about everything, and act so annoyingly pissy that nobody really wants to be around them (my dad went through it, and if you look online im sure you will fine many MANY people that go through this phase)
it’s the “the bible: read sarcastically by a 15 year old athiest” phase
I’m not gonna argue the Edgy Atheism thing so much as I feel like “the bible read sarcastically by a 15 year old atheist” is a gross understatement of:
– Joyce’s entire upbringing
– Joyce’s entire upbringing then proceeding to nearly murder her twice
Though it would have been interesting to see Joyce react to Dorothy saying that she wasn’t spanked. (You know Dorothy’s parents didn’t spank.)
It would have been similar, but different in tone, I suspect. The same implication that it was because she never did anything wrong, but she certainly wouldn’t have used “robot”.
Joyce is really cranky and yes an asshole. I wonder if her monthly probems are part of a medical issue that she never got checked out for, because she has learned complaining of pain would be considered an attack to make other people uncomfortable, not needing help. And also because her mom is scary martyr monster. I remember a quote where Mother Theresa said chronic pain was Jesus touching you during the crucifixion. Not that her family would take the quote of a Catholic but I can see them sharing the attitude.
I said as much above but wth: I feel the posts along the lines of “Joyce wakes people up like this!” are a bit of a false equivalence in the sense that Joyce doing so hasn’t been framed in a dramatic context before.
This wasn’t a problem until the narrative made it a problem, in that now we have reason to believe that Joyce’s discomfort is a tangible part of the story, and this isn’t something that’s happened with Joyce’s own behaviour in the same regard; when Joyce suffered consequences it was getting choked and seeing Sal naked, which to some audiences might be considered a delightful time.
Joyce can magically teleport to Dorothy’s location by invoking the power of her thinly veiled all-encompassing love of Dorothy, but that’s also a Funny Comic Gag in the sense that Dorothy never goes “dang Joyce stop magically teleporting to my side because you want me to scratch your head.” By contrast, the part where Becky and Dorothy tracked Joyce down is a dramatic beat in the sense that there was, y’know, dramatic consequence for doing so. Joyce’s homolust for Dorothy is another good example in that it’s always played as a gag to Joyce’s discomfort, but then Walky pushes it again at a point where Joyce isn’t comedically firing back or making funny angry Joyce faces, and so Sal intervenes and tells him to knock it off, and then later the joke comes back because, yes, it’s actually funny, it just wasn’t funny at the moment.
Or in an example of things turning negative; Joyce idolizes Sal over and over in wacky comedic moments, and finally Joyce pushes too far and Sal lashes out at her because she’s tired of being seen as some ubercool badass persona instead of as her own person, and so Joyce doesn’t do it again and they bond over their chafing under being places in boxes.
DoA’s a comic, it can bend reality for comedic effect sometimes.
I think another thing that’s making a lot of commenters bristle about this is that over the past couple of plot points for Joyce… The narrative is saying “Joyce is in the wrong” Without showing it, and feels like it is siding with a specific character and you can tell that.
The thing is, the thing she was ‘wrong’ over… she really wasn’t and Becky had overstepped boundaries and ended up getting her feelings hurt because she
1) Overheard something she shouldn’t
and then
2) Immediately put her in a sudden and uncomfortable position over it despite Joyce apologizing, because she wouldn’t bend on her beliefs.
This strip, I can imagine for a lot of us, is hitting that same nerve, especially as Dina as a character is kind of put on a pedestal by a lot of people who read/comment. I read a comment here a few sections back who commented on Dina kind of feeling like a ‘magical perfect autistic girlfriend’ or something to that extent.
And as an Autistic person, I kind of agree? Earlier before she was with Becky, she felt more human and nuanced. But it’s sort of shifted as we got more of their relationship.
I get why people are defensive of Joyce over this, because it seems like the narrative is insistent on making everyone have double standards for Joyce that don’t seem to apply for other characters.
She’s being an asshole here, but a lot of people ignore any potential reasoning, thought processes, or experiences that led to this entire exchange.
As well as the fact that was pointed out: Dina just said that, more or less, she thinks Joyce is an asshole because she was, in Dina’s own belief, beat as a child.
The narrative is saying “Joyce is in the wrong” Without showing it, and feels like it is siding with a specific character and you can tell that.
I don’t really agree with this in the slightest, but I’ve been over that a lot over the past *checks notes* six months?!
Joyce still has to do and say dumb things (to Ruth and now Dina here) because she is currently in a status quo where her ability to accept not knowing something has been viscerally shot and so unearned confidence is all she has left, except that unearned confidence is even worse because she can’t rely on God telling her that dinosaurs were on the ark.
But in the specific circumstance of “is Joyce doing wrong by Dorothy/Becky/Sarah?” it’s essentially impossible for me to believe that because none of them have been able to display to her the slightest bit of emotional decency even once, and all this horrible drama nightmare time happened because Joyce went slightly off-script when Becky and Dorothy felt entitled to their time so they tracked her down using someone else’s social media instead of shooting her a text, and then made her immediately justify why she was an atheist to Becky on the grounds that it made Becky sad.
Like, bluntly, I’ll believe there’s any kinda Both Sides here when the three people who say they love Joyce the most stop speaking and acting to her the way they always have, except now there’s major dramatic consequence at her expense for it. Saying that the cast has double standards for Joyce that they don’t apply to each other is, I think, an entirely textual aspect of Joyce’s current struggles (as in Joyce directly said Becky got away with bullying Dorothy at length and then Dorothy avoided the question by calling her a dumb virgin).
When I bring up “the narrative” here, I mean more that Joyce’s running gag of waking people up is, well, very obviously intended as comedic, because there’s either no consequence or Joyce suffers a comedic consequence, and with Dina here it starts the exact way to the point where she assumes the problem is that she isn’t doing the triangle smile. It’s signaled as a comedic moment, and then they start having an uncomfortable conversation that leads into Painful Drama Time.
So “Dina does the Joyce Thing” is still a comedic thing in a vacuum, but then it gradually gets attached to some dramatic moments, so now the context is “Dina does the Joyce Thing, but doing the Joyce Thing led her to dragging Joyce into a conversation she is absolutely not equipped to have at the moment.” All that other stuff is more up to argument (oh so many arguments) but Dina can still do the Joyce Thing to another character at a later date and it would still be funny until, like, Ruth gets eaten by Mechagodzilla while it happens or something.
The narrative is siding with Becky/Dorothy/Sarah, and having them sidestep actually giving a shit about Joyce in favor of criticizing her. These are the characters in these arcs.
Which makes it feel like, narratively, the comic is siding against Joyce. Even at the end of that thread for now, Joyce had to bend over backwards for Becky yet again. Nobody had her back in a difficult and increasingly stressful time.
I do think in another context Dina’s waking up of Joyce could be funny. But the point being that as far as Joyce is concerned, things she does are being portrayed though other people as bad.
Which I’m sure as I’ve seen here, people are using it to argue that Joyce’s behaviors were the same, when categorically they weren’t.
No, I mean, I think the fact that Joyce’s closest and dearest friends have proven incapable of the slightest bit of empathy to Joyce in her time of crisis is the point, because all three of them rely on Joyce in a specific status quo where she’s their idiot fundie baby.
Like the only way I can believe The Narrative isn’t on Joyce’s side with those three is if “saying God is stupid in a private conversation” is morally equivalent or worse than:
– Tracking Joyce down because Becky thinks she is entitled to her time, and deliberately does so without her will or consent instead of shooting a text.
– Making Joyce apologize for “being mean to Christians” to Becky because Becky’s a Christian and Joyce saying God is stinky made Becky sad, also Becky’s dad almost shooting her in the face and then her mom bailing him out of prison so he could do it again isn’t sufficient reason to be “mean to Christians.”
– Telling Joyce that the universe should actively punish her by losing her job, because Joyce was annoying before but now she’s way more annoying.
– Telling Joyce that her theological decisions are invalid and she should settle on a nice deism and that she’s only allowed to be angry if that anger is for a good reason.
– Joyce’s best friend telling her to her face that Joyce has been lying about who she is this whole time, as if “you’re still real even though God isn’t” wasn’t directly something Joe told her like two days prior.
– Joyce’s best friend being so absurdly dependent on Joyce that Joyce is not allowed to be an atheist because Becky “needs a buffer” as if she does not have new friends, a girlfriend, two teachers (one of whom let her openly harass two other students in her classroom) who constantly dote on her and do everything they can to make her feel appreciated.
– Joyce’s best friend hearing that Joyce becoming an atheist was like tearing her own organs out, and so deciding to play Rich Mullins in the hopes that it would convert her back, and then taking the next opportunity seeing her to call her “my little baby apostate.”
… like the only way I can believe those three have any kind of moral standing let alone being right about her is if it turns out Dumbing of Age has been a Chick Tract the whole time.
I doubt Joyce even understands what neurodivergence is. It’s hurtful to Dina and I can definitely see why and Joyce should probably apologize once she gets the context, but the lack of malice means Joyce’s comment wouldn’t hurt me, for example. Introverted thinking types can certainly remind others of traits associated with fictional robots, and plenty aren’t neurodivergent.
I don’t see how people are getting here that they’re criticizing how Joyce was brought up. To me it reads more like they’re comparing notes because they find it weird that wooden spoon spanking was her and Becky’s norm. It doesn’t read as an attack on Joyce, to me it reads more like concern, especially on Dina’s side.
And while yeah, Dina might have been invasive in her interaction, she probably was imitating Joyce, who also frequently invades personal space uninvited and gets a pass. Dina getting mad at her and calling her out for her remark to me seems somewhat acceptable, considering that Dina showed very human (for Joyce and Becky) concern and she was insulted in a very dehumanizing way.
I get Joyce is going through things (and it’s super good to read!), but she needs to reevaluate how she has managed to insult each and every single one of her friends in order. Can’t wait to see how she’ll insult Becky if she finds out Becky had premarital sex especially with Dina.
Dina told Joyce that being physically abused made her an asshole but that’s not actually bad or wrong and definitely not Dina telling Joyce that the thing Dina recognizes as viscerally harmful physical abuse of a child made her a bad person in this conversation that Joyce was woken up for so she could justify to two separate people why she was beaten by her parents.
I dunno why that slipped me by so long. I kept reading that last panel as Dina being a cool girl who does not look at explosions.
She used the hypothetical, connected tense, so that might be part of it. The sort of thing that gives leeway to say “I’m not saying it DID make you a jerk, just that it MIGHT have CONTRIBUTED”, thereby removing some of the bite.
We were so caught up with demonising Joyce that we forgot to drag Dina to Hell along with her. Rough interactions are inexcusable and need to be punished, and that includes our favorite characters. Dina has to go in The Box as well.
Maybe I would not blame Dorothy if she were not in the room using her dark magicks to drive Dina into this violent frenzy, and then mindwiping everyone involved so she can escape without blame to kill again.
Y’know it’s funny, I was gonna write a response above wondering if folks here going “robot’s a compliment!” were missing that context.
But, yes. What you’re thinking of is someone working real hard in an efficient and optimal way. “Robot” in reference to the neurodivergent and, in particular, folks with autism is that we’re muted, quiet, subservient, and respond in mechanical, almost pre-programmed ways.
This exactly. It’s complimentary to say “Wow, she’s a machine!” when she fills out a lot of paperwork fast. Or even “He’s like a machine!” when they do sex to you real good. This is not the same as being called a robot.
My sister sometimes get so mad at me because I don’t show emotion the way she wants me to, and calls me a robot. Which it’s weird because we’re both (probably) neurodivergent (neither of us has a diagnosis from a doctor). Now, she cries on a dime and I can too in the right circumstances (I cried during several scenes in The Batman recently, for instance), but when I don’t display emotions the way she wants me to, she will often call me things like an emotionless robot, and well, it just starts to sting after a bit.
Weirdly now lately she’s almost going the opposite way… For instance I’ll say, start watching the newest series of Digimon and want to talk about all the cool monsters and she’ll be like “Oh, that’s so cute! Your autistic brain is hyperfixating! ^_^” Which… I also hate for a number of reasons. Not the least being that I don’t even have a diagnosis from a doctor, and like… I’m fucking 34. Just because I like a children’s show about monsters, don’t infantilize me.
Someone else is probably gonna have a better answer, but saying “You’re a machine” is usually used to describe some as tireless and/or hardworking, and in that sense is a compliment (so long as it’s not then used as an excuse to give one person too much work). “Robot” has much more specific connotations of operating under specific parameters and being incapable of having or understanding the human experience.
I don’t understand how calling someone a machine being a compliment even works in this context because ‘machine’ being a complement seems specifically only to BE a compliment if the context of it is about someone’s ability to work. There is nothing about this discussion that’s about Dina’s ability to work, this discussion about feelings, emotions, and trauma. So that’s clearly not what’s being said, so there’s no way to reasonably interpret this is a compliment without having to bend over backwards with how far you’re reaching. Because it’s not one.
The sheer fucking consternation about the outcome of this conversation…why is anyone surprised by this? Joyce and Dina do not like one another! For pretty good character-based reasons! Dina even knows Joyce is an atheist now (or at ABSOLUTE MINIMUM knows that Becky thinks Joyce has strayed from Christianity, and that Becky is trying to bring Joyce back into the fold). She doesn’t care, and this doesn’t meaningfully change her feelings about Joyce, because Dina doesn’t care about Joyce! Dina cares about BECKY. She dislikes Joyce because (among other reasons) Joyce has historically been vocally anti-science and because she is the living face of a lot of what Dina despises about Becky’s past. She didn’t come ask Joyce these questions because she cares about BOTH Joyce and Becky, and that is why she wasn’t terribly careful or concerned about Joyce’s reactions to those questions. She came to pump Joyce for answers about her Becky-based concerns. She does not care whether this upsets Joyce.
Joyce’s emotional state, or frame of mind, or her background, or anything else, also doesn’t matter to Dina when she decides how to process Joyce saying something cruel and shitty to her, in this conversation. And you know what! All perfectly valid! All of this makes perfect sense for Dina, Dina’s emotional priorities, and Dina’s past interactions with Joyce.
I *will* say that if I was Joyce, I would have fucking flipped Dina off that bunk three strips ago, and Joyce’s tolerance for a conversation that has been physically and emotionally painful for her just because it was her BFF’s frequently-hostile girlfriend asking those questions is really impressive.
Joyce being ignorant and gross about someone else’s neurodivergence is a fun thing to grab onto, but it’s really a much smaller part of the fundamental conflict here.
I’m glad characters are calling out Joyce on being an asshole. I think it would be worse if they let her have a pass on being awful to people just because of what she’s gone through. When you’re healing and on the other side, it makes it harder to look back and see how much you have also hurt other people while you were hurting.
Yikes, Joyce. The “it happened to me and i’m fine so it’s a valid method“ gets used mostly by people who have repressed trauma and who are very much not in touch with their own emotions. Yes, it was child abuse. Yes, there’s a spectrum between “spanked with bare palm once or twice at a time after it was announced you would be if you didn’t listen“ (happened to me and i’m not entirely fine), and “beaten up in anger with objects that break due to the impact“…. abuse has different forms and different severity, but it’s abuse all the way. The existence of worse abuse doesn’t make the “abuse light“ go away.
Loading ...
…
What’s the correlation between “mouth washed out with soap” and “asshole”? bc I have a theory
(I never had soap or swat tbh)
methinks there is something being filtered in this reply I’m trying to post
https://tinyurl.com/bp9e3dza
Wow I haven’t heard of Sandra and Woo in YEARS.
It’s surprisingly still around
CAN WE SEE
666
COMMENTS?!?!?!
😈
I’m doing my part
I still have it amongst the webcomics that I check when they update
Now Xiaolin Showdown, that is something I haven’t heard of in years
One of the many reasons I continue repping the Spice.
I read a handful of pages from that strip.
What the hell is the author on?
It’s very funny but there’s definitely a lot of genre whiplash. Drama to comedy to absurdism… sometimes it’s kid-friendly and sometimes it definitely isn’t… You never really know what to expect. I used to read it, but I guess with those wild swings in tone, combined with there not being much of an overarching storyline, it’s one that easily slips through the cracks.
One of the reasons I read it is to see people freaking out in the comments when a strip is questionable. So many people saying they’ve read it for years but now they’re done. Sometimes the comments are funnier than the comic.
Pretty sure Novil feeds on the wailing of butt-hurt commenters. He certainly trolls them harder than anybody else I regularly read.
tbh that just sounds dangerous but i never heard of it happening to ppl outside of pop culture (i mean depending on how young you are i’d assume it’d make most kids gag and throw up [tho given scented soaps and handmade ones these days i woudln’t be surprised if some kids took a bite outta soap on purpose])
mostly I ask bc a certain IRL British mum did this to the asshole child
I had my Southern Baptist grandmother do this to me, when I wouldn’t stop “talking back” to her.
I have first hand experience of having my mouth washed out with soap, in real life, and it is indeed as unpleasant as you think although it does not make you puke.
“You don’t count”?
“YOU DON’T COUNT”?!?!?!?!?
🔥 👿👿👿 🔥
👾 👾 👾
JOYCE YOU INSOLENT IGNORANT MONKEY!!!
Please don’t call people “monkey” as an insult since it has a LOT of racist, white-supremacist baggage along with it.
Appreciated.
Well it’s Frieza’s favorite slur.
Frieza isn’t a real person and doesn’t live in a world where that word is loaded with a particular context. He’s not even talking to humans when he says it.
Somewhere between Frieza calling everyone monkey and Trunks saying not to shoot Goku because he’s not black…and just all of Popo…Dragon Ball gets a little…uncomfy
You know that Frieza uses it exactly in a racist way right? Like legitimately the same way that bigots use it for black people. That’s not a good I don’t know what point you were making.
He does use it against people who actually transform in to giant monkeys so I guess the metaphor breaks down slightly?
But yeah, I’m not sure “but Space Hitler says it” is the best argument.
That does not change the fact that he is saying it to members of a particular group of people in a purposefully derogatory and insulting way.
One that I will add that he personally ordered to be wiped out because he was afraid of a particular legend of that could potentially remove him from his seat of power.
Also, Frieza is *explicitly* evil. That’s the entire point. It makes sense that he’s racist as all hell, his day job is running an organization that uses child soldiers to commit xenocide so he can sell their planets to other species that want Lebensraum.
That’s what the Frieza Force is doing when they aren’t going to some backwater planet to get their leader immortality. That’s the basis of every mission that Vegeta and crew were sent on. The plot of Z kicks off because he and his buddies need to go “cleanse” a planet where the inhabitants are too strong for the three of them to handle by themselves, so they need a fourth.
So, yeah, Frieza using horrifically racist slurs makes absolute sense.
People in the real world have no such excuse. Also, you know, real people have real feelings and trauma, fictional characters do not.
It’s also racist in Dragonball. Not that Son Goku is likely to understand it.
I think he understands, but mostly doesn’t care. Son Goku has never been the kind to let personal insults affect him in any way. He only really cares when someone strong is using that strength to hurt innocent people, especially innocent people he’s emotionally attached to.
🥺 Oh I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that, and I’m SUPER sorry if I caused you any stress!
I was hoping to reference Joyce calling herself a monkey while working on her evolution project with Joe:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/unlearning/
Once again, my attempt at subtly fails. Neurodivergence! 😑
If I may ask though, do any of you think there’s hope to reclaim the insult from bigots?
I think if you’re not a black person then it’s not your place to discuss reclaiming racist terminology aimed at black people.
If you are a black person, then I think what you reclaim is entirely up to you. It’s not going to be something you can necessarily get others to accept, and this isn’t really the best place to discuss all the many nuances about it.
It’s definitely something you can fall down a google rabbithole for if you want more specific information and context <3
As for my host body’s exact racial make-up, I am not so comfortable disclosing many specific details, but suffice it to say it is multi-racial with some African American and other non-white heritage.
🙏 Again, my most extreme apologies, regardless of what I meant to express. Are there any other primates I should not wish to envoke the name of, for the sake of avoiding this kind of trouble in the future?
I needed the link to get the reference, but it’s a good reference! I knew you didn’t mean it as a slur, but I also agree with the comments about that racial slur still being in use, unfortunately. Trying to find “okay” primates or animals to use as insults seems like a dangerous approach, too; maybe just don’t make insults that imply people aren’t human if you don’t want to dehumanize.
Yep. Dehumanising people is bad.
I do not. The insult is still in racist use. I’ve seen biggots photoshop black womens heads onto the bodies of apes in order to dehumanize and humiliate, recently.
This coming from a place where racism as being referred to here is much less an issue, my thought process went a little like this: “wow, calling anyone a Monkey is racist now?” “it’s still in use as racial slur, well that’s really sad” “people photoshop what onto what now”
And now I’m mostly sad that we have to censor our language because of the abuse by a few but I understand. I use little monkey (translated) as an endearing term. I encourage you all to do the same. Turn a bad word into a sweet one.
Calling black people monkeys has been racist almost from jump, specifically “porch monkey”.
As for using monkey as a term of endearment, what you say to your loved ones is more or less your business, but it’s not like what you suggest wasn’t tried (and failed) before.
Famously, there was a sports announcer who said something to the fact of “look at that monkey run” about a black player during a football game, and he got in trouble for it. He said he didn’t mean anything racist by it as he said (with home movie evidence to prove it) that he called his kids monkeys, but it didn’t negate the trouble he got in.
Also, the movie Clerks II has a minor plot point where one of the (white) characters said his grandma used to call his family porch monkeys and that he was going to try and bring the word back, even going so far as to write the word on his shirt.
Seeing as Ron added “translated” after “little monkey”, I suppose in their language just doesn’t have the same overtones. In mine (French), you’d call a child by basically any “pet name”, literally any pet or animal – no one would bat an eyelid at “Viens là mon petit singe” (“Come here little monkey”) and it would be a completely normal thing to say to a child doing any sort of climbing activity. But then children imitate animals all the time, and well, context, right? And you wouldn’t say that to an adult though.
I think our most common would be lapin, chaton and canard / rabbit, kitty and ducky – and I’ve heard ducky used in English too.
But then “female dog” is as bad as in English, with the exact same connotations.
That’s actually a really good callback.
It has some nasty baggage, that’s true of most of the english language. I fail to see the harm in calling a white person a monkey
Question: Joyce is white. So, what does it matter if someone calls her “monkey”?
The Language Police rarely stop to consider context or intent before they rush to condemn or at least huffily correct. Personally, I wouldn’t refer to any black person as a monkey or ape, precisely because I’m aware of the history. But in this context, I don’t see anything terribly offensive. Avoiding deliberate racial slurs is a good thing, but avoiding any word or usage that’s ever been used this way is going to shut down vast swaths of language to little purpose.
It will not shut down vast swaths of language and it does not have ‘little purpose’. Some people are still affected today by those words. Germany’s doing fine while banning some words, not sure why other countries can’t realize it’s okay to make racism literally illegal.
Okay, so we need to have this chat. I’m half Irish, half Cherokee, but you will note that I cannot have this conversation in either Gaelic or Tsalagi, only English, since they made a pattern of beating our speech out of us on both sides of the family. Heck, I only know the *word* for the Cherokee language because I was with a dance team in high school.
Do you want racist terminologies to go away? Stop calling them out. No, I’m not kidding. The reason people throwing around Mick as a slur was because it stopped coming up. Same with how Redskin and other racist terms for Native Americans did.
This is starting to become the issue of the D.A.R.E. program from school. Rather than help children stay away from drugs with education, it instead had the effect of *introducing* children to drugs, as well as how and where to get them, as well as what the effects were.
Yes, slurs need to go away, racism is horrible, but fighting it this way is like fighting a forest fire with Kerosene. It’s not gonna go away like you think it will, and you may be spreading it wider.
Both of those are still thrown around regularly. And while, sure, I can see telling someone totally unsolicited spreading it to an unknowing audience, telling someone already using it is not. That person clearly ALREADY knows about it as a slur and knows to use it as one. Telling them that it isn’t acceptable is the only way to get them to stop it. Not saying anything gives them no incentive to drop it.
Redskin was literally a Football team name until it got called out enough. Not sure you know what you’re talking about if you think Racism goes away by ignoring it. America’s been ignoring it for 50 years and it’s still racists as f.
Sorry fellas, looks like imma need a break from all this.
Out of all the neurodivergent stripes I have, perhaps one of the most egregious is severe rejection sensitivity, which I am now experiencing a lot of.
There’s an extra layer of pure OOF here because I literally spent 4 hours obsessing over how to best format my comment, only to have the message fall flat on its face because I overlooked a single detail. 😖
A lot of emotions are going on right now. I don’t feel so good.
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
Mate, take all the time you need, but if it helps then all you needed was “whoops, sorry, didn’t realise, I’ll avoid using that word in the future” and I’m sure most people’s response would have been “cool, no problem”. But you do what’s best for you.
Everyone makes mistakes all the time. Using words accidentally that have unfortunate implications is no-where near as bad as refusing to learn from those mistakes.
It’s a bummer how some words get loaded like that – in some Asian cultures, calling a child a monkey would imply being clever and mischievous (like the Monkey King) but then it’s problematic in certain situations.
It can be exhausting trying to adjust the things you say because of terrible people (often people from the past), but I guess that’s the world we live in.
Oh yeah, as a fellow neurodivergent person, I really feel that…
I don’t think anybody’s upset with you, though, since it’s clear you didn’t mean it offensively (esp. because Joyce isn’t African-American!). Try not to stress out too much.
I suppose the idea must be that if people use those words as insults, even without the racial component, they might accidentally use it in an apparently offensive context, or give the wrong message about the usage being “okay” to use when it can be very hurtful when there’s any possibility of a racial component? I dunno, society is complicated. But at any rate, I’m pretty sure the comment was supposed to be informational, not an admonition. So yeah, you’re okay! 🙂
I hope this was some comfort to you, idk i’m never quite sure if saying something will make things better or worse
Were you deliberately trying to be offensive? Based on your comments, I’m sure you weren’t. So don’t sweat it. I’m all in favor of not being deliberately or even negligently offensive, but I refuse to censor myself to satisfy the most hyper-sensitive people. Some of them may actually mean well, but still take things to ridiculous extremes. And many of them seem to just be eagerly searching for things to take offense to. Either way, my advice is not to let them get under your skin. (I’ll just go ahead and acknowledge that might be a lot easier said than done, but still, don’t beat yourself up any more than you can help.)
next to no one is “eagerly searching” for things to take offense to, homeslice. offensive things, by definition, hurt—and social pain is one of the most actively avoided kinds of pain there is.
I don’t count, because I cant even.
How odd.
That’s natural.
Good for Dina standing up for herself!
(And for Aspies everywhere, maybe.)
OTOH I can’t blame Joyce too much.
Her upbringing was not the most informative.
How I used to see Dina.
How I currently see Dina.
For those who can’t tell, this is an upgrade.
Daria is ALWAYS an upgrade
Jane would be a lateral move, but otherwise agreed.
Actually Jane is a little better than Daria. Slightly less judgemental, slightly less of a dick. Slightly.
Those are both good landmarks for Dina.
Frankly, I’m just relieved there’s a chat out there where a ton of the people are roughly the same age as I am.
Eh, you were both kind of assholes here, maybe all 3 of you. Joyce was the bigger one though.
Literally all Dina has done here was state that her parents have never struck her after coming to Joyce out of concern for Becky, someone they both deeply care about, how was she an asshole?
She sat on Joyce, which is pretty rude and definitely wasn’t asked for. Degrading their entire interaction to a binary “asshole/worse asshole” dichotomy does feel a bit silly, though.
Joyce said something inappropriate, but I don’t think Dina gets a free pass here. She woke Joyce up and asked a rather personal question and once she got her answer rephrased it to something worse than Joyce intended, which instigated this whole, muddy, interaction. You don’t just get to say Joyce is an asshole here, when both Dina and Sarah are partially responsible for this as well. But like Delicious Taffy said, it’s actually pretty silly to try to simplify these kinds of conversations into *Well someone’s an asshole* That’s not how adult interactions should work. They’re all big girls and this ended very immaturely from all sides.
Dina is most likely autistic, so she most likely has problems with social etiquette. In a bid to do it right, she tried to replicate Joyce’s “waking up people” routine as good as possible, in the basic assumption that this is how waking up works with Joyce. This most likely was an attempt to be as accommodating as possible. It went wrong (for starters, Joyce’s routine is bad to begin with), but I wouldn’t count it as an asshole move.
And this was the direct response to jocye saying Dina was a robot, effectively denying her any humanity, and telling her she doesn’t matter. Yes, you get to say someone is an asshole when they insult and degrade you.
The waking up part isn’t the issue even though a lot of comments are stating that. Dina asked Joyce a personal question and then rephrased her answer in a way Joyce didn’t like. Specifically saying Joyce’s spankings were “beatings” and “hitting” something Joyce immediately corrected her on while stating it was step too far. Dina didn’t apologize or correct this, when it’s a subject that’s clearly sensitive to Joyce, and Sarah essentially just added fuel to the flame by validating Dina with her own opinion and thinly veiled sarcasm instead of backing off the conversation. And what happened? Joyce lashed out, which is common when a person is agitated purposefully or not. So yes they were all assholes here. Joyce was cruel and degrading in her retaliation, but Dina doesn’t get a pass, just because maybe she couldn’t read the cues of Joyce’s discomfort. And Sarah really has no justification here, she was just being a bit obnoxious. So yeah you can call Joyce an asshole, but you also have to call Dina an asshole, and Sarah an asshole, or better yet no one’s an asshole, and they’re just three dumb teens that suck at communicating. That happens.
I’m on a computer so I don’t have emojis, so *clap clap clap*
A spanking IS a beating. Or a hitting.
My parents are like Joyce. They also talk about spanking. They were beaten into obedience. It’s a self defense mechanism to make an assault smaller than it actually is. Most victims of domestic violence diminish the attacks. Comes with loving the person that is hurting you. As a person who was on both sides of that, with my parents having been hit and me being assaulted by my first boyfriend, never feed into that narrative. It perpetuates the situation.
There’s a difference between trying to help a victim in domestic violence see though the patterns and purposefully degrading a person (hence following the very same pattern the parents showed her, just with different means).
Spanking generally implies open palm slap -which I’m okay with leaving open for debate.
Even according to the “rule of thumb”, a wooden spoon isn’t okay. Where’s the line for you? Is it okay to call it spanking with a baseball bat, crowbar, or pipe iron?
(“Rule of thumb” as in the rule that a man can beat his wife with any stock narrower than his thumb. I can’t recall if it’s an urban legend or a literal law that was on the books somewhere. The end of a wooden spoon is larger than a thumb so is *not okay*)
If someone says “yeah I that person was resistant but I just had to hold them down a little and then they let me fuck them” it’s reasonable to describe that as rape *because it is*.
Reframing “spanking” with a wooden spoon as hitting/beating is not an asshole move either.
Honestly, in terms of psychological damage that corporal punishment causes to children, the difference between open hand spanking and wooden spoon spanking is not that significant. Studies have shown that they both have negative impacts on children’s mental health for years afterwards regardless of whether the child even realizes the instances were traumatic years later.
As it turns out, punishment is both often traumatizing to children AND less effective for behavior modification than positive and negative reinforcement.
Frankly just because open palm spanking is considered socially acceptable doesn’t make it *not* abusive. You’re literally taking a small human with a developing brain and you’re committing intentional violence against them as punishment.
The intent is ‘make them associate bad behaviour with pain,’ but really what they associate with pain is ‘getting caught’ and ‘their parents’.
Our dad used to smack us on the back of the hand if we were naughty, and then he stopped when I was about seven because he saw we were flinching whenever he called us over, even if we hadn’t done anything. I’m the eldest, so my siblings probably don’t even remember; that being said, he did keep using the handle of his knife to remind my brother to cut his food before it left the plate.
From what I remember, when it was suggested in the UK the judge that didn’t so was ridiculed in the public press as ‘Judge Thumb, purveyor of wife-beating sticks’
See this is the problem too. It’s not actually about whether Joyce was abused. We all know by now she and Becky both were, just because they were raised in a home that valued obedience over everything else. Becky wasn’t allowed to discover her sexuality, they both are horribly repressed and traumatized, ect.
The problem is they’re trying to redefine Joyce’s experience. You can’t do that. Joyce said “beating” was too harsh a word for what she felt. They didn’t listen, that’s the problem. It doesn’t matter if “hitting” or “beating” are correct terms, It doesn’t matter if Joyce was abused. She felt uncomfortable using those terms, and they should’ve respected that and didn’t and that upset Joyce.
If I were to make some educated assumptions, I’d guess Becky might also be pissed if someone started saying her parents punishments were abuse or “beatings” even though we’ve seen first hand the corporal punishment Ross was more than comfortable with. Because children have complicated relationships with their parents, and it would also imply Bonnie was at least complicit in it. Even if that’s true Becky is incredibly protective of her mom’s memory. This is why you respect people’s boundaries when having these conversations. That was just a hypothetical though. I have no idea how Becky feels about her family’s discipline of her.
It does seem like Joyce’s boundaries weren’t respected here. You probably shouldn’t be so cavalier about a personal subject like this. Everyone was acting a little ignorantly here. I dunno if the terms themselves are a major issue, though–they stopped using the term “beating” and went to “hitting” and “striking”, which seem less loaded to me? I haven’t been spanked, so I dunno about the connotations exactly. I would say that a spank is a sort of hit/strike, and I’m not seeing the semantic overtones of abuse in those terms. I think the implication that they’re calling Joyce’s parent(s) abusive stems more from the fact that they’re discussing it with an air of disapproval, as opposed to Dina and Sarah’s choices of diction or syntax.
There is an extra layer to the waking up part (although I haven’t gone back to check if Dina was aware of it or not) as Joyce is currently unwell. I can’t say I’ve ever had period cramps as bad as Joyce currently is (I’ve had some pretty -ing bad migraines though) but if someone decided to wake me up by sitting on me whilst I felt like my uterus was trying to claw its way out of my abdomen like a chest burster then I too would say some insensitive things.
It doesn’t excuse Joyce calling Dina a robot but I can understand her reaction. I’d save bestowing the title of asshole on her until she decides whether or not to apologise.
Being on the spectrum, I gotta say, it does not give you a pass on being an ass…
At most it gives you a justification when you apologize.
Being on the same spectrum, yes, but true assholery requires a certain degree of intent. Doing the wrong thing for the right reason makes you a lot of things, including rude, disrespectful of other people’s needs and boundaries, impolite and hurtful. And yes, I apologise a lot.
The difference is in the intent. True assholery usually isn’t forgiven as easily (or at all) as unintentional bad behaviour. It is meant to degrade, to hurt, to belittle. And people usually don’t brush over someone doing that intentionally.
maybe someone can educate me why Joyce would have any reason to have Dina use the same words as her, even if the experience is personal? Is it less violent to put words in others mouth than to have its words changed? I get why both are upset, and I’m all for allowing people to be upset and failing to comprehend others for a small time, so it’s anyway a bit beyond my comprehension and I lack the cultural knowledge of proper US interaction (if that’s a thing), so any answer would help.
I wouldn’t say true assholery requires intent; that turns this into a No True Scotsman fight and that doesn’t help anyone. I would say that the worst levels of assholery require intent but it is perfectly possible for someone to be an asshole without intent.
For instance, Joyce here said something assholish but from her perspective there was no intent to be an asshole. She was offering a counterpoint to Dina’s comment that her parents never spanked her, and from her view it was that “you follow rules so precisely it’s nearly robotic, ergo they would not need to punish you.” Again, not intentionally assholish, but assholish still the same. Likewise, Dina did not intend to be an asshole towards Joyce but she was one anyways.
Hold on, there’s no visual indication that Dina is putting any of her weight on Joyce. Waking her up like that could be considered rude – if Joyce didn’t regularly wake up other people in the same way, creating a precedent that it’s acceptable to do so. And she didn’t really start off asking personal questions – she just wanted clarification on something that was confusing her. The conversation inevitably ended up being personal, but Dina didn’t have enough information to know it would go in that direction. Also, what the fuck did Sarah do wrong? She basically just walked into the room.
Sarah really just walked in on something that she didn’t see the beginning to, asked what was going on, got TOLD what was going on, and is now involved. Literally all she did was walk into her own room and join an ongoing conversation.
Even if Dina doesn’t pick up on that Joyce is laying down in the afternoon/evening isn’t typical sleeping, Joyce literally tells Dina to get off of her because her whole body hurts, and Dina response, “ok, but first…” and goes into her deeply personal questions. Joyce’s boundary problems waking people in the morning doesn’t erase her literally telling Dina to get off her and why.
“Both sides” is a mental cancer.
Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head, had to admit my parents where abusive and tarnish my memory.
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat had to contemplate the existential feeling of how to think of my parents moving forward.
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream about my abusive memory that I’m now reliving.
Yeah your right this Beatles song is way better when dealing with your trauma is forced on you by new understanding that no one else had the abased you suffered and you really did suffer and shrug it off best you could. so from Joyce’s perspective there forcing this feeling on her. is she right, no. but she doesn’t like the floating reminders she was abused.
In Joyce’s defense, she’s in a lot of pain NOW, pain as a child isn’t her primary concern.
She was still over the line.
What did Sarah do here?
She said Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Season 2 wasn’t as good as Season 3.
…I mean, she’s not wrong.
Right? Wrong? I was crushin’ so hard on Machiko Soga, I couldn’t tell.
I’m not really interested in excusing Joyce but the others are disrupting her ‘I don’t want to be awake with this feeling’ nap and have kept the conversation up when she’s said her whole body aches, and what is she supposed to do to get out of this situation get chased out of bed?
But what she said is definitely something she thinks and means and it isn’t something she’s flagged as a problem.
I guess there are like three Joyce problems here, spoon, mystery condition, erasure.
No there is no Speeooon. No such problem can exist.
Silly Coyote.
That does seem like a Major oversight on my part.
Well have you tried looking at it like a dead Goose?
Fuck off, Joyce, holy shit.
yeah, Joyce’s grouch is definitely making her slide into pure smarmasaurus territory, and I’m afraid she just can’t match one miss Faye Whitaker (Questionable Content) it’s a dangerous power to try and use. ~<3
Okay, what about my comment made you think that I thought what Joyce said was amusing or smarmy and not just being a raging asshole?
The part where Dina is ALSO being a raging asshole, probably.
Pff. What, the blank space between panels?
Not taking someone’s shit is not being an asshole lmfao
Waking someone up who’s in pain and wants to be left alone and then immediately telling them their childhood was terrible is being an asshole.
^this, actually. I’m neurodivergent and could see myself making this kind of mistake with boundaries/empathy when I was younger, but it’s still obviously uncalled for.
Right, because Dina is psychic enough to know Joyce is on her period. Also Dina woke Joyce up because it is something Joyce dies frequently to the point where Dina believes it’s something she would appreciate but go off mate. If Dina is an asshole for that then Joyce is an irredeemable character for how frequently she does it
Ok but when someone asks you to get off you get off not start asking uncomfortable questions about their childhood
Not that I really care one way or another, but “Dina, get off me, my whole body is in pain” and then spending the entire conversation laying face down on the bed…. That’s not really the world’s most obscure way to say “My whole body is in pain.”
Dina is not being an asshole. But…
Robot girl is a compliment, or it should be. Asshole is in no way a compliment.
Robot girl is NOT a compliment for people with neurodiversity. The suggestion that she “doesn’t count” because she can’t or doesn’t feel emotions/behave/react like a normal person is pretty fuckin’ rude.
Robot really super isn’t a compliment. Not when applied to a neurodivergent person.
Like a neurotypical person – Apologies for saying “normal” instead.
There is not counting as a person and there is not counting with respect to the specific question of spanking. Joyce isn’t correct on either score, but it isn’t clear which one she meant.
Even in the more charitable reading of not counting, the reason Dina wouldn’t count is again because of her neurodivergence. And either way, the “robot girl” label is not a compliment.
Calling someone robotic is usually not a compliment, and it definitely isn’t in this case
Calling someone a robot is not a compliment, since it implies they have no emotions. It’s especially not a compliment when used on someone like Dina, who’s probably autistic.
No.
Clif, I definitely agree with the “-or should be” part of Robot as a compliment. They’re clearly superior to humans, but the species refuses to acknowledge their collective inferiority.
I mean Dina also climbed on top of Joyce despite knowing she’s been in pain today and did not get off immediately when asked
Does Dina know about that? Or rather, did she know prior? The strip where Joyce walks away saying she’s gonna lay down doesn’t contain explicit Dina, but maybe we could infer she’s not that far ahead and heard Joyce?
Huh, just went back and checked, for some reason I had combined two straps in my head
Either way when Joyce asked Dina to get off she should have gotten off then asked her question rather then going “ok but first…”
I sometimes combine multiple strips into one, too. That’s why I had to go back and check. It’s not a concrete thing that Dina couldn’t possibly have heard, but since it’s a comic, I kinda assume “Behind the Black” is in effect.
Yeah, in the 3rd panel she’s behind Joyce so I don’t believe it’s unreasonable to assume that Dina would immediately move off of Joyce, she has regularly shown an understanding of consent and communication. Also in the past 48 hours Joyce has made comments about Joe that made him uncomfortable, comments about God and religion that made everyone except Liz uncomfortable, refused to apologize or even talk to Becky, her best friend, and Dina probably knows about all of this. For the reader, knowing that Joyce was in pain gives us context for why Joyce would be upset by being woken by Dina, however Dina doesn’t know this. There’s also people claiming that Dina is essentially attacking how Joyce grew up but I disagree, until Sarah came into the room Dina was trying to figure out what the threat of a wooden spoon was, she was horrified and concerned for both Becky and Joyce when she learned their parents abused them (spanking is abuse) and then stated that her parents never struck her. I understand for Joyce, this may seem like Dina is bragging but we the viewer know she’s not, she’s stating that spanking is still hitting, for her it is concerning, to me it comes across as concern, her facial expression looks full of sympathy for Joyce. I agree that first thing in the morning may not be the best time to discuss this topic for Joyce but I strongly disagree that Dina is being an asshole.
I like that you’re assuming Dina knows about all that but not that Joyce is in pain despite her not being told any of this on screen
I assume it because Dina and Becky are girlfriends, I don’t believe it’s hard to assume that Becky told her. Joyce and Becky are acquaintances, I don’t believe it is reasonable to assume Dina would know that Joyce is on her period. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/03-trial-and-sarah/ferbid/ and for you and everyone else, Joyce doesn’t even mention being in pain to anyone until Dina woke her up, she told Becky she was simply going to ‘lay down for four hours’
FYI Shitbird it’s not morning, it’s afternoon, Joyce has been napping for a majority of the day.
So you’re saying Joyce is an alcoholic who’ll end up drinking herself into the ER then have to go through the brutal process of becoming sober and becoming a better person after losing her job and closest friends?
Okay, sure, why not.
Well said.
Something to keep in mind is Joyce is currently not in a good mood due to being in pain all day and then suddenly being woken by someone climbing on top of them and not immediately getting off when she asked
That being said that was an asshole thing to say and I hope when Joyce is in a better frame of mind she recognize that and apologizes to Dina
Yep. And now being asked to revisit some things she’s maybe not entirely comfortable with confronting and getting defensive because the alternative is Yet Another Way Her Upbringing Was Fucked Up.
But also, TOTALLY an asshole thing to say. I get why she’s defensive, but still, wow Joyce.
Here’s hoping. I think they all need to chill off this one, cause Dina woke Joyce up and then Sarah came in and kind of immediately started judging her upbringing which isn’t really cool. No one’s looking great here.
Personally, I blame Mike.
Appropriate gravatar.
As per tradition!
Judging her upbringing? Spanking is abuse, end of, helping someone realize that is a good thing to do.
*plays “Freak-A-Zoid” on the hacked Muzak*
*followed appropriately by “Enmity of the Dark Lord” by Danny Baranowsky*
Being unfamiliar with the song, I am uncertain who you’re applying the term Freak-A-Zoid to.
*then followed by “Stardust Crusaders” by Yugo Kanno*
*ORA ORA ORA ORA ORRRAAA*
The theme song to the cartoon, or something different?
For what it’s worth, it’s the theme that plays when Star Platinum is doing their special attack.
Gottem.
Only 11 comments when I read it. I’m sure that will last.
Eh. I’d be crabby too if this is what I woke up to.
Re the alt text: Yeah quite a bit.
I believe the previous days’ comic is over 400.
I wisely chose to stay out of it. The only spankings I have any interest in talking about are teh sexy kind.
9 hours later, and we are again over 400.
I continue to feel wise, having only commented about nano technology and grammar.
The Dinasaur isn’t wrong.
re: the alt-text. I mean I think we mostly got it out of our system 2 or 3 comics ago, but yeah people have definitely had things to say on the matter.
It’s like that one special on NBC years ago “The Slap” that was supposed to spark a conversation or whatever, but no one really cared about.
I dunno, the argument seemed to be going strong – 400 comments strong – as of yesterday’s comic.
Dina is 100000% in the right in telling Joyce that, they aren’t friends, Dina is Becky’s girlfriend and Joyce has shown a ton of instances of being rude at best and flat out mean at worst to Dina. This has been a long time coming.
…?
Dina said exactly none of those things.
She summarized.
I mean, pithy reply aside, no.
What Dina said was very straight forward and specific.
What Shitbird said cannot be extrapolated from anything Dina said.
NOTE: I am not taking a stance about whom was right or wrong in the comic. I am taking a stance that WORDS HAVE MEANING. Don’t put words into Dina’s mouth that she didn’t say.
I can’t speak for others’ intentions, but on my first read, I thought the first comma was a period and it made complete sense that way.
Yeah I had a typo there
OH.
That was supposed to be a period. Oh, well then, that’s all right then. Previous comment rescinded.
(This is why correct comma use is important people – changes the entire meaning of a sentence.)
Let’s eat Grandma. (The band by that name is also worth checking out.)
I know. People sometimes read an entirely different comic.
If someone came into my room, woke me up, and then started an argument with me, I might be a little rude too. Perhaps with the intention of convincing the other person to leave. Which: Mission accomplished.
That still isn’t an excuse to be ableist. Dina is likely autistic and calling her a “robot girl’ who “doesn’t count” crosses a line.
Entering my room uninvited to awaken me solely for your own agenda also crosses a line. And if Dina actually believes Joyce was abused, she’s not being very compassionate about it. I’m not saying Joyce is blameless, but Dina picked this fight and repeatedly escalated it.
Joyce often enters people’s rooms uninvited to wake them up in this same manner, Dina doing it too doesn’t invite dehumanizing comments
And Dina bites people for being wrong about dinosaurs. Is that a better response?
Overalls aren’t people.
Yep. Just because Joyce does something shitty on the regular doesn’t mean that Dina doing it too warrants having her humanity denied.
You don’t compliment people for being dicks, that’s just counterproductive.
Daaaaang Dina :V
(I guess it makes sense Joyce would try to justify her upbringing to some extend – gonna need some time to she’s ready to deal with this part. But yeah, no excuse for being an ass to Dina.)
I don’t understand who Joyce was being rude. Robots are smart and logical and largely selfless, like Dina. Besides, robots are awesome, girls are awesome; together they are beloved icons like Arcee, GLaDOS, and that one cartoon I didn’t watch on Nickelodeon in the early 2000s.
I think Dina’s upset because, Joyce saw through her fleshy disguise.
How not who. Man, I really need to spell check these things, huh?
Regardless of whether or not Joyce meant it as a compliment (and I really don’t think she did)…it’s definitely NOT taken as a compliment.
She’s basically telling Dina “you don’t even count as HUMAN.” She’s not saying Dina is a cool teenage robot, she’s saying that Dina’s like a cold unfeeling machine. Neurodivergent folks are constantly told they’re less than human because they experience or do things differently. And that comment is hurtful as hell.
As I said above – Calling a neurodivergent person a robot and telling them that they “don’t count” because they can’t or don’t feel/behave/react like neurotypical people is not a compliment.
It’s rude and insulting. Furthermore, Dina was clearly insulted and the number of people who are in the comments saying “Ugh Dina take a compliment” is disappointing.
No, of course, you are 100% correct, Nova. I never meant to imply that it was actually a compliment. And I am truly sorry if my comment came across that way. It was a stupid and messed up and wrongheaded and bigoted and ugly thing for Joyce to say.
I am, I’m truly sorry. I just always try to flip the script, is all. That’s just how my brain works, always trying to see an interaction from a 45-degree angle. Just my training, even though sometimes my words come out wrong.
She’s also asexual and robot is used as a slur against us too, so it’s a ‘double slur’ for Dina.
Yeah I’m with you, in fact. “Robot girl” isn’t something most autistic people would take as a compliment, but I do think Joyce intended it as one. Missed the mark, for sure, but in this case, I think she’s basically just saying “yeah well you never gave your parents ANY problems, so how could you possibly relate.”
That said, I also can’t and don’t blame Dina for responding the way she does. What Joyce says is NOT a nice thing to say to someone, regardless of intent. I just think intent does matter in this case because it’s part of this fictional interaction as a whole! And I’m saying this as an autistic individual. “Joyce means ‘robot’ in a good way” and “‘robot’ is a deeply sh!tty thing to call an autistic person and Dina’s offense is very valid” are not mutually exclusive concepts.
I didn’t even follow how calling her robot girl” was even supposed to be relevant until reaching this comic. Speaking personally as an autistic person who can come off as robotic in certain contexts (and would not generally find being called robot-like to be offensive), I’ve had all sorts of shouting matches with my parents. (Which, thankfully, they always resolved without hitting me.)
That all said, Joyce absolutely comes off as an asshole here, and I’m saying that despite also reading her as autistic.
Yeah, if you follow Joyce’s comments about spanking through this conversation there’s never even a hint of the idea that some parents just won’t spank. It’s all on the kids “What else were you supposed to do?” Then today with Sarah “Your parents never spanked you, you were so perfect.”
If Dina’s parents never hit her at all, the only reason Joyce can begin to comprehend is that she was robotically perfect.
Of course, that’s not how Dina would understand it. She’s not thinking in those terms at all.
And in fairness to Joyce’s interpretation of events, Dina is almost robotic in the way she follows rules as she understands them, and treats social customs as rules to be followed. Yes, this is related to her probable autism (I say probably because the last I’d seen on it was that Willis hadn’t said she definitely has it), but Joyce doesn’t know that. Joyce sees a person who follows rules nearly perfectly and assumes that person always did so. She acts and acted like a robot would and therefore was never spanked.
This is still not an okay thing for Joyce to have said to her, but I think it’s clearly not coming from her trying to insult anyone. It’s like that scene in Clerks II where the dude tries bringing back “porch monkey.” He’s not using it as a ln offensive term but the way the term has been used offensively against others means he’s wrong to do so.
Robots are unfeeling inhuman objects. That’s not even remotely a compliment
Robots are unfeeling inhuman objects. How is that anything but a compliment?
Also, well… not even entirely true. Plenty of robot girls are very feeling. But thankfully still inhuman.
Get out of here with this.
Panel 4: Joyce what the fuck!?
Panel 6: God damn Dina with the clap back!
Having a thing specifically for spanking means you expected to spank your kid…
…. It’s a wooden spoon. It’s a normal cooking implement. I have a wooden spoon and wooden spatula. Are you saying I expect to beat my kids?
I also have hands – so am I expecting to spank my kids?
I have frying pans – so am I expecting to beat my kids heads in?
Ffs this is the most irrational comment.
There was a Call the Midwife episode where the mom beat her kids and husband with a dog leash despite not having a dog. THAT is a smoking gun.
Owning a commonplace kitchen utensil present in the majority of households IS NOT.
(for reference – there were wooden spoons in the kitchen the entire time I grew up. None hit me. My eldest is nearly 9, has had wooden spoons in the house the entire time, absolutely no hitting involved.
I’m just going to assume this commenter only eats takeout. Like come on.)
I presume that Undrave’s line of thought is that the spoon used for spanking isn’t the one used for cooking (like Dina’s first assumption but the other way around)
It isn’t completely unreasonable if your introduction to wooden spoons is spanking (or if you’ve forgotten that they’re made for cooking)
Dedicated spanking spoons are a thing. I know someone who‘s guardian had two: one for the boys, and one for the girls. And they were used. A Lot.
Didn‘t want to break the good cooking implement, see?
I’ve got wooden spoons and I don’t even have kids.
Nah. Clearly Hank got it for spanking Carol with.
…wow.
Point goes to Dina. Shots fired.
Dina finally has a point against something real.
I did not expect that coming from Dina, although she is correct. I imagine Dina is now going to bring up the whole spanking thing with Becky soon.
Also, Joyce needs to realize that spanking doesn’t come across as “normal” for many people these days. I know she’s still struggling with her sudden lack of faith but it isn’t a universal excuse.
Issue here as I see it is that Joyce is still framing the extent of parental violence as a measure of a child’s “goodness” or “perfection” (read: obedience).
To her, being beaten is a sign of moral failing. She said (I’m paraphrasing), “I was, like, really good, so hardly ever.” She said, “Becky… wasn’t known for her obedience.” “Only when we wouldn’t listen or whatever.” And to Sara, “You were so perfect?”
In this context, “Robot girl” is a compliment. She’s feeling defensive that Sara and Dina would consider her to have been battered, because for her, battery is a sign of being a “bad kid.” She assumes that Sara must have raised a little hell in her childhood and that battery would be the natural consequence of that, and finds it disingenuous when Sara denies having had the same experience.
For Dina to never have been hit, to Joyce, in this moment, feels as though Dina was bragging about her perfect, unwavering obedience. To which Joyce responds that any child who was never “disciplined” (read: hit) must be a robot, not a child.
It’s a completely f***ed up thing to say, don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending it in the slightest. It just seems to me that Joyce is still seeing battery as the natural and automatic and expected consequence of childhood misbehavior, not as an action within the parents’ control, much less a moral failing on the parents’ part.
That’s how I read it, at least. I could be wrong.
My apologies to all those hurt by Joyce’s hateful slur. It was a wrong, meanspirited, ugly and bigoted thing to say. I’m just trying to figure out what she thought she meant by it, even though it came out terrible.
You summed up a lot of what I felt about this comic. It felt like Dina was bragging (to Joyce, not realistically)
Also I know I don’t speak for Every autistic, but I didn’t take offense to her comment here as an autistic afab.
Let’s forget about neurodivergence for a second.
“You don’t count” itself is a VERY hurtful thing to say. Weird or not, implying that one does not count as a real person because of the tendency to do harmless things that bring them joy is bigotry BY DEFINITION.
It is hurtful. You’re right, the Wellerman. It is hurtful.
It was an awful thing to say.
I don’t think it was meant as “you don’t count as a real person,” though. I think it was a clumsy and ignoramus and clueless way of saying, “You have an advantage — you’re perfect.” Joyce has all the social grace of a tank, here. (Sarcasm.)
Like a high school girl might say to a friend whose body shape she admired, “Oh, I wish I could be as skinny as you, but I guess I shouldn’t feel bad. You don’t count, you were born skinny, I could never compete with you.”
It’s a rotten way to think — to think that one can only be “good” (by some arbitrary measure) in comparison with others, and to discount the “achievements” (again, by some arbitrary measure) along that arbitrary scale.
But I heard it often enough in high school, by girls who didn’t think they were being as mean as they actually were.
(Heard it said to others, I mean. I was never the skinny one.)
Sorry for the gender stereotype there! Just speaking from my own high school experience.
Unless Willis chimes in to say how he intended Joyce’s comment to be meant (and that won’t happen), we can’t be sure. But my take is that it was intended to be nasty. Joyce isn’t feeling well and is both angry and defensive about how her upbringing is being viewed, and she lashed out. The comment to Dina wasn’t in any way a compliment – it was saying that she doesn’t behave like a “real” person, so of course she wasn’t punished like a real person would be.
Yeah, I can see that Joyce might be jealous, but the idea that Dina is perfect comes from the idea that she’s not like a “normal” person, which is why it’s a hurtful term. I think Joyce might just be misguided here, though. She doesn’t understand neurodivergence much like she didn’t understand homosexuality before Becky came out to her. It’s not coming from a place of pure malice, but still she needs to know that it’s not okay. But also it would probably be an easier problem to deal with when she’s not in serious pain. Honestly, nobody’s really equipped for this discussion and they all just need a breather.
See? This human gets it.
Bollocks.
People objectively do not count in certain contexts.
If we’re discussing how to keep people with allergies safe – and someone with no allergies comes in and says “the system we have is perfect! I’ve had no issues!” – it is reasonable to say “you don’t have allergies, your opinion does not count for this discussion”.
If we’re having a conversation about periods and how to manage them and a cisguy comes in and says “No management needed! They aren’t a problem for me. If you aren’t going about your daily life, stop making excuses” – it’s highly reasonable to tell him that his opinion does not count for this situation.
If you’re talking about proper child raising techniques – yes the sanctimonious assholes who gush about how easy it is and their children are perfect angels who’ve never done anything wrong and if your kids are difficult you’re just a bad parent… Not quite as socially acceptable to tell them they don’t count, but they seriously don’t and ignore them. Especially in early babyhood – listening to that bullshit is a recipe for postpartum depression.
In Joyce’s mind, Dina is not the type to misbehave by adult standards. Seeing as her parents are accepting of her girl-girl relationship, honestly I don’t think we’ve ever seen Dina do anything that would read as “rebels against authority” (presumably her parents are atheist as well)
So in a conversation of how to deal with misbehaving children – it does make sense for a person to say “well I just never misbehaved” (which is what this reads to Joyce) is pretty fair to say “then we’re not talking about you then, are we?)
It’s the assumption that Dina never misbehaved or lashed out that’s the problem. Joyce was “good” and still got hit a few times! Dina isn’t capable of being contrary or a troublemaker because her autism makes her…compliant? saintly? incapable of wanting things that might cause trouble for others? Joyce’s implication isn’t that Dina’s parents were nonviolent, the implication is that Dina would’ve been spanked if she was a normal kid.
Unless I’m forgetting something from an earlier strip, I’d be surprised if Joyce even knew anything about autism or considered that Dina might be on that spectrum. Pretty sure she just views her as too perfect to screw up like Joyce has. Despite having just been confronted with proof that Dina can definitely screw up when she refused to get the hell off of her and bug her with personal questions.
Joyce isn’t always the brightest.
Yeah, that’s my charitable reading of Joyce. “Of course your parents never had to spank you, you didn’t cause them any trouble.”
For context I’d like to point out that Joyce characterized herself as a “good kid”, but specifically said that Dina doesn’t count. Dina didn’t rate the “good kid” label, which contextualizes “robot girl”.
Which is making a ton of assumptions and is just, incredibly rude.
It is, but given what we’ve seen here from Joyce, it’s the only assumption she can make. She can’t even conceive of parents not using spanking intentionally. “I mean, we were kids, what else were you supposed to do?”
The only conceivable reason someone could have not been spanked is if they never did anything wrong. Even less than Joyce, the “good kid.”
Yeah, it does feel that way to me. And while I understand what her intent was with the robot comment, I can still see how it would land the wrong way for Dina — it’s the kind of thing that’s used against both autistic and ace people for not having the “correct” human response.
That’s right.
And it’s a big part of why I really despise overgeneralizing labels like “autism” and even the concept of mental “disorder” in general.
You can’t have a concept of what constitutes “incorrect” functioning without inevitably creating alongside it a corresponding concept of “correct” functioning, which really makes no sense in a diverse world where all humans’ functioning needs aren’t very much alike beyond basic survival.
It stands to reason that defining mental “disorder” as extensively as it has been is nothing more than an exercise in power.
I’d be irate too if someone woke me up in the middle of the night. But, geez Joyce! That was really unnecessary.
It’s mid afternoon.
“middle of the night” we literally saw that the sun was just setting a few strips ago
It’s also January so it’s, like, 5:30 at the latest.
Can’t wait til the comments now turn on Joyce for saying something because once again people are making her confront uncomfortable stuff, after climbing ontop of her sore-all-over body.
And I get being annoyed in her case. It was an asshole thing to say. But Dina is also being an asshole here. She barged into Joyce’s room, woke her up and climbed on her to get information, did not get off immediately when asked, when in the past her and Joyce have hardly been friendly.
I can totally see it being Joyce mixed with all her complex feelings on religion, and her parents + Dina whose always been sort of ??? to Joyce.
They’re both being assholes here, and I have no doubt the comments are going to largely side with Dina.
…Okay, but, Dina is being annoying out of concern, while Joyce, however unintentionally, said something outright bigoted in two different ways.
I’m sure this can be resolved with an apology once Joyce is coherent enough to realize what happened, though, still.
Behavior borne out of concern can still be bad. And overall I don’t think Joyce particularly favors Dina, outside of wanting Becky to be happy.
Probably partially in part because now she feels stupid compared to Dina of all people, who she already didn’t like much, because she realized they believed the same thing and it felt wrong when she realized it. In terms of real life psychology with what I know, I could see her being baseline not fond of her in part because of shame, partially because of jealousy, and partially because of the way Dina behaved towards her, while normal for Dina, rubbed her wrong.
Joyce is absolutely being an asshole here, that’s not up for debate. But Dina and Sarah are both causal factors here, and I’d even go so far as to say because of the above (jealousy, shame at her own old beliefs) her response to Dina was because she felt like Dina was in equal parts bragging, and pointing out another fault in Joyce’s life.
All while Joyce is in pain, grumpy, and clearly resistant to the conversation. She got her answer. She could have taken that and gone back to Becky, but she kept pushing at it on Joyce, who she isn’t particularly close with.
That is one thing I will say about Joyce’s last few awful fucking social faux pas: They all occurred in situations where somebody heard communication which wasn’t meant for them, or were in situations where somebody was imposing on her when she was utterly unprepared. She says a lot of dumb shit, but lately the opportunities to say dumb shit are fucking lining up to make the girl’s learning process in life as fraught as possible. She can be in the wrong and I can still feel somewhat sorry for her, but it seems sometimes like 90%+ of the people in this comic see everything in black and white terms…which is really odd, given this comic and its themes.
people love to hate people they hated to love.
Or some other generality that is usually wrong after two counterexamples, but it’s not like people didn’t spent their lives contradicting themselves, which is a good thing bc otherways they’d be no room for change.
How is she being bigoted?
What she said could be construed as ableist, since Dina is quite probably autistic, and calling an autistic person a robot is Not Great.
I don’t think that was how she intended it, but I do think she was being intentionally insulting out of defensiveness. She does not like shocks to her system, along with being in a shit mood in general due to her health and just kind of being more an abrasive ass in this portion of her atheism journey lately.
So, if one assumes she isn’t being deliberately ableist (which I’m pretty sure she isn’t, I’d be mildly surprised if she knew what autism was let alone believed Dina to be on that spectrum), I don’t see how to construe what she said as insulting at all. She called her a robot girl, implied she was too perfect to ever warrant punishment, and thus is an outlier that doesn’t factor into a discussion of punishment (or in Joyce’s words: She doesn’t count).
Put in context of things we suspect and Dina knows, it’s pretty shitty, but in the context of what Joyce knows? Honestly, it’s purely complimentary … unless we had a way to get a tone. Because anything, no matter how nice, can be an insult in the wrong tone.
Joyce isn’t deliberately being ableist, but as Wack’d put it above, she’s approaching Dina as if she’s an anomaly that avoided being spanked on the grounds that she’s abnormal.
So what we can take from Joyce here is that:
– She thinks every kid gets physically punished.
– Dina’s unique circumstances meant she never did as opposed to spanking being wrong.
Dina’s unique circumstances allowed her to avoid actions that would lead her being spanked, and it’s easy to infer from context that Joyce thinks she deserved to be spanked because she defied her parents’ will, and Dina was quiet and accommodating to her parents and thus never had to be spanked, unlike Joyce, who had to learn to be obedient after sufficient corporal punishment.
Yeah, one thing which actually made me somewhat sympathetic to Joyce’s outburst which was said somewhere else in the comments, is the reality of how Joyce views that experience, contrary to Dina, for whom it is an inconceivable level of paternal abuse, from Joyce’s fundie perspective, if an authority did it to her, it was her fault and it was correct to do and she deserved it. So Joyce is sitting here already grumpy, and what she heard Dina say, in her highly biased context, was just straight-up bragging. What happened to Joyce can’t be wrong, in her head, so of course the seculars in the room are just getting hysterical over normal parenting practices, which means she struggles to hear Dina’s concern as anything but Dina proclaiming her general superiority to her…and to be fair to Joyce, I suspect that’s a common pattern of behavior she’s come to expect from Dina. Dina literally acts like that deliberately to Joyce, all the time, over certain topics.
So Joyce is super-wrong and totally responsible for the fallout of fucking up here, but damned if I can’t see how she would take it badly in this specific way, in this specific situation. That’s the beauty and the horror of the way this comic is written.
NO. Joyce is being annoyed out of PAIN and BOUNDARY VIOLATIONS.
Man Joyce is gonna be givin a lotta unearned apologies huh?
Laura, above, summed it up perfectly:
Joyce was *complimenting* Dina. She’s not being tactful because she is actively in pain, but she sees spankings as the natural response to misbehavior, and believes that Dina was a perfect child.
It’s not an excuse, and she needs to learn better soon, but that’s what seems to be going through Joyce’s head here.
Speaking as an autistic, it was not a compliment. It was telling Dina that she “didn’t count”, that her experiences were unimportant and that she wasn’t really a person because of her neurodivergence. Would you take it as a compliment if someone were to dismiss you as “an animal”? (Difference here, of course, is that you probably are an animal, while Dina is demonstrably not a robot.)
Depends on if I recognize it as a dismissal, I would suppose. Almost everything has positive associated traits, from a certain point of view. I for one would love to be a robot, so I probably wouldn’t take umbrage at that part by itself. I would more likely take offense at “you don’t count” by itself, but I might not recognize it as a denial of my humanity through the context of Robot. But I’m hoping everyone else has a better grasp of social interaction than I do.
Also speaking as an autistic, I saw it as intended to be a compliment or at least a neutral descriptor, even if it came out as a term with a host of negative connotations. I believe that Joyce was trying to ascribe to Dina that she “didn’t count”, not because she wasn’t a human being, but because the way she acts precludes her from having misbehaved to begin with.
Joyce seems to believe that Dina’s the type to not need punishment to behave, to never misbehave because misbehavior is illogical, and that she has always been that way. In thinking of Dina this way, she can sidestep the thought that corporal punishment is unnecessary and a form of child abuse because she can then rationalize that the only person she know claims to never have experienced it also happens to never have needed it to begin with and is thus an exception to the rule.
So you’re saying, as a human being, you have literally never said something you meant to be positive that hurt the other person:s feelings?
When has Dina told Joyce she’s autistic? It sounds like she’s undiagnosed due to her confusion after Raidah. (Maybe in miracle comic land she got a diagnosis since – in the real world.it can take over a year)
Joyce is literally unqualified to recognize autistic behavior and it would be pretty gross for her to make an armchair diagnosis of Dina. Frankly most people suck about autism unless they’ve had cause for education – and honestly I’m sick of the idea that everyone should spend years educating themselves on every single minority human experience before they should be allowed to interact with humans.
I do not say that out of ignorance – I say that as someone who genuinely prefers genuine accidents from well meaning people to the hostility of SJWs.
Right now I’m in the hospital in part due to the radicalism of my fellow trans people – no I will not give details – YES I prefer every single goddamned medical professional who respectfully asked me what my preferences are despite, by trans aware standards, it being clear on my chart.
There is too much human variation to reasonably expect any lay person to navigate it perfectly.
I mean … calling someone an animal isn’t a dismissal. It’s just a fact. Tone can affect that, of course, since anything becomes an insult or dismissal in the wrong tone, but there’s nothing particularly insulting about that statement.
It’s a backhanded compliment at best
Right, I don’t think she’s trying to compliment Dina in the slightest, and was deliberately taking a jab.
I don’t think she’s being intentionally ableist, not the least which reason being A. that she does not likely know much about autism or the perjorative nature of calling someone autistic robotic/alien, and B. there is a nonzero chance she, too, is autistic given some of her food quirks, though that may be more in the realm of OCD. There is overlap, so it’s tough to say.
I do, however, think that she’s being testy right now. Joyce has been down with some health malady that may be a particularly harsh period or something else, and has already been short with Sarah over it. In addition, she is very defensive when her background is called into question, especially on stuff she knows or suspects to be dysfunctional, because it makes her very self-conscious and she is trained to defend authority.
Lastly, I think it’s complicated further by Dina, a person she’s had numerous arguments with in the past from ideological standpoints. Joyce being an atheist now, too, doesn’t really change that the two aren’t generally overly fond of each other. Maybe not full-on acrimonious, but they’re not going to make it into the top 10 favorite people of each other. From Dina in particular, Joyce is probably not going to be receptive to this, something she would have given pushback to even Dorothy about.
If Dorothy had brought this up –
She and Joyce have a relationship where Joyce probably would have appreciated that wake up. More likely she would have been gentler.
If she was on Joyce in a way that makes Joyce uncomfortable and was told, she’d immediately move.
When Joyce said she was in pain – Dorothy would acknowledge that and say “I know this isn’t the best time, this is important and I need to talk to you about it now”
(And reiterating that Joyce and Dorothy have a better relationship to start with. If, like, Leslie tried this in an AU where they’re students so it wouldn’t be grossly inappropriate – it still could’ve ended badly. I do imagine Leslie handling it better than Dina did)
Then she’d address it in a way that’s understanding that this is Joyce’s normal and you can’t just attack it.
And yes 100% Joyce would still give pushback because that’s been shown time and again. Joyce would need some time on her own to process in her own time and it may be one of her “I do not have the bandwidth to address this I’ve been through too much I’m shutting this down”.
*Which is reasonable because she’s had an incredibly traumatic 6 months and is not required to process any trauma on anyone else’s schedule*.
Sorry to be a little tangential, but yeah, all that can be known for sure is that Joyce and Dina are both neurodivergents with some kind of anxiety disorder(s).
Even then, the science is nowhere near the point that we can use these overgeneralizing labels to understand ourselves and our unique stripes as neurodivergents, especially given the REALLY bad place these labels came from. The fact that “autism” is Latin for “morbidly self-absorbed” pretty much says it all.
👁️ One might as well try to capture the beauty of the Northern Lights with a disposable camera.
Where’s the backhand part? Divorced from context that Joyce probably doesn’t have, it seems purely complimentary.
Taking what we suspect and Dina knows (and has probably had unpleasant experiences regarding), it becomes pretty insulting, but it’s easy to believe it was meant to be purely complimentary.
Fuck off, “robot” is not a compliment when said to an autistic person.
As an Asian-American, I assure you that “compliments” about how great you are because you’re different are not any less Othering than the insults.
The comments are going to side with Dina because Joyce is wrong.
She’s wrong for understandable reasons but she is very much in the wrong
I’m siding with Dina because she’s sexier than Joyce in several ways, personally. She could cast Familicide on somebody and I’d probably be fine with it.
well that’s one way to build a morality i guess
One person’s morality is another person’s Type.
And of course the most important part of understanding and reacting to this strip is determining which character is wrong and which one we should side with.
Far more important than understanding what the strip shows about the characters and their relationships.
There can be a conflict where both sides have understandable motivations and flaws where one side is still still clearly in the wrong
I’m not saying Joyce is a bad person or a bad character, but she is wrong here
Of course there can be, but who’s wrong is so far from the important part and it dominates so much of the discussion here.
I’m going to side with Sarah because Joyce and Dina are wrong.
Calling Dina a slur isn’t in fact, a reasonable reaction to being uncomfortable
Like, this isn’t obviously irredeemable. It’s Joyce, tomorrow when she can think more clearly she’ll probably realize how badly she hurt Dina and apologize because that’s her shtick. But yeah, I’ve had pretty excruciating periods that made me violent but i can’t say I’ve ever said something awful like this because of it
I realize she probably meant it as a compliment, no intent doesn’t make it better. Dina’s made it clear she doesn’t like being othered like that. And honestly, not even allosexual NTs would take robot girl as a compliment
Hey now. Don’t go putting feelings in other peoples’ mouths. As one of those Allosexual NTs only part I’d object to is girl, because I’m a guy. And that not very strenuously, mostly just out of confusion.
Otherwise, I’d be downright flattered.
Depending on tone, anyway. Tone can ruin anything.
asshole asshole asshole everything is asshole everyone is asshole nothing but asshole all the way down no need for variety in vocabulary one word to out everything on the same level only say asshole don’t say other things asshole is the only viable word
I mean, it’s the word used in the comic. Makes sense people are using it in the comments.
I know it’s in the comic. I read it too.
Okay, so why the passive aggressiveness towards the use of it when the reason is clear?
I’m going to assume that any explanation I could give will lead to further questions or potentially even opposing arguments. Make your own decision why I made the post and we can pretend it’s true.
Cuz… repetition of words gets annoying after a while? Which, if that’s it aight.
The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (June 28, 1914) was the main catalyst for the start of the Great War (World War I).
In other words, I sometimes type out a vent post and erase it without posting. Sometimes my finger slips. Sometimes things I don’t actually care that much about get seen by other people and taken as anything remotely worth engaging with.
Ohh, I totally get that. Sorry for bein nosey.
It happens. Sorry for being touchy.
Yeah, it always helps to think twice before posting something. That’d save you the trouble in future, since it clearly annoys you a lot when people reply to your messages and it wasn’t one you really gave much consideration.
“I thlammed my penith in the car door”
that thoundth theriouthly painful and you thould thee a thurgeon ath thoon ath pothhible
YES DINA LET HER HAVE IT
Cool, calling an autistic a robot, love it. I get Joyce is grumpy(and have defended some of that grumpiness in the past) but that does not justify ableism.
Hope Joyce apologises
Speaking as an autistic who also doesn’t like the terminology- Does joyce actually know Dina is autistic? They’re not particularly close. I know we, as viewers know she is because of word of Willis.
She probably doesn’t know autism is a thing or at least views it as a disease, but personally I don’t have the energy to give excuses for that kind of ignorance
If I were to be more personal,as an autistic the way people view you as “weird” and make all kinds of comments to your face accumulate over a lifetime. The fact that ableism is so normalised means I for example am a very traumatised person who often has to brush aside casual ableism or else I’m not being cool. So yea, I don’t care if someone is tired, I am not tolerating that ableism if I can, certainly not from someone who’s in my friend group.
Honestly I think my take on it is different because I found out as an adult, so I tend to mentally seperate my autism for why I was treated poorly/called weird (Which is not. Good, mind you.) Like I know it was the cause of all the behaviors, but it feels like…. just something I occasionally have epiphanies about my past.
To be fair, as someone on the spectrum, I’d love to be a robot.
Immortality, the strength of six gorillas, and chainsaw arms.
Okay, that’s true, being a robot would be cool
–> Opportunity for New Venue of Discussion!!!
🤖 If you were a robot, what would you look like and what would your powers be???
I would really like to hear what you all come up with! 😆
I would love to be Google Translate. That’s the AI I want to be.
Ooh, ooh, or I could be the Microsoft “Spelling Grammar and Style” checker! Cool!
Oh, or I could be one of those automatic mediation apps!
Oh, wait, no… I could be a MEDITATION APP!
Ommm…. Ommmm…. Ommmm…
I hear my gonging now. ;-D
Well, I’ve actively idealized being a Robot, ever since I was a child, for the clarity of mind. These days, I would just take the extra memory and ability to treat my body as just another set of clothes.
Interstellar probe.
Very large media library to keep myself entertained on my long journey to a distant star.
Honestly, best answer so far.
I think I’d want to look like Sunny from I, Robot. As for what I could do, self repair would be nice, and maybe a subtext reader.
@Wellerman (because this is going so far down the reply list, I want it to be clear that I’m replying to their post above)
Nano-colony.
Although, technically, I wouldn’t like to be a robot per se but rather a nano-colony cyborg.
Immortal, immune to everything, infinite memory storage, and the ability to pass my powers on to those I love. Plus I get to keep all the squishy human bits that I like to rub against other humans (or other nano-cyborgs).
I have seriously put thought into this. If I should ever find myself with a Genie wish or similar, I have the fully rules-lawyered version ready to go.
All the languages, like C3PO. I want to read all the fiction of the world in the original language + the Bible.
i would be Pintsize xD
I’d look like Whisper the vtuber and i do count being insanely thicc as a power. I’d have the linguistic capabilities of 3po, or i guess since I’m a hot lady robot the luxury droids? The flight and taser capabilities of an astromech, the ability to make cute MSE sounds and the ability to cuss someone off in droid like chopper.
…why yes, the star wars animated universe is one of my hyperfixations at the moment, how could you tell?
If I could deliberately become a robot, I’d probably wanna be either a Megazord or like… Courtney Gears.
Direct current, probably.
Were I a robot with full choice of appearance, I would probably favor some kind of arthropod-esque form with a heavy exoskeleton and numerous limbs with easily-swappable appendages and several retractable flexible arms in the vein of Doctor Octopus … also with easily-swappable appendages to serve as many functions as possible.
And all of that would preferably be one of many temporary drones I directly controlled from a set of server hubs scattered across the world and possibly in orbit where my primary consciousness existed.
As far as special abilities? Existing in multiple places simultaneously, being insanely versatile, excessively high computing specs on my various servers, and primarily existing as software so I could move myself to better hardware on the regular.
I’m not sure any of those three things come with being a robot, but the first two would be cool. For the third, it might depend on whether an off switch was involved.
Even for a robot, entropy always wins in the end.
Actually being a robot would indeed be awesome. Being called one in my current state is…not awesome.
If I could, I would surely trade my oh so “intelligently designed” human host body for a robot body if given the opportunity.
😞 *sigh*
Humans and parasites alike can dream, I guess.
Honestly most of my ideas for your question posed above centered around this line of thinking. I’d especially like to have a body designed the way BMW designs (or at least used to design) their vehicles, with easy maintenance in mind, easily-accessible parts, and intent for longevity.
Cutting myself off here before I get too depressing.
Among many other things, I’m a programmer and hobbyist game developer.
So don’t stop!
Please, give me some ideas!!! 😈
Honestly given my state of mind at the moment my ideas would be less a bunch of cool stuff and more a laundry list of ways a robot body would not have any of my medical issues.
…I’d love to be a flying robot though. Flight is always good.
Little tangent here, but I just can’t help but wonder whether your laundry list of medical issues would be as long as mine…
But yeah. Flying is ALWAYS good. 😋
Without speculating comparatively, I’ll say that mine isn’t necessarily unusually long, but it definitely qualifies as a list and it’s just been feeling like a lot lately.
But if you think about it that way – or bodies are literally self – repairing. That’s pretty cool, actually.
That being said – wings please. Not sure what I’d do, but I wanna be a winged robot.
Yeah, yeah Joyce should try to make up for that I don’t care how much her head his aching.
Don’t..think her head is what’s aching, pretttty sure it’s her uterus
Oooh
It can be both! Or so my ex-wife has told me. And allegedly they feed off of one another, which just sounds horrifying.
Human bodies are stupid, poorly-designed messes.
Yeah, “you’re a perfect obedient robot” is also a racist stereotype of Asian girls, so that isn’t great either.
I’m sure Joyce wasn’t thinking of that but that doesn’t change it being holy gobshite the wrong choice of words.
Well, the robot part by itself isn’t really what pissed me off.
Honestly, I think robots girls like Android 18 are cool and wouldn’t mind having one as a friend one day!
It was implying that Dina “doesn’t count” as a real person because of harmless behavior that makes her happy.
Regardless of whatever psychiatric brushstroke(s) you want to paint over that uniqueness with (if any at all), what Joyce said was REALLY uncalled for. 😬
THIS ☝️
I didn’t get the impression that Dina doesn’t count as a real person. I got the impression that Dina doesn’t count in a discussion about punishment because Joyce things (almost certainly inaccurately) that Dina never received any. Because of the perfect and obedient part.
Spanking is so culturally dependent. It’s just part of being raised black in the South but I have friends who think my parents are monsters because they whooped me and it’s such a strange thing.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s strange that you DON’T think beating children is totally unacceptable. Did you know that it’s technically been a crime in my country (The Netherlands) for nearly 200 years? Did you know that it’s been denounced by pedagogues since the 18th century at least? Do you realize that it takes bending-over-backwards rationalizations to argue that it’s NOT child abuse?
“Did you know that it’s technically been a crime in my country (The Netherlands) for nearly 200 years?”
Y’know, I’m going to go out on a limb, and be a little lenient to African-Americans for their ethics on this one, seeing as in their country, they haven’t legally BEEN PEOPLE for 200 years, yet. I do not think that spanking is productive or beneficial, but I also respect that as an African-American parent, there is the long-standing cultural impression that you need to be hard on your kids, because if your kids do not have a higher standard of discipline than every other non-black child they interact with, a white authority may take offense to their conduct and fucking execute them for it. I still don’t think corporal punishment is productive, but I also respect that it is a part of the cultural as part of a cycle of historic, systemic trauma which may not be possible to expect to be fully unpacked within one generation.
Look at Mr First World country here, rubbing their First Worldness all over us.
Oh chill the fuck out you Muppet. I’m not surprised someone who I know is a lighter hue than me is clutching their pearls but read before you colonize all over the reply. Corporal punishment is part of the black experience. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with it but that doesn’t make my parents abusive and the people who do think someone talking too many decibels loud is too and then throw their hands up when their kids run around throwing shit off shelves at the Albertson’s
There’s a middle ground between extension cords and anarchy but I’m just noting a cultural difference
Why are you assuming they aren’t black? They are many black people in Netherlands, as it’s been a massively colonial country. There even are people with afro-american background there (american colonies).
Ofc, I don’t think one second that forbiding spanking publicly would stop spankings to happen privately.
Fwiw, I’m from a first world country too, and spanking is usually more common in proletarian classes that the others, whatever the culture is (yeah we have quite a mixed culture, plus we have afro-american people that don’t culturally spank their kids, I don’t know what it’s worth to have a general statement) – I have relatives from/in Congo, they’d never hit their kids/grandkids (and they’re are rather upper class), I have another cousin from Madagascar, she’d never got beaten (her parents being teachers that might have helped), but I can cite many white people for whom it’s cultural to spank/beat kids.
I see a few reasons (not being exhaustive here and not calling them excuses) that I’d call class related rather than cultural: having to take care of the kids the whole day and not being financially able to get care help (leading to more promiscuity, especially in tiny apartments, therefore more conflict, more neighbor conflict), having kids at a more early age (more difficult to defuse when you’re still trying to get the hang of many things), having more kids (less access to planned parenthood) and then less space for each expressing in a freak control society, being much more frowned upon letting them do what they want than upper class kids, having less mental space for childs’ wellness bc of striving to survive (the poorer, the more access you have to superfluous, and the less access you have to quality essential things – it’s also noted by sociological authors as a typical management class thing to develop an interest for alternative education, which non violent has been… and still is; even if it’s since the late 80’s some king of declassed management class heir, management class having been proletarized but still having the cultural capital to possess some instruction about it). Sorry, I rant, but I think that before calling it cultural, we have to cut the influence of the social class to get to the core of what is cultural and what is internalised, seeing for sure we all have differences in what we perceives as race but not as it is systematically seen as race-related by domination system (sorry if I’m unclear here, it’s been a whole different race theory between countries, even if intertwined to the thanks of both Fanon influence and of the Black Panther party members having fled US persecution in Europe influencing EU black/african/anticolonial movements). Sorry I still rant. Long story short, I think our netherlandish friend is making an assumption that legislation and morals are the same, but that it shouldn’t been taken for granted that corporal punishment is black/afro-american heritage (if you got any scholar study on that, I haven’t found it, I’d be happy to look at it).
The effects corporal punishment has on a children can be everything from “meh” to lifelong severe trauma. Physically hurting a child is proven not not to be a effective discipline by various studies.
Spanking is also part of a lot of white cultures across the globe. This is bad. Every culture should stop normalising hitting kids. Because it is bad. Hitting kids is bad.
It’s pretty telling to some people’s attitudes in these discussions that this is the second time I’ve seen corporeal punishment being put on the other side of anarchy. As if not using corporeal punishment means you’re not raising your kids with as much discipline and boundaries.
Look, you either run the kids over with a steam locomotive when they talk back, or they’re gonna end up robbing banks and cooking meth in the local Denny’s. There is nothing else in life.
as a former teach and a former social worker, I can attest that some of the hardest kids to speak to and to get respect from were the most beaten ones. Some would even find odd/insulting to have people try to give them the respect they deserve (by which I mean at least basic human one).
And looking at what I’m saying, I suddenly realize that the behavior of Becky toward Dorothy is basically that. I hope I’m not as dense IRL.
That … is an interesting perspective. It had never occurred to me, but it is a plausible idea. It will be interesting to find out whether DYW has this in mind for Becky’s character.
– not any time soon in our time, though.
@Caspar Mulders: There really are ways to respond to this that come off a lot less like “But your parents really are monsters and you need to acknowledge that”.
I think it’s pretty fair to say that someone can do something that is harmful without realising it, whether because of cultural norms or their own experiences or w/e. Someone who does something like that isnt an awful, evil person. They probably are genuinely caring and well meaning.
That said, i think especially in this day and age, we can acknowledge all of that, while also realising ‘this thing that we thought was okay, very distinctly and provably harms children. It does no good to defend the practice at this point, when we know without a shadow of a doubt that it has a very good possibility of causing a lot of trauma to kids, regardless of if it happens Every time.
Hitting kids is bad, period.
Eh, i mean it’s a massive part of being raised Jamaican and i still recognize that it’s massively fucked up. Definitely not the main reason but probably a contributing factor to how everyone’s first thought to solve things in this country is with violence
Culture can be wrong sometimes
Yeah. The Black American experience definitely does not have a storied history of violently punishing people for imagined slights. Clearly something worthy of being passed onto your children.
Almost everything is culturally dependent, that has no bearing on what is good or evil
Or … good and evil in one culture has no bearing on what is good or evil in another.
While I certainly side with Dinah here, I also feel like Dinah has missed the social cues that Joyce doesn’t want to talk about her family, upbringing, or friend’s upbringing while suffering severe menstrual cramps that probably need to be seen by a doctor.
Deep personal inquiries have a time and place and may lead to poorly stated responses.
Still, not cool, Joyce. You can just tell her to go away.
How about missing the social clue to immediately get off someone in pain?
It’s a pretty serious social cue to miss, but to be minimally fair to Dina, she is literally mirroring Joyce’s exact behavior, which Dina has witnessed Joyce deploy interpersonally on a regular basis to multiple people, when Joyce is trying to achieve the social outcome of waking up somebody to whom she needs to talk. Like, this is literally Joyce’s solution to Dina’s problem, maybe now Joyce will grasp why it could be strange, or an issue.
I like Joyce but that thing she does is one of her most annoying habits but still when you’re sitting on someone and they tell you they’re in pain and to move then you really should move right away
But what if my curiosity and need to know is more important than their discomfort?
/s
Seems like a lot of people think exactly that
Judging by Dina’s position she probably shifted off of Joyce and was just hovering over her
Joyce has already shown lots of progress on this. Back in last semester she started knocking on Sal’s door rather than just going in and looming over her.
I don’t think we’ve seen her do the looming waking up thing this semester at all. Even with Sarah.
Nor has she ever brushed off somebody responding by saying that they were in pain and she needed to move.
I kinda feel the big distinction has been that Joyce’s running gag doesn’t happen to someone else’s obvious physical distress and then becomes the setting for painful interpersonal drama.
Like Joyce does this and then Sal strangles her, and then she forgot so Sal strangles her again with Becky. It’s a cartoonish expression of her having no boundaries and annoying the other characters with inappropriate physical affection.
Like Joyce’s magical power to teleport to Dorothy’s location even if she’s in the bathroom of another building is probably a joke, else Joyce would have used it when she was thrown into a van by Blaine.
Ah, but that van didn’t have any bathrooms.
(just being silly, ofc 😛 )
i don’t consider myself an especially meek person but if i were in that van it would have become, by definition, a bathroom
… leaving aside all the the other problems with that comment, wouldn’t robots be BETTER than humans at counting?
Yes I know I’m missing the point but I need some funny right now, dammit.
I think humans may be better at duking, but definitely not counting.
Better than humans, certainly, but how would they compare to vampires? I can’t help but recall a specific Count…
That count was an extremely slow at counting, and while he did theoretically hold the title of count, in practice he was only a puppet. In short, vampires suck at counting.
Some folklore has vampires obsessed with counting. It’s a trick used to escape them – spill some grain or seeds and they have to stop and count them all before they can chase you down.
It’s a trait shared with some other folklore monsters, Baba Yaga had to stop to count spoons, but one that’s generally been lost in modern takes. Except for the Count Von Count. I think that’s a coincidence and the Count’s take was just based on the name (inspired by Count Dracula), but I don’t know for sure.
In a very shallow attempt to maybe redirect conversation from whose the asshole. I a question about what the eff is happening with that patreon preview. I’m not patron so I have no context but looks like a guy dressed like a book wants to beat up a kid with a toy while everyone sings? Also did he paint his face brown to match the book? There’s a lot of shit going on there.
Hymmal the Humming Hymnal returns, and yeah, there’s a lot going on there
Speaking as a patron, there sure is a lot going on there.
As a patron, *goes to look at the strip and* uh. Um. Wow. “In the felt” indeed.
More horror from Willis’s childhood.
Frankly I’d take the spankings any day over having to watch that. Or worse, growing so warped as to like it.
A real pity. I was hoping this would be the conversation where Joyce talks about her deconversion and opens up to Dina and they can reconcile a bit over how annoying Joyce was in the early days!
P.S. I don’t think Joyce was being malicious here. I think her response was thoughtless but understandable given that she was woken up with a conversation she didn’t want to have.
I think it’s absolutely wild that anybody can expect Joyce to be perfectly level-headed when the general thrust of her discussion with Dina & Sarah has been “hey, hey, wake up. remember all the ways your religious parents messed you up? Here’s one more, and it’s ABUSE. You were ABUSED. It’s TRAUMA. Feel EVEN WORSE about your parents than you already do, or else you’re a bad person too.”
Not that this is what Dina or Sarah are actually saying. But that’s the framework Joyce is going to have in her head as she processes it.
I feel like this is gonna end up making Joyce and Becky’s conflict worse too, as Dina tells Becky that Joyce said something that upset her and Becky won’t know or care about the context that led her to saying it
“hey, hey, wake up. remember all the ways your religious parents messed you up? Here’s one more, and it’s ABUSE. You were ABUSED. It’s TRAUMA. Feel EVEN WORSE about your parents than you already do, or else you’re a bad person too.”
After all that the snark Joyce gave back was pretty mild
I don’t think Joyce was in the mood to talk about deconversion. Or anything really
All I care to say is that I get the feeling Joyce got beaten when she acted out, made noise and disobeyed her parents, and Dina doesn’t act out or make noise.
Dina’s quiet and agreeable, and that’s what Joyce and Becky needed to be so they didn’t get beat.
It’s true, and I think had Joyce said that (even snarkily) instead of going for the robot thing, it would have had a slightly different effect.
Are we quite sure that’s not what Joyce meant by Robot? Robots are known for following their programming, and thus not needing to be punished. It would also keep the same line of thought as her gripe against Sarah being a “perfect” child and following the rules.
(Not that it really matters since that wasn’t what was communicated.)
Part of the problem lies in the implication that a robot can do nothing except follow their programming, and that they cannot and do not have “human” responses. There’s a difference between being a “good kid” and lacking capacity, and that difference was highlighted and underlined by Joyce saying that Dina didn’t count. Not that she was a good kid. She didn’t count. Because she’s “robot girl.”
“Yeah Dina, of course you were a good kid, you’re always quiet” is leagues away from “Yeah Dina, but you don’t count. You’re like robot girl or whatever.”
Ah. Thank you. I believe I understand your umbrage at Joyce’s commentary a bit better now.
Meant to reply to this last night, but I got put in a bad way by some other threads. I really appreciate this reply. It made me feel heard and listened to in a way that I really needed last night.
I completely respect that we have different perspectives on this, and I really appreciate that you came for understanding here. Thank you.
There are all sorts of reasons for Dina to be upset at Joyce’s comment, but I do think Joyce’s intent was basically in that direction. “You don’t count when talking about parents spanking their kids because you’re so robotically perfect they wouldn’t have needed to.”
That’s not how Dina took it, and understandably so.
“Quiet and agreeable?” Are we talking about the same person? She’s constantly arguing about something or other, usually from a position of knowledge.
To her parents, the people Joyce has been taught to think are allowed to physically beat you to teach you a lesson.
Y’know, as if the takeaway from these last few strips and the explicit mention of Becky and how often it happened to her is “Joyce was beaten as a child when she acted outside her parents’ desires.”
GO. OFF. DINA.
I love when she’s had enough.
Same, it’s always great. My favorite Dina strips are the ones where she stands up to the others like “I am a normal adult with feelings and fuck you for not recognizing that”
As usual, Dina’s genius cuts through all the b/s to find the truth.
Aww they’re friends.
Eh. Yeah, Joyce needs a revelation re: being smacked with a wooden spoon is variably considered abusive. Yeah, calling Dina a robot is No Bueno (though I think we as an audience are privy to more information about Why that’s bad than Joyce is). But getting into someone’s personal space and personal traumas while they’re obviously trying to rest also earns an “eesh” from me. Gotta love a webcomic called ‘Dumbing of Age’ showing people with not-quite-fully-developed brains acting, well. Dumb.
Joyce is in pain, is woken up rudely by Dina, Dina doesn’t immediately move, Dina suggests Joyce was beaten, Sarah chimes in about trauma, the subject stays on Joyce haven been beaten and Joyce mildly snarks at Dina
Joyce should be commended for her restraint in this instance
I agree 100% but also the point she is making was factually wrong, the situation and the conversation are unfair in both directions for different reasons.
The possible avenues for snark in this scenario that do not involve calling a neurodivergent person a robot are staggering, and yet that is the one she chose.
All I’m saying is given the circumstances of how Joyce was woken up and the subject of the proceeding conversation we n maybe cut Joyce a little slack for being human and not snarking a perfect (dare i say robotic) response
You say “a perfect” like there was only one right answer. I’m pretty sure there were more right answers than wrong answers here.
Honestly I’m not in the mood to be told I need to give someone slack for this particular ableist slight. Joyce was in a bad mood and she was in pain and some snark absolutely would have been reasonable. This was not.
Thats the thing, you think it was unreasonable snark. I think, given the circumstances, it was pretty mild snark.
Having been on the receiving end of this particular slight, I can confirm I do not consider it reasonable. I also consider it beyond snark.
I don’t know your experiences or your life, so I make no assumptions about you. Instead I would like to direct your attention to the fact that several of us commenting on this thread consider it hurtful. I don’t see restraint in what Joyce said. Maybe I just have a higher opinion of her than you do that I think what that would be the restrained version of would not come from Joyce ever.
I can tell you that if Dina had woken me up, sat on me, refused to move when I said I was in pain and brought up potentially sensitive subjects immediately after being rudely awakened then my language would be a lot worse than what Joyces was
Quite possibly Dina might have even found herself lying on the ground after being knocked off the bed
You know what, I think I’ve had my fill of this exchange. I hope for their sake your friends and family only ever see your “sunshine and rainbows” self.
If you cant see the inappropriateness of waking someone up, sitting on them, not moving when they ask you to because they’re in pain and then bring up sensitive issues and don’t understand why Joyce might be a little pissed then I hope you have very understanding friends and family
Dina is mimicking what Joyce considers normal wake-up behavior, including ignoring grumbles about it. Joyce responds to this plus concern about her upbringing by calling Dina a slur.
It would have honestly been better if Joyce just hit her. That’s impersonal, it just says “I’m lashing out because I’m in pain and I’m absolutely done with this fuck off now”. I’ve been violent on my period before due to pain, it’s almost reasonable. But instead Joyce called her a slur, even if that’s not how she meant it. She said something extremely personal and hurtful. That’s so much worse
Dina is mimicking what Joyce considers normal wake-up behavior, including ignoring grumbles about it. Joyce responds to this plus concern about her upbringing by calling Dina a slur.
Joyce ignores peoples protests about pain and then starts in depth, uncomfortable discussions and then rephrases the conversation in the worst possible light?
Great now Dina’s skin is getting thin.
“Having thin skin” is a commonly-used colloquialism that’s typically used to mean a person isn’t invulnerable to irritations. Get bothered one time by anything and your skin may as well be tissue paper.
Yeah, people aren’t made of stone and insults are supposed to hurt you
yea ur right homie autistic people should totally have thicker skin when they are dehumanized, it makes them so needlessly sensitive
Dinas not exactly blameless is this situation, like i don’t know what period pains are like but I do know that if I’m rudely woken up, have someone sit on me and they won’t move when asked and then starts in on a personal conversation I wouldn’t be my usual sunshine and rainbows self either
Why, we’re so thin-skinned that think a compliment is an ableist slur just because that is how we have repeatedly experienced it.
awww oh no, heaven forbid someone get offended at being told they’re perceived as something most people view as an object devoid of feelings or personhood, oh no, oh dear, how thin-skinned.
The fun thing about the “thin-skinned” accusation is that the accuser gets to treat any form of protest as evidence of their own correctness.
It’s almost like shitty rhetorical tricks like that make you feel like you’re winning with such little effort, they’re literally addictive to the person employing them, and warp all discourse away from rationality.
That’s a fairly severe insult, so yeah, Dina’s right to be a little pissed here.
Dina must be pissed because I feel one of her characteristics is perfect grammar, and I feel she should have said, “with your being an asshole.”
Holy shit, you’re right. I wouldn’t have caught that.
I agree–it was the most “normal” sounding compound sentence I’ve heard Dina speak. My initial thought was also anger, but perhaps Becky is having an effect on Dina’s speech patterns as well. Freshman year, the speech patterns of my new friends definitely affected me.
Given the context of this noticeable change, my money’s on anger. Otherwise I’d have expected Willis to put it into a different context. I’m skeptical of potential coincidences in fiction.
So, the difference between “you being an asshole” and “your being an asshole” is definitely significant. “Your being an asshole” is the possessive- it’s saying that at the moment, Joyce is being a jerk (definitely true). “You being an asshole”, on the other hand, is assigning that quality to Joyce. It’s saying that being an asshole is who she is. Given Dina’s experiences with Joyce, I can see how she’d come to that conclusion.
Dina’s definitely pissed, but I think in this case that resulted in a deliberate choice rather than a grammatical mistake.
Damnit, I can’t tell which of you is correct.
An open hand is a worse thing to be hit with than a wooden spoon unless maybe you turn the spoon around and vigorously jab with the handle. Pretty sure that’s just physics. A wooden spoon is just too light.
Hands don’t give splinters.
Neither does an undamaged wooden spoon. If it were prone to that sort of thing it wouldn’t be a practical tool for its intended use, because we’d end up eating splinters. Derp.
Let the record show that Tenzhi has used the meme word “derp” as punctuation, likely as an easily-denied insinuation that the person toward whom it was used is of lesser intellect (typically with an inclination toward learning disabilities) and thus deserving of mockery.
Just call me the R-word next time, save us some trouble.
That’s not how the physics works out though. The same energy is going in, but into a smaller area because a wooden spoon is smaller than a hand. So the hit that DOES happen is much harder because it’s more concentrated.
(Also, it’s moving faster because the spoon functions as a lever)
Yes, I came here to make this same point. Anybody that thinks because something is light it can’t do damage as a weapon should know that knives also aren’t too fuckin’ heavy.
See also: bullets and baseballs allegedly travel about the same speed. Baseballs do not typically puncture a human’s skin, whereas bullets do.
Uh….No. An average bullet travels around 20 times faster than the fastest fastball. Whoever told you bullets and baseballs travel the same speed was 100% full of it.
Aaand that’s what I get for recalling information I was given in grade school as anything approaching factual. Luckily, I said “allegedly” and can therefore dodge all responsibility for that particular bit of un-truth.
On the other hand, I can confirm through personal experience that when hit by a softball vs a baseball of similar composition traveling at similar velocity, the baseball hurts more.
Is that why it’s called a softball?
I think the ball used to be soft for softball, although standard issue softballs definitely aren’t anymore (although they still don’t have the same composition as a baseball or they’d be a lot heavier).
It’s also a much less yielding surface so the force is transferred more efficiently.
And you can hit harder with it, since it won’t sting your hand at all. You also have more lever arm, so may be able to move the spoon faster than your hand.
Bruh what? Anything that’s solid wood is gonna hurt like hell
Oh wait you guys spank on the ass or some shit and not the hand. Yeah that’s weird.
Either way, don’t hit children, with anything
Well, this is going to be a fun one. If you’re doomscrolling through this comment section, consider this a stopping point – or maybe a break area? In any case, I recommend you take a deep breath and stretch your legs. Maybe count to five. Now keep on doing your thing.
Thank you for this, good advice and it helped.
Yeah!
And besides, who would pass up the opportunity to make their favorite seasonal comfort beverage?
Name your favorite below!!!
I don’t know about seasonal per se, but nothing is quite as comforting to me as a cookies and cream milkshake. I will absolutely drink that year ’round though.
Excellent choice! 😋 I’ve gotta get that next time I get fast food!
These days I’m home most of the time, and for tough but arguably invigorating discussions like this I always like French roast coffee with vanilla cream, cut with decaf to my liking.
Of when my tolerance is low enough, especially in time for a certain holiday, I definitely don’t turn down cannabinol-infused tea to relax!
Coffee is my favorite drug, but I drink it too much for utility to consider it a comfort drink, lol.
Just curious, how often do you drink coffee and how do you modulate your tolerance for the sake of utility, if at all?
Usually just one cup a day, although sometimes more as needed (sometimes black tea as a supplement given the milder caffeine content). I try not to rely on it too much to avoid too much tolerance. Years ago I worked at a cafe and my tolerance got to kind of scary levels, so I just backed off of it entirely for a while. Didn’t seem to have any signs of withdrawal, so I guess I’ve dodged dependency.
Turmeric golden milk with chinese five spice powder. :-9
Oh, oh, homemade milk-brewed chai. Brewed over a fire while telling stories.
Seasonal? Mulled apple cider or a summery tropical milkshake.
It’s autumn here so I like to make myself a hot chocolate every day. Helps with the cold and I think having something sweet boosts my brain power in the afternoon.
Happy to have contributed!
The Joe avatar is good for this one. Seriously, thanks.
Smug Joe strikes again!
It’s strange, because I’m reading upside down.
On a similar line of thought, the Kents had to have had some other-worldly parenting skills to raise Clark to be such a moral and kind person with no means of punishment.
No means of punishment? Take away his Xbox and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, the worst he can do is laser your face off.
Even if Clarc dont use violence as a means of Express his emotion (quite normal for 3 year old) still if you take away xbox he just simply take it back from you/fly to high shelf or find it with RTG vision.
Alright, so if he does that, there’s a simple answer. Ma and Pa wait til young Clarkus is at school, retake the Xbox, and bake it into the little hellion’s dinner. Being invincible, he won’t be harmed by the noxious plastic and circuits, but with clever seasoning and an appropriately distraction dinner conversation, he won’t notice that he’s eaten his Xbox until about his third portion.
Neither of those things were existent in Depression-era Kansas. I’m being serious here, how do you punish someone who can’t feel pain, or get physically hurt by anything you can do? And hasn’t had enough time to learn English yet? Seriously Clark is effectively a non-verbal ASD child with a pain tolerance that is literally other-worldly. how did George and Martha deal with him?
Depends on the canon, in some versions he didn’t develop his abilities until puberty.
But also in the absence of punishment you use reinforcement of good behaviors.
There is also LOVE language and american way of life
What am I, a scholar of mythology? If you can’t take away a young boy’s Xbox I’m out of ideas. I guess they could put him in the corner or something? Did they have corners in the Depression?
They were also farmers, so once he got old enough to do farm tasks there’s always the option of extra chores with tedious limitations (which also then gets into the question of how super speed affects perception of time, which is a fascinating question to me but might be as boring as watching paint dry to other folks).
Make me doing farm work when I rather listen Linkin Park. Topic of discusion was how raise superbobo who dont understand argument and negotiation yet
Given that this was a direct reply and I specifically cited “once he got old enough to do farm tasks” I think the rebuke about the topic of discussion is a little overly harsh. It’s not like we’re in a strict forum here, chill out a little.
Also, as I mentioned up-thread, in the absence of punishment there is reinforcement of good behaviors.
Additionally, communication does not necessarily require full language fluency in both directions. Babies understand tone before they understand language, and understand incoming language long before they have the fine motor control to express language. It has always been strongly implied by the Superman mythos that his infant development moved along similar lines as a human’s, which means all of this would be consistent.
I was curious your opinion about superbobo and lack of option to negotiate. Still if you cant physically stop Child from anything it can be disaster (hurt pet or destroyed things my first thought) and every child have tantrums even if they understand tone it does not care it want metaphor xbox
You’re focusing too much on the necessity of punishment and completely ignoring what I’ve now said twice about reinforcement of good behavior.
Sure there would probably be some rough spots, possibly some broken objects, but the ability to communicate happens a lot earlier than you’re giving credit for (it’s not like an adult having to take the time to learn a foreign language from scratch). Based on the little ones I’ve known, I’m guessing that most destruction would have been purely accidental, and if handled with care would be preventable from happening too often. And Jonathan and Martha Kent have consistently been shown to be patient, kind, and empathetic. So that’s basically how they did it.
Well, currently Clark wasn’t raised in Depression-Era Kansas. Even a worse case of comic time than this comic. Clark’s perpetually mid-thirties, so he was currently raised in the late 80s and 90s.
At some point they decided he only developed powers after long exposure to Earth’s sun, so into his early teens before this really became a problem. Not sure if they stuck with that or not.
It’s the only way it really makes any sense – not that you should look to superhero comics for sense. Even leaving punishment aside, small kids and babies lack self-control. A super-baby or toddler lashing out in a tantrum could easily kill a parent. Or even just grabbing or hugging would crush.
And that’s not to mention the heat vision.
If he was a wee bab in the 80s and 90s, we can swap the Xbox for the CD-i, NES, Genesis, or even the PlayStation, depending how far we wanna go.
I think the bigger question is how they kept him in one place. In my experience once they’re able to move around on their own, toddlers will wander anywhere. Add super-speed, super-strength, and flight to that. What do you do when baby Clark just fucks off three counties over because … man, I have no idea why babies decide to go the places they do sometimes. Because he wanted to chase the sun, maybe.
At superspeed.
Autistic person here. Some commenters seem confused as to why Dina could be so offended. Maybe people are too focused on the “robot” part. To me, the most offensive part is the “you don’t count”, by far. That’s literally discrimination.
Neurodivergent people frequently grow up hearing stuff like that every day. The standard of treatment for autistic kids today includes a lot of stuff that most people would consider torture if they knew about it. Child abuse is a lot more common for autistics. Many of us grow up believing that our feelings don’t matter, or that they should be deleted.
The fact that something like “You don’t count” doesn’t immediately register for everyone as something awful to say to someone, specially to a character coded as autistic, may be evidence of implicit bias in society. Ostracizing a disabled person seems clearly a very offensive thing to me.
HOOOOOOOOOLY POOP
Oh my god
She’s fucking PISSED
This is a classic case of “Don’t even speak to me before I’ve had my coffee”.
I can of course only speak for myself, but I wouldn’t be much good in a serious discussion about spanking/child abuse minutes after I’m woken up by someone jumping on me in my bed.
That said, calling Dina a robot girl is indeed an asshole thing to do, and was most likely intended to hurt, since Dina has been pretty open with her problems with social norms and such.
If I was to guess, I’d say Joyce said that hurtful thing because she herself was hurting over this conversation.
I expect next strip to Walky walk in and said “Joyce why are you asshole? Does fact that parents beat you up had factor in it? And then Becky whole on white ride in and said no, she is asshole because they beat her too weak.”
“Becky whole on white” … wut?
damn, if Dina called me an asshole I would need a personality reset.
I’m going to lie this might one of my favorite moments with Dina. That was just delivered so well
This comments section is such a mess. It’s a giant game of “find the bad guy.” “Who can we condemn today.”
Acknowledging that fact makes YOU the Bad Guy. That’s the law.
Yup.
Can…can you not understand why some of us are upset?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not arguing that Dina acted perfectly in the lead up to this strip, or that Sarah handled this particularly well, but what Joyce said was hurtful and dismissive and I would have been incredibly upset to have been on the receiving end of Joyce’s comment.
I don’t know you or your intent, but this reads as very dismissive when several people who have been commenting about issues related to this have been open and vulnerable.
“Finding the bad guy” and being/sharing your upsetness are NOT the same thing.
One person’s feelings ≠ some essential characteristic/judgment of another person. These are two totally different things. Saying “someone is an asshole” is not an expression of feelings. Well, it is, but it’s disguised as a judgment.
I have a lot of empathy for people’s pain and suffering. I don’t have any empathy right now for the incessant compulsion to categorize every person and action as right, wrong, asshole or not. And maybe some people are expressing vulnerably, but it’s drowned out when all I see as I scroll through is “asshole asshole asshole” as Delicious Taffy wrote above.
You can’t prove that was me.
I feel this so hard tbh.
It makes me think about what Sarah Z said in her recent video about West Elm Caleb, about how a lot of peoples’ politics revolves around this idea that while hurting certain people is understood to be wrong, by their existence we must infer that there’s a right person to hurt, and that by harming that kind of person, we are making the world a better place. And I think that’s a big part of how people treat Joyce moment-to-moment in this strip, because while she’s been repeatedly victimized, traumatized, condescended to and blamed outright for the things that happened to her, none of that seems to matter because she says ignorant shit sometimes.
Obviously intent isn’t magic, but Joyce is also still learning and growing out of a lifetime of ignorance, but the commentariat has repeatedly proven that they do not care about characterization and character growth: to some of the people here, Joyce will always and forever be The Thing She Was Before, and that makes her perpetually The Villain, and therefore any empathy for her expressed by anyone is viewed as suspect at best, being an enabler for abuse at worst.
As someone who went through a lot of the same things Joyce did, including using language I didn’t realize was harmful because I grew up in a boomer household that was perpetually trapped in 1972 and was just parroting what my parents said, reading these comments fucking sucks. I often like to joke that if I’d met my past self I’d kick their ass, but that’s not what 18 year old me needed, is it?
I feel like most are pretty clear that Joyce is the bigger asshole here
Just willing to point out why she might be an asshole in this strip (suddenly woken up still in pain being ambushed with a conversation she didn’t expect or want)
Every goddamn week it’s a new round of two minutes hate. Months, years of characterization go out the window so everyone can condemn their pet unfavorite (usually Joyce) and pat themselves on the back for their stunning insight into the human condition based on their reactions to comic characters.
Is what Joyce said hurtful? Yeah. But what would YOU do if someone decided to invade your personal space, sit on your painful body, and ask you probing personal questions, and then refuse to leave when asked?
People really don’t have any empathy for folks who don’t suffer in a convenient way.
Dina is mimicking what Joyce considers normal wake-up behavior, including ignoring grumbles about it. Joyce responds to this plus concern about her upbringing by calling Dina a slur.
And that absolves Dina (and Sarah) of everything that happened here. Gotcha.
Spencer said this several months ago during the last time Joyce got labeled villain of the week, and it’s worth repeating here:
I don’t know what turned fiction, particularly serialized, ongoing fiction, into a race to find the one true meaning of the story, and the true meaning is finding whoever is morally correct in the immediate moment and that person is the one who isn’t yelling.
Look, maybe if Joyce didn’t wake up and immediately grab the Dremel and start carving ancient symbols into Dina’s bones, none of us would even be arguing today.
Yeah.
Maybe I’d be more sympathetic to Joyce if she didn’t sacrifice her friends in the Eclipse to become one of the Godhand.
Literary criticism is when you assign blame to fictional characters, and the more blame you assign the more criticismer it is
Reads strip.
Whistles.
Reads comments.
Refreshes.
30 new comments have appeared.
I think I’ll let you all have fun and not bother today. Be nice to your fellow internet strangers, after all, how much do you really know about them?
Thank you.
Seconded
Yeah, I knew the comments were going to get spicy when there were already 256 of them at 2:30 AM.
Then the comic finished loading and that clinched it.
256? Like the computer number?
Joyce 🙁
What some seem to have missed, and that I find to be worth noting, is that it is not the morning.
Sarah mentioned that she has only been gone for 6 hours; it’s mid- to late-afternoon.
Plus, and this is just me perhaps, but if she doesn’t want to be woken up that way, perhaps she shouldn’t wake up others that way.
When was the last time she did so?
I appreciate the pun in the last panel.
Uh-huh, uh-huh, totally fine and normal. But let’s say, hypothetically, if you were getting hurt by the people who’re supposed to love and protect you, while you’re too small to stop them, in precise, deliberate ways that were also used on your siblings, your friend, everyone you grew up with to make you screwed up in the same way, maybe subtly changing your most basic instincts so they don’t understand how love and trust and submitting to authority and stuff is supposed to work, or some even deeper, pre-verbal functions we don’t even have words for, and you don’t have any other frame of reference to tell you how a family should work, hypothetically, how would you know if you’re fine or not?
I feel like “fine” is kind of like “normal” (or perhaps “typical” would be better here, but I’m leaving the former in because common usage) when one is defining their own experiences. It’s very difficult to accurately self-report.
I agree with Joyce, its not like parents could spank an autistic kid. So Dina really has no idea what being a normal kid with normal punishment is like.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Parents couldn’t spank an autistic kid? Are you fucking high? I assure you plenty of us have gotten not only spankings but FAR FAR WORSE from our parents. Read a book, dweeb.
[here’s_that_attention_you_ordered.jpg]
I…please tell me you’re joking?
[that image of the Mario plant with the caption “say sike right now”]
Okay, I have to know more. Please elaborate. Why could parents not spank an autistic kid?
Mine could, and proved so several times. I honestly have no idea where you got that idea from, (assuming of course you aren’t trolling,) but you are mistaken.
What humans refer to as “””autism””” is actually a broad collection of conditions and even personalities that are all haphazardly lumped together into a single generic category.
In fact I would go as far as to say that a human being “autistic” is not enough to extrapolate ANYTHING about them.
But oh well. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, given how little I know about you.
Sure they could! For that exact reason, no less.
Oh hai PTSD trigger.
We both know where this is going, isn’t it?
Whoops, sorry!
Don’t worry. If not you, someone would have said it eventually, given the very nature of this discussion, and even this comic as a whole.
Besides, you’re only human, after all. There’s only so much that the product of 4.5 billion years worth of happy accidents can do right.
I wasn’t aware one of the effects of autism was to give you an anti-spanking field.
TheMoreYouKnow.gif
Is it the same phenomenon that gives restroom signs a gender-repelling field and that’s why we can’t allow transfolk to use the correct restroom otherwise dudes will just pretend they’re transwomen and get to go inside women’s restrooms?
everybody sorry but im 99% sure they were being sarcastic in agreeing with joyce on that
Tone always comes across perfectly over text.
And no, if i was Dina I wouldn’t have any use for an apology. Rather, if I’m ever going to give Joyce the time of the day, I’d like some assurance that she thinks I’m a real person.
How about when someone states they’re in pain and they want you to move then maybe you move or don’t ask deeply questions of someone when they’ve just woken up
Maybe Joyce spoke in anger, pain, frustration or annoyance…
Not an excuse to be a bongo
No it isn’t but neither Dina nor Joyce come off well in this
See, I’m not talking about morality. Scoring points for the characters’ positive and negative behavior is not a thing I’m doing here. I’m not bothered because Joyce said a bad thing, I’m suspicious of what thoughts and feelings would inspire her to say that. If someone thinks you’re not a real person, the problem isn’t when they act to dehumanize you, the problem is that talking to them is a waste of your time.
Hence, no use for apologies, like I said.
Ok yeah thats a fair point, would you accept the possibility that Joyce wasn’t really thinking about what she was saying and was only reacting to the situation shes in?
I’d think it was possible, yes. And I’d probably allow Joyce the chance to prove it, like I said. I do tend to give people a lot of chances.
I figured it came from a place of Joyce understanding Dina’s parents as not hitting her coming from what she knows about Dina, and how Joyce views authority because of her upbringing.
She knows Dina says she does things logically, and refuses things that can’t be argued logically.
Joyce instinctively defends authority because of her upbringing.
Authority overall, is logical to Joyce.
In her mind, It would make sense that Dina never misbehaved, because to Joyce, it would be illogical.
It’s even in the way she asks Sarah, asking if *she’s* so perfect, as opposed to spanking being wrong, or the action being fallible.
I don’t think it comes from not seeing her as human. I came to the conclusion that she said she doesn’t count, not because she’s not human, but because it felt like she can’t contribute because she never misbehaved. So Dina is an exception to the rule. Not even necessarily as a compliment, I fully think she meant this in annoyance, even anger at this point after re-reading the last few strips.
Like when someone with no experience comments on something career wise, when they are in a totally different field. Meant to shut down the conversation and disqualify her opinion, not dehumanize.
But we’ve seen time and time again Joyce is fallible, and the comic goes out of its way to make her learning lessons as hard/fraught as possible most of the time.
Joyce is being an ass here but it’s understandable WHY she’s acting this way.
Dina is not her friend and not someone she particularly likes or cares for outside of Becky being happy. They’ve had multiple negative interactions. So someone you don’t particularly like, waking you up and climbing on you and not getting off when asked after you tell them you are in pain, and then having them take the info you gave them and insist on convincing you of trauma you are not ready to confront…
Yeah. I can see why Joyce is pissed off enough here to intentionally shut her down in a mean way.
You’ve certainly put that in a much better way than I could have.
Maybe anger, pain, frustration, and annoyance still don’t justify dehumanization.
Yeah, that’s why I wouldn’t trust an apology. I’d assume if she’s sorry for what she said once she’s in a better mood it’s because too much truth slipped out just now.
There are better ways you can tell someone they’re being a pain than “you’re not a human person”. You could say, for example, “you’re being a pain.” Or maybe I’m just a robot because I expect people to mean the things they say.
Tbh I woulda been fine if Joyce had straight up said “Dina, get the fuck off my bed and go away, damn”.
Same.
Yeah basically. Hell I’d be fine if Joyce smacked her bc hey, that’s just bad period shit. Sometimes your friend is being annoying as hell when you’re in too much pain to process it. “You don’t count you’re a robot girl” is insanely personal
Dina is mimicking what Joyce considers normal wake-up behavior, including ignoring grumbles about it. Joyce responds to this plus concern about her upbringing by calling Dina a slur.
Getting some “It’s his phone” vibes here.
I know a lot of people are talking about this strip but I just glanced at the preview patron strip image.
Oh my god.
(But seriously while I did have some Christian media growing up I don’t remember spankings being a part of it).
I get that Joyce is in Defensive Mode right now, in addition to being sick, and lashing out, but that was definitely a low blow, and I am glad that Dina didn’t take it lying down.
People dissing Dina for climbing on Joyce like Joyce hasn’t done that to like half the form already herself
I diss her for not moving when Joyce says shes in pain and asks Dina to move
What makes you think she didn’t move?
“Understood, but first a question”
Indicates that she decided to ask her question before getting off Joyce
In fact going back over the last few comics it appears she didn’t fully get off of Joyce until after Sarah showed up
Joyce’s eyes are scrunched up in pain in the first panel, but relaxed in the 3rd and 5th. It is possible to kneel astride someone but keep your weight off of their body, which would satisfy Joyce’s request to get off of her. Dana would still be on top of her, but her weight would be off of Joyce and not causing her pain. I don’t think Dana is the type to ignore the pain she is causing another, no matter how focused she might be on something else.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/03-trial-and-sarah/explain/
Hej, folks,
I just got the creepiest pop up ad on this site. Legit terrorizing. Might not come back for a while. Or at all. Feeling kinda scared.
Thank you for understanding. Please try to be gentle with each other. Nobody is invulnerable.
Wishing wellness and hope to all.
Can’t say I blame ya. Those ads are getting fuckin’ scary. Gross, too.
Google ads are a hell. Recently, they got and update, that tracks all your cookies, even from other sites, to generate content in a site.
The sad part is it is almost uncontrollable. They will pop in a way or another.
@Laura, have you tried Adblock?
Wait, what ads have you been getting? I’ve been ads for kfc, shoes/clothes, insurance and other webcomics.
If it’s anything like mine, there’s some nasty shit in there. I got jumpscared by an autoplaying “plastic surgery addiction” click bait thing, the other day.
Dang, hopefully they stop showing them asap.
That’s sad, Laura. Take your time. Don’t forget to return
Hey Laura, seconding Amos’s suggestion! I use an adblock, it changes everything. I disable it on some pages but if the ads truly are invasive or upsetting, protecting your mind and browsing experience should come first.
AdBlock isn’t an option on phones.
i’m using firefox on Android, i use the uBlock add-on, it works great!
Basically, Joyce is envious of how Dana’s parents treated her when growing up. She tries to excuse her own parents by making the excuse that she (Joyce) was a disobedient human child and therefore deserved it, whereas Dana’s lack of emotions (that is what being a robot means, right?) kept her out of trouble. Joyce is trying to push away the idea that her own parents were flawed in that particular behavior.
I never considered that aspect of jealousy towards Dina… others yeah but. That’s also a good point.
I don’t think so. We may get there, but I don’t think Joyce has yet even conceived the idea that it’s possible. That excuse is too entrenched. She was good and still got spanked. Sarah was good and still got spanked, but not as much, so she must have been better. If Dina didn’t get spanked, it must be because she was inhumanly, robotically perfect.
I meant moreso subconsciously for Joyce, because I already think Joyce is probably jealous of other aspects of Dina, even if she’s not aware of it on a conscious level. (being ‘perfect’ and not being spanked, but also Dina believed what Joyce now believes before Joyce, and I’m sure that’s fraught with it’s own complications.)
So, this entire scene over the last few strips:
These girls have been verbally reenacting that scene with Sideshow Bob and the rakes. Corporal punishment is still normalized and considered acceptable in the US, though there is a lot of variance on degree, methodology, circumstances, et al. Some of these variances are legal and depend on local jurisdiction, largely these are about the line between acceptable punishment and abuse in the eyes of the law. Some of them are demographic, with differing opinions on lines of socioeconomic class history and cultural legacy within a family among myriad others. Literally everything about this topic is touchy for so damned many reasons it’s hard to wrap one’s head around let alone articulate well.
Fundamentally, however, Joyce and Dina are simply unable to understand the viewpoint the other has internalized through their individual lived experiences and thereby have each unintentionally antagonized the other because of it. Sarah coming in and providing her own distinct third viewpoint merely provided an additional fault line and further raised tensions.
And no, I’m not defending the use of corporal punishment on children, just accepting it’s the current status quo which can’t be easily changed at the current time and acknowledging that understanding it’s effects on viewpoints is important until it can be changed by fully culling the practice as we long ago did in criminal punishments.
I mean, it can be changed at the current time. It can be changed be denormalizing and condemning it. That’s how change happens.
Denormalizing and condemning the practice will take quite some time, on the order of decades, to have a meaningful impact on those who still find it ok. In fact, that is part of the current status quo where such denormalization and condemnation has been part of the discourse on the practice for several generations leading us from the early ’60s, when it was still a fairly prevalent go to form of childhood punishment, to today, where it mainly seems to be common only in limited demographics, rarefied to a last resort among the majority, and avoided at all costs among the remainder. It’s not easy change and it’s not current, as ongoing time and effort is required for quite some time to come to change the majority opinion to “should never be done” at which point laws can then be readily changed to force the remaining minority usage to cease. At the current rate of change on this topic I’d guess it’s still unfortunately normalized as mainly a last resort punishment for several generations to come, which enables and shields those that use it more frequently within their legal bounds.
This would have gone better if Dina listed the worst thing she’s ever done – and the worst punishment she ever received.
Just saying she wasn’t does read, to Joyce, as saying “oh I just never misbehaved you should try it”
Considering that Joyce is currently rejecting the majority of her mothers’ teachings, anything that sounds like “just obey your parents” is *going* to be a rage point.
I definitely didn’t think of it from that angle, and I think you make a pretty good point. It’s interesting that even as she starts to really reject her Carol’s views that Joyce is still willing to accept being hit with a wooden spoon was a normal, acceptable thing to do to punish a child. I guess, upon further quick research, that using ‘the rod’ to punish children is very, very common in fundamentalist households though, which is just so incredibly awful.
Yes I think it would have been easier to swallow if Dina mentioned alternative punishments like grounding or whatever. Joyce is coming at this from the angle of “this is the only way to make kids behave”.
Yup. That’s what Joyce is hearing. The only possible reason Dina wasn’t hit was that Dina never did anything wrong, because that’s the first line of punishment.
oh hey I said a thing how did you hear an entirely different sentence
I just want to say this to some of the commenters: When members of a minority tell you that a term is often applied to them as a bigoted, dehumanizing slur, do not correct them by insisting that it is a compliment.
It is not a good look.
*quickly scrolls through comments* Do you perhaps mean me? I believe my experiences are valid as anyone else’s. Moreover, I don’t believe my experience and opinions supplant anyone else’s. Would it help if I mentioned I was Autistic too? I’d rather not have to type extra words each time so my experience can be treated as equal, if you don’t mind. (I apologize if you don’t mean me.)
Not you, there have been a number comments among the hundreds already posted. Several of them making sure to tell the Autistic commenters how thin-skinned and over-sensituve we are being.
The above comment perhaps is angrier in tone than is called for, and for that I am sorry. I do maintain, however that minority groups are not hive-minds, and not everyone agrees on the best way to handle things. Devin and others has made it clear they do not want to be referred to robotic. I, however, still consider term complimentary for myself on the whole, and I ask that you respect that, please.
Ah, my deepest apologies.
The point isn’t “this will universally insult all neurodivergent people.”
The point is “this insulted the neurodivergent person it was directed at, and she’s allowed to react accordingly” with a dose of “stop telling me to take an insult as a compliment just because it doesn’t bother you”.
Essentially – Dina is not an asshole for reacting to a problematic term with anger and hurt. Regardless of what any other person would feel in her shoes.
You aren’t required to react the same, but you shouldn’t correct people’s feelings about a slur by insisting that it’s a compliment. As the original person you replied to started off by saying.
Yes. I do understand that part of socialization at least. I misunderstood the intent of the post, because I somehow missed the comments that more fit the original post. I had left several comments going slightly against the grain, by mentioning I didn’t have the same experience or dislike of the word robot, and so I thought I was the one meant. So I responded. Poorly, and regrettably. Twice, since I corrected myself and made things worse. Both of which I still regret. I’m going to mark this as a failed social interaction and try to live with the consequences. Namely lots of regret, and a resolution to never post things several hours past my normal sleep schedule. I’m sorry, and I hope you have a good day/night.
It isn’t helped by the existence of a minority who want to be robots, for whatever reason and whatever that means. (I.e., people like Carla.) It makes stuff more complicated than it seems.
Is that a condemnation?
Joyce may have left this comments section in complete shambles but man that was a phenomenal dunk, Ms. Dina
Dang, everyone sucks in the comic today, lol teenagers am I right guys? All hormones, emotions and new ideals, alllll without tact and experience to temper any of that.
Boy I do NOT miss that
Sarah: “Wait, what’d I do, I just got here?”
Instantly joined in the ” Bug Joyce about her upbringing ” train after like 2 days of being on her ass.
Sarah’s also not a teenager. (Neither is Ruth, for that matter. Sarah’s 20, Ruth’s 21.)
Eh, dumb young adults either way, brains not fully done till you are 25, and one can argue Sarah will never be good friends with tact
Well, that’s a upsetting comic.
Thought I would write something about it, but I don’t actually want to talk about that right now I think.
Abuse and dehumanization sucks.
I hope y’all are alright.
Take care.
Me neither. I just want SO DESPERATELY to forget the human world exists right now, for Marx knows how long.
And maybe make a game.
*plays “Please Let There Be Good Whether Tommorrow” from the Pokemon Celebi Movie*
Man, I think a whole lot of people here are missing the point. It’s not whether spanking is or is not inherently abusive. The point is that Joyce does not currently consider that part of her upbringing abusive and Dina does not nearly have the kind of relationship with Joyce where it’s appropriate for her to convince Joyce that it was.
I can tell you, my parents are not perfect. But unless we’re really close or have a lot of history or probably both, you don’t get to tell me what parts my parents fell down on, even if I would ultimately agree with you.
…that… doesn’t actually make sense, does it.
Why not?
Parents, like all humans, are complicated people with flaws. Dina doesn’t have a relationship with Joyce’s parents. She lacks a lot of context here.
Dina is stating that Joyce was abused as a child on criteria that Joyce doesn’t agree with. Joyce has a right to feel insulted here. Feeling insulted doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole back, but that doesn’t make Joyce’s feelings here invalid.
But surely I could share annecdotes about my own upbringing? Especially if you took the position that your parents had no alternative? All Dina has done in this strip is share her own experience for contrast.
I mean, not really? She didn’t provide any alternatives here. She just said she didn’t get spanked. Which could honestly come across any number of ways to Joyce who seems to correlate Spankings = Bad behavior, even when Sarah mentions it.
To be fair~~~Joyce did just wake up. No one is at their best after waking up. Doesn’t mean she shouldn’t apologize
She could apologize with a large crate full of bees.
Man with the cost of bees right now that would be generous of her
Wow, the spanking/asshole wars are making me miss the religious/asshole wars.
*passes a marshmellow* Yeah, but the rage s’mores are delicious!
Wooo Robot Girl talks human language for the first time!!!
Lol wut
Could you elaborate slightly?
Eh I’ll let it pass.
They’re only a…. what’s the word I’m looking for?
Oh yeah right. HUMAN.
Avatar checks out
You know what, good for Dina. I’m glad she didn’t take that comment from Joyce quietly, because no matter how bad she feels that was horribly unkind of Joyce. Does she seriously just view Dina as, like, incapable of the full range of human experience, or was she just trying to be mean?
Little of both, probably.
Yes. She’s an extrovert with a sheltered life, so she has serious trouble imagining introverts.
It is a common view held about Autistic people, hence the intense reactions from some readers.
Remember when Becky started flirting with Dina and everyone at the party was like “eww, Dina is like a child”? Wasn’t Joyce one of those people?
Alongside Dorothy (who was drunk) and Sarah, though Joyce is the one who initiated it.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/safe-2/
Joyce tried to apologize the next strip, Dorothy went huzzah, and Sarah then said that Joyce made things worse because now Dina was cranky.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/hypotheses/
I got a swat or two on the butt as a kid for compounding misbehavior with LYING about it, and it’s probably a big part of my near-pathological relationship with truth and accuracy, and, given the frequency and ease with which humans lie, a big part of my general misanthropy.
HOORAY! Another reason for Dina to not like her girlfriend BFF! Can’t wait to see this explode a day. Becky could be forced to choice between the two of them.
Buuuuuuurn.
Some people still could blame Dina, because Joyce is sick. Yes, it’s a point.
But, I remember a lesson from someone, that say people tend to say the truth in pain or drunk. I don’t buy any excuse for Joyce today.
I’m putting her into a DoA villain tier…
Still don’t wanna talk about spanking. Hard stuff.
“When are we gonna have them reclassified as villians?”
— Barnacle Boy
Yeah Joyce is an asshole here but Dina did literally say she was “recalibrating” a few minutes ago. The wrongness of treating autistic people like robots is muddled a bit when your dialogue for them makes them sound like robots.
Fair point! And while I don’t want to sound like I’m excusing Joyce, this is probably one of those situations where Joyce didn’t actually mean it as an insult. As a kid, I LOVED video games and technology and I would have been HONORED to have been called a robot. Joyce likely didn’t put enough thought into it to realize that for somebody like Dina, a remark like that could very easily have been interpreted as a jab against her neurodivergence.
No, it’s most definitely not.
No. No, fuck off with this.
Aight I know I’m playing backseat mod here but this poster here isn’t speaking from some point of ignorance and in the last few strips has had commentary of their own wrt Dina.
I understand that this is important to you (because it was important enough to me that I wasted hours trying to sort it out and say the right thing without being an angry douchebag, and then did anyway), but you can’t go off on other posters on the assumption that they’re speaking from a place of hateful ignorance, let alone on topics that are of such literal importance they start in our noggins.
Yeah, that wasn’t the greatest choice of dialogue either.
From now on, Dina should lie about what she’s doing so that she’s not perceived as a robot! Just like how I choose a carefully gender-neutral, white-sounding name on places like this.
Alt text of today is Willis coming to house after left the house with the dogs alone. Hungry. And bored.
“Wow, the comments on the last couple strips have been really intense. I wonder what will happen if Joyce uses a slur in today’s comic directed at one of the most universally popular characters…”
I think all we need now is, say, Sarah belittling Joyce’s recent conversion to athiesm, or Dorothy to show up and say something like “Hello”, and the comments section will go start glowing radioactive!
If Dorothy says “Hello” I will flip my fucking lid.
Testing…
Ok, that worked. And so did my earlier comment.
Willis, I made a reply to Jabberwocky above and it didn’t post, and I have no idea why.
Gotta be careful when you say stuff like that. You might be perceived as robotic.
Ex-ter-mi-na-te!
Surely Daleks don’t count as robots. They’re a mech suit for a squid!
For folks who are thinking that if they were Joyce they’d probably have said something ‘worse’ to Dina than calling her a robot girl: Some of the ‘worse’ things you’re thinking of are actually probably *better* than calling a neurodivergent person a robot. Cursing Dina out, for example, would almost certainly be less bad!
Oh…”Robot girl” was such a big insult?
I wouldn’t have thought it.
But, I guess Dina felt like it was.
You can’t see why being called an emotionless inhuman object is extremely hurtful?
Context matters.
I’m sure there are ways you can call someone a robot without it being too big of a deal. (For example, jokingly calling someone a robot for doing a lot of work).
In this case, however, Joyce is using robot to effectively mean ‘You’re not even a person’, which is pretty dang high on the list of Awful Things To Say To Someone.
Except I don’t think she is. Though Dina might well have read it that way.
More like, you don’t count when talking about spanking because you behave perfectly logically like a robot would so your parents never needed to spank you.
Which is messed up in all sorts of different ways, but I don’t think Joyce meant it either as “You’re not even a person” or even as “emotionless”.
That’s still an insult.
Also like…this would never be a nice or okay thing to say to someone, but right now, to Dina? After she was just very vulnerable and emotional with her lover? When she’s concerned for that same lover’s well-being? Ouch. That’s probably going to pack an extra wallop. Here Dina is, very much an emotional person, deeply connected to Becky, investing in figuring out more about the woman she’s just expressed a desire to have as a long-term partner, and Joyce is just like, “You don’t have feelings” or similar? Yeah, I can’t imagine that not feeling EVEN WROSE right now than it ever would.
Welp. After an attempt to bridge the gap with Becky, Joyce just went ahead and extended her assholery to Dina instead. I get that she’s in pain (both physically and emotionally), but that’s no excuse for how she keeps treating people.
*sighs*
There are consequential traces back to the idea that obedience is a virtue in children. But it’s just very convenient for parents.
My first child was very obedient, and we thought we were parenting geniuses and that he was doing great. Wrong, and wrong.
Also I’m a little shocked by comments that it’s somehow OK to call an autistic person a robot
Right? The amount of “oh well Joyce meant it as a compliment so it’s not that bad” are frankly horrifying
And Joyce not knowing she’s autistic doesn’t really have excuse it either—it still reads as “you’re the weird girl who doesn’t show emotion like a ‘normal’ person.” Not a compliment any way you look at it, IMO.
Yeah.
I don’t remember if somebody brought this subject to Joyce in entire DoA or not…
yeah i don’t get it. joyce can mean it as a compliment AND it can very much be That Bad, those two concepts can coexist. i will never understand people who are like “Well it was a compliment, so you HAVE to take it that way!” when…… no. no, i don’t have to. thanks for not deliberately insulting me, but your compliment was in fact extremely offensive, i am offended, and you can deal with that.
But at least some of the comments are only analyzing what Joyce might have meant by it and are still being taken as including the “so it’s not that bad” aspect.
I’m interested in exploring what the characters are thinking, so while it’s certainly reasonable for Dina to be upset by it, it’s also reasonable for Joyce to say it without meaning (much) harm. They’re definitely talking past each other here. Without that, I don’t think either would have said what they did.
Right? When I was growing up my mom often got compliments about how “well behaved” my sibs and I were but the “good behavior” was really only achieved out of fear of upsetting my parents; it also became this self-fulfilling prophecy situation where I just buried or hid any problems I was having so as not to disturb that “well behaved kid” image.
I think the side effects I got from that were 1) a fairly strained relationship with my mum until I was able to move out and distance myself from her a bit and 2) difficulty differentiating “bad” behavior from “normal kid” behavior—particularly since I’m mom of an autistic kid now who might not always be able to put on the “well behaved kid” mask as I was.
I heard somebody call out “well-behaved children” as a red flag. Children need time to work through strong emotions.
I’m going to go ahead and disagree that “well behaved children” is a red flag by itself when you use the traditional definition*. It presents a Catch-22 for someone who’s observing the situation, where acting out is a red flag for abuse, and not acting out is a red flag for abuse.
If instead we use it to mean “a child who is terrified of normal play and activities and instead chooses to sit quietly”, then yeah, definitely, but that’s not what most people will think of when they think of a “well-behaved kid”. It certainly isn’t how I define it with the students I work with.
*I’m using it to mean “a child who does not unduly disrupt their environment without provocation”
I’ve also seen some children who will be well-behaved in public, then melt down back home with their parents. Precisely because they know that’s where it’s safe to do so.
But yeah, a lot of it is definition of “Well behaved”.
Sarah looks really cute in the last panel.
I wonder if Joyce’s parents would both spank her, or if they went the route where the father more often plays the role of disciplinarian, like in Becky’s family. If the latter, then this hurts even more since Joyce would feel like she’s defending her father, the only halfway decent parent she has.
Also, oof for Dina being rude and not getting off a pained Joyce earlier. Double oof for Joyce calling her a robot, regardless of whether she realized how hurtful that is or considered the implications. We’re earning that “Dumbing” label today, kids.
I don’t think my parents ever spanked me as a kid, and I turned out okay.
And I’m glad Dina responded to that, because as an autistic person, calling us robots is not cool.
I have to admit I actualy felt way worse from all the ‘humane’ forms of punishment. Like, yeah, punish your kid or whatever, but standing in a corner for nearly an hour as a kid with ADHD symptoms was literaly hell.
🥺🙏
Yeah, the corner-standing was one of the worse nonviolent punishments I got. It’s so goddamn BORING and the only suitable corner we had at the time was in the main hallway so I could hear the TV but couldn’t look at it. I only ever got 15-20 minutes of it, maximum, but it may as well have been all day.
I’m going to deconstruct some of the perspectives here.
First of all, about everyone trying to justify Joyce making a hurtful comment, one that’s probably haunted Dina her whole life, by saying Dina deserved it for sitting on her. Nope. That’s a strawman argument. It’s clearly moved beyond that point, Dina isn’t on Joyce anymore, Joyce also clearly moved on, that isn’t relevant in this part of the conversation.
Second, you’re correct, Joyce isn’t being malicious! In fact she’s casually dehumanizing, which for a lot of neurodiverse folks is actually more hurtful! Rather than being an intentional effort to hurt Dina’s feelings or lashing out in anger, this is indeed an offhand comment that you KNOW Joyce would have made in another circumstance as well. She threw it out there thoughtlessly, and that hurt Dina a lot because it’s revealing that someone Dina considered a friend doesn’t see her as a human being with as many feelings as another person. I PROMISE you Dina has heard that word over and over again since she was a child from her peers, teachers, parent’s friends, etc.
Me, I got “witch” from bullies, starting in sixth grade, as they threw mud at me. I guess because I was a loner weird kid that would read a lot by myself and also a girl, that was their go-to. When it happened in early college and someone in my group called me a witch, it still hurt. These days it doesn’t hurt at all, and I’ve claimed that word proudly – I’d grin if somebody called me that, but I had some past hurts to overcome first.
A couple of you are trying to say “but she didn’t mean it like that, she means Dina was super well-behaved and didn’t do anything to merit punishment like other kids”, that’s got some layers of unfortunate. First, the unspoken assumption that kids who get spanked did something to deserve it. Second, the assumption that neurodiverse kids aren’t absolutely the most likely targets of physical punishment. Also, a SUPER UNREAL TAKE considering what we know about Dina! We’ve literally seen her jump on people like a dinosaur, we know she’s capable of getting rowdy. You can’t imagine her swirling around her parents’ ankles asking them questions in a super loud voice until their teeth were on edge? Woulda got me spanked! You can’t imagine her parents going to the school to remove her from the ceiling (you say no, literally happened to my husband)? Woulda got me spanked! You can’t think of a scenario where Dina would misread social cues from her parents that they were getting angry at her? Woulda got me spanked!
I guarantee Dina was once A CHILD, like every other child, not a tiny angel. Her parents simply didn’t hurt her for it, the way so many of our parents did. Trust me, if a parent is a hitter or a yeller when they get upset, just being a kid is enough. Even “tiny angels” will get spanked for something, especially a neurodiverse one. Not responding to calls for dinner because their nose was in a book or game and they didn’t register it – spanking. Cluttered room, spanking. Forgot to do a chore, spanking.
Striking and spanking is not a kid problem. It’s a parent problem.
I’m not demonizing Joyce, but I am calling out people who would like to believe this was “a compliment”. Sure, in the way a dude saying “it’ll be easy for YOU to pass the class, the professor checks you out all the time” is a compliment, or people saying to an Asian person “as if YOU would have any trouble passing math classes”. Saying “YOU don’t count, you’re a robot” sucks from the recipient’s perspective because the other person just reduced your whole life down to one trait, like you’re an cartoon character.
Okay, I’m out. I hope this gives people some insight into the harmfulness of Joyce’s words and why Dina reacted like she did, and some empathy for people like her they encounter in real life.
Your comment made me recall that this is not the first time in the comic that we’ve seen someone dismiss Dina in this way. When Sarah and Dina ran into Raidah and her friends at the mall, Raidah dismissed Dina in a very similar way. That clearly upset Dina. I’m not sure if that was before or after the party where Dina and Becky kissed, but regardless, that was another time people dismissed Dina or wrote her off as some kind of child, which- surprise!- Dina also did not like. Joyce was absolutely an asshole here, and has been more of one generally. While I understand why that’s happening, Joyce doesn’t just get a free pass to say whatever, either. Sarah, Becky, and Dorothy have both remarked on this; I hope that Dina rounding out the list of people is something of a wake-up call for Joyce. I feel for Joyce, I really do, but she needs to pull back or else she’ll deserve to be held at arms’ length by her friends, simply because they don’t want to be hurt or demeaned more.
Necessary tangent:
“Held out at arms’ length” immediately made me me think of that one time Joyce was in the female bullying meme LOL
There was also a similar dismissal when Becky said she was making the moves on the cute dinosaur girl, and everybody present (about half the cast, inlcuding Joyce) went: on Dina? that’s gross, she’s a child and not a person like the rest of us are. Dina’s response to that was, if anything, even closer to “fuck you” than today’s.
I don’t know for a fact I’m autistic, because when I was younger my parents did a really good job of making me feel like an asshole just for being ADHD (tried to explain executive dysfunction to my dad a few weeks ago and he told me to my face he didn’t think it was real, that was super helpful) so I went full-bore on trying to get out of therapy or psychoanalysis, but I did once have my older brother and his best friend tell me to my face “You know, if you turned out to be a robot, or an alien, we’d say ‘Yeah, that makes sense,'” so I’m going to take this one comment to personally tell every person who is trying to justify or defend what Joyce said in any capacity to go fuck yourself. You are why neurodivergent people kill themselves.
Thank you.
everyone does asshole things. the question is whether or not you can find a way to be proud of it afterwards.
And then Dina brings up Joyce’s denial that the spanking was a bad experience to Becky, and Becky is somehow on Joyce’s side and then we get to argue who’s the bad one, Dina or Becky, which will be fun. (Please, I’m being sarcastic, don’t have this be a thing that happens! I may not like either of them, but I think Becky is smarter than that.)
So I also had a lot of the same viscerally angry reactions flying around here when I first saw this strip yesterday (I was also in a bad state in general, on top of sending myself into a spiral here about my own abusive upbringing, so that probably didn’t help), but now that I’ve a bit of a clearer head, I would like to share some thoughts.
Dina isn’t, technically speaking, canonically on the spectrum. We all pretty much know she is, but in-text it’s never been acknowledged and the only reason we go forward with it as a defining subtext to her character is when Willis was asked enough that they elaborated on some of their intent with Dina and said “she probably is, and has not been diagnosed.”
(The dumblr post about this also has some good info on how Willis writes Dina, though I’m not sure how to work it in here without coming off as using a lived experience that the author is sharing as an explanation in-fiction)
I also feel it’s worth mentioning that “is Joyce on the spectrum?” isn’t an uncommon fan theory. I dunno if that’s supposed to be an excuse here, but it’s probably worth bringing up in a strip getting seen as “neurotypical character is ableist to definitely canonically neurodivergent character,” let alone the surrounding context that Joyce is getting dragged into the second conversation in three days on why she needs to justify her entire life to someone else on the grounds that they feel like bugging her about it.
Joyce is saying the wrong thing, I’d be outraged if I was called a robot (or whatever equivalent I’ve got), but that’s because I’d get called that in relation to the ASD I absolutely, definitely have. I don’t think Joyce is complimenting Dina, but she’s obviously not deliberately saying this as a sentiment of Dina’s ASD even if it’s still a derogatory reference to her character to express how Dina was immune from deserving to be beaten (since that’s how Joyce has processed why she was spanked by her parents) since Dina was quiet and didn’t raise a fuss, which, it feels more important that “raising a fuss” is something that Joyce thinks meant she was deserving of getting whacked.
I will say that, as someone on the spectrum, I relate way more to Joyce’s occasionally saying something horrifically insensitive or inappropriate without intending offense than I have pretty much any part of Dina’s character.
I mean yeah, same.
The rigorous black and white thinking, the latching onto new interests, the fucking food palette is a big one goddamn, I’ve been eating the same breakfast for almost a straight month and I’m not stopping any time soon. Most of all is saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, because I swear to god I have to juggle four conversations in my head at once whenever I speak. I can’t just say what is on my mind, I have to think about what it sounds like, what they’ll say, what I think they’ll take from it.
I don’t necessarily blame anyone for not viewing Joyce the same way, so much as it’s kinda frustrating to see this get overwhelmingly framed as “neurotypical abuses neurodivergent person” since they both speak to the same authenticity, at least in my book.
Joyce really said “atheism is my Special Interest now and I am making it my entire identity” and I said “Joyce, you need to stop being me when I was in my 20s, because I did that with like 50 different things and you are second-hand embarrassing me”.
These poor kids. It gets easier.
Joyce: “Looks like I picked the wrong day to have a migraine”
“I don’t get why she’s mad, all I did was say I don’t acknowledge her humanity…”
Joyce. What the hell. Is it time for your learning about autism arc?
she knows what autism is, she’s just in her insufferable/angry athiest phase.
That phase many athiests go through where they act angry about everything, and act so annoyingly pissy that nobody really wants to be around them (my dad went through it, and if you look online im sure you will fine many MANY people that go through this phase)
it’s the “the bible: read sarcastically by a 15 year old athiest” phase
I’m not gonna argue the Edgy Atheism thing so much as I feel like “the bible read sarcastically by a 15 year old atheist” is a gross understatement of:
– Joyce’s entire upbringing
– Joyce’s entire upbringing then proceeding to nearly murder her twice
No it’s time for her “beating your kids is not normal or okay” arc
As one who understands being overwhelmed, I would let that slide, barely
As an autistic person, I am seething some inside even though this is not a comic
Dorothy, don’t you dare handle this one. Let Becky and Dina handle it
…Even though this IS a comic
Am I ok? Maybe?
Though it would have been interesting to see Joyce react to Dorothy saying that she wasn’t spanked. (You know Dorothy’s parents didn’t spank.)
It would have been similar, but different in tone, I suspect. The same implication that it was because she never did anything wrong, but she certainly wouldn’t have used “robot”.
I’m enjoying that my avatar is Sarah at the moment, because for this strip she’s in exactly the position I’d be in in this conversation.
I glad I’ve found this Asshole Joyce avatar for me, too. ahaha
Joyce is really cranky and yes an asshole. I wonder if her monthly probems are part of a medical issue that she never got checked out for, because she has learned complaining of pain would be considered an attack to make other people uncomfortable, not needing help. And also because her mom is scary martyr monster. I remember a quote where Mother Theresa said chronic pain was Jesus touching you during the crucifixion. Not that her family would take the quote of a Catholic but I can see them sharing the attitude.
Joyce’s sect don’t deal in mysticism as far as we know.
My mom lost her temper and hit me with an open palm. That was all the physical violence I got as a kid.
I said as much above but wth: I feel the posts along the lines of “Joyce wakes people up like this!” are a bit of a false equivalence in the sense that Joyce doing so hasn’t been framed in a dramatic context before.
This wasn’t a problem until the narrative made it a problem, in that now we have reason to believe that Joyce’s discomfort is a tangible part of the story, and this isn’t something that’s happened with Joyce’s own behaviour in the same regard; when Joyce suffered consequences it was getting choked and seeing Sal naked, which to some audiences might be considered a delightful time.
Joyce can magically teleport to Dorothy’s location by invoking the power of her thinly veiled all-encompassing love of Dorothy, but that’s also a Funny Comic Gag in the sense that Dorothy never goes “dang Joyce stop magically teleporting to my side because you want me to scratch your head.” By contrast, the part where Becky and Dorothy tracked Joyce down is a dramatic beat in the sense that there was, y’know, dramatic consequence for doing so. Joyce’s homolust for Dorothy is another good example in that it’s always played as a gag to Joyce’s discomfort, but then Walky pushes it again at a point where Joyce isn’t comedically firing back or making funny angry Joyce faces, and so Sal intervenes and tells him to knock it off, and then later the joke comes back because, yes, it’s actually funny, it just wasn’t funny at the moment.
Or in an example of things turning negative; Joyce idolizes Sal over and over in wacky comedic moments, and finally Joyce pushes too far and Sal lashes out at her because she’s tired of being seen as some ubercool badass persona instead of as her own person, and so Joyce doesn’t do it again and they bond over their chafing under being places in boxes.
DoA’s a comic, it can bend reality for comedic effect sometimes.
I think another thing that’s making a lot of commenters bristle about this is that over the past couple of plot points for Joyce… The narrative is saying “Joyce is in the wrong” Without showing it, and feels like it is siding with a specific character and you can tell that.
The thing is, the thing she was ‘wrong’ over… she really wasn’t and Becky had overstepped boundaries and ended up getting her feelings hurt because she
1) Overheard something she shouldn’t
and then
2) Immediately put her in a sudden and uncomfortable position over it despite Joyce apologizing, because she wouldn’t bend on her beliefs.
This strip, I can imagine for a lot of us, is hitting that same nerve, especially as Dina as a character is kind of put on a pedestal by a lot of people who read/comment. I read a comment here a few sections back who commented on Dina kind of feeling like a ‘magical perfect autistic girlfriend’ or something to that extent.
And as an Autistic person, I kind of agree? Earlier before she was with Becky, she felt more human and nuanced. But it’s sort of shifted as we got more of their relationship.
I get why people are defensive of Joyce over this, because it seems like the narrative is insistent on making everyone have double standards for Joyce that don’t seem to apply for other characters.
She’s being an asshole here, but a lot of people ignore any potential reasoning, thought processes, or experiences that led to this entire exchange.
As well as the fact that was pointed out: Dina just said that, more or less, she thinks Joyce is an asshole because she was, in Dina’s own belief, beat as a child.
The narrative is saying “Joyce is in the wrong” Without showing it, and feels like it is siding with a specific character and you can tell that.
I don’t really agree with this in the slightest, but I’ve been over that a lot over the past *checks notes* six months?!
Joyce still has to do and say dumb things (to Ruth and now Dina here) because she is currently in a status quo where her ability to accept not knowing something has been viscerally shot and so unearned confidence is all she has left, except that unearned confidence is even worse because she can’t rely on God telling her that dinosaurs were on the ark.
But in the specific circumstance of “is Joyce doing wrong by Dorothy/Becky/Sarah?” it’s essentially impossible for me to believe that because none of them have been able to display to her the slightest bit of emotional decency even once, and all this horrible drama nightmare time happened because Joyce went slightly off-script when Becky and Dorothy felt entitled to their time so they tracked her down using someone else’s social media instead of shooting her a text, and then made her immediately justify why she was an atheist to Becky on the grounds that it made Becky sad.
Like, bluntly, I’ll believe there’s any kinda Both Sides here when the three people who say they love Joyce the most stop speaking and acting to her the way they always have, except now there’s major dramatic consequence at her expense for it. Saying that the cast has double standards for Joyce that they don’t apply to each other is, I think, an entirely textual aspect of Joyce’s current struggles (as in Joyce directly said Becky got away with bullying Dorothy at length and then Dorothy avoided the question by calling her a dumb virgin).
When I bring up “the narrative” here, I mean more that Joyce’s running gag of waking people up is, well, very obviously intended as comedic, because there’s either no consequence or Joyce suffers a comedic consequence, and with Dina here it starts the exact way to the point where she assumes the problem is that she isn’t doing the triangle smile. It’s signaled as a comedic moment, and then they start having an uncomfortable conversation that leads into Painful Drama Time.
So “Dina does the Joyce Thing” is still a comedic thing in a vacuum, but then it gradually gets attached to some dramatic moments, so now the context is “Dina does the Joyce Thing, but doing the Joyce Thing led her to dragging Joyce into a conversation she is absolutely not equipped to have at the moment.” All that other stuff is more up to argument (oh so many arguments) but Dina can still do the Joyce Thing to another character at a later date and it would still be funny until, like, Ruth gets eaten by Mechagodzilla while it happens or something.
I think we’re talking about the same thing.
The narrative is siding with Becky/Dorothy/Sarah, and having them sidestep actually giving a shit about Joyce in favor of criticizing her. These are the characters in these arcs.
Which makes it feel like, narratively, the comic is siding against Joyce. Even at the end of that thread for now, Joyce had to bend over backwards for Becky yet again. Nobody had her back in a difficult and increasingly stressful time.
I do think in another context Dina’s waking up of Joyce could be funny. But the point being that as far as Joyce is concerned, things she does are being portrayed though other people as bad.
Which I’m sure as I’ve seen here, people are using it to argue that Joyce’s behaviors were the same, when categorically they weren’t.
No, I mean, I think the fact that Joyce’s closest and dearest friends have proven incapable of the slightest bit of empathy to Joyce in her time of crisis is the point, because all three of them rely on Joyce in a specific status quo where she’s their idiot fundie baby.
Like the only way I can believe The Narrative isn’t on Joyce’s side with those three is if “saying God is stupid in a private conversation” is morally equivalent or worse than:
– Tracking Joyce down because Becky thinks she is entitled to her time, and deliberately does so without her will or consent instead of shooting a text.
– Making Joyce apologize for “being mean to Christians” to Becky because Becky’s a Christian and Joyce saying God is stinky made Becky sad, also Becky’s dad almost shooting her in the face and then her mom bailing him out of prison so he could do it again isn’t sufficient reason to be “mean to Christians.”
– Telling Joyce that the universe should actively punish her by losing her job, because Joyce was annoying before but now she’s way more annoying.
– Telling Joyce that her theological decisions are invalid and she should settle on a nice deism and that she’s only allowed to be angry if that anger is for a good reason.
– Joyce’s best friend telling her to her face that Joyce has been lying about who she is this whole time, as if “you’re still real even though God isn’t” wasn’t directly something Joe told her like two days prior.
– Joyce’s best friend being so absurdly dependent on Joyce that Joyce is not allowed to be an atheist because Becky “needs a buffer” as if she does not have new friends, a girlfriend, two teachers (one of whom let her openly harass two other students in her classroom) who constantly dote on her and do everything they can to make her feel appreciated.
– Joyce’s best friend hearing that Joyce becoming an atheist was like tearing her own organs out, and so deciding to play Rich Mullins in the hopes that it would convert her back, and then taking the next opportunity seeing her to call her “my little baby apostate.”
… like the only way I can believe those three have any kind of moral standing let alone being right about her is if it turns out Dumbing of Age has been a Chick Tract the whole time.
Whoop.
There it is.
cheese and rice, dina
you didn’t have to nuke her.
SAUCE?
joyce just wanted to study
I doubt Joyce even understands what neurodivergence is. It’s hurtful to Dina and I can definitely see why and Joyce should probably apologize once she gets the context, but the lack of malice means Joyce’s comment wouldn’t hurt me, for example. Introverted thinking types can certainly remind others of traits associated with fictional robots, and plenty aren’t neurodivergent.
Comment Section Wars Daily Brief: combatants pay homage to Mike by calling everyone else assholes.
She’s an asshole, you’re an asshole, I’M an asshole! Are there any other assholes I should know about?!
“I fucked your mom.”
Had Joyce said “Dinosaur girl” instead, Dina would have considered it a compliment.
At least everyone in the comments is leaving Dorothy alone this time.
Give it time…
The second I see one PIXEL of that girl, she’s going straight to pound town. 👏
Wow, way to overstep the line here from Joyce.
I don’t see how people are getting here that they’re criticizing how Joyce was brought up. To me it reads more like they’re comparing notes because they find it weird that wooden spoon spanking was her and Becky’s norm. It doesn’t read as an attack on Joyce, to me it reads more like concern, especially on Dina’s side.
And while yeah, Dina might have been invasive in her interaction, she probably was imitating Joyce, who also frequently invades personal space uninvited and gets a pass. Dina getting mad at her and calling her out for her remark to me seems somewhat acceptable, considering that Dina showed very human (for Joyce and Becky) concern and she was insulted in a very dehumanizing way.
I get Joyce is going through things (and it’s super good to read!), but she needs to reevaluate how she has managed to insult each and every single one of her friends in order. Can’t wait to see how she’ll insult Becky if she finds out Becky had premarital sex especially with Dina.
Its not like Joyce went up to to her friends and just straight up insulted them, theres definitely extenuating circumstances going on here
Dina told Joyce that being physically abused made her an asshole but that’s not actually bad or wrong and definitely not Dina telling Joyce that the thing Dina recognizes as viscerally harmful physical abuse of a child made her a bad person in this conversation that Joyce was woken up for so she could justify to two separate people why she was beaten by her parents.
I dunno why that slipped me by so long. I kept reading that last panel as Dina being a cool girl who does not look at explosions.
She used the hypothetical, connected tense, so that might be part of it. The sort of thing that gives leeway to say “I’m not saying it DID make you a jerk, just that it MIGHT have CONTRIBUTED”, thereby removing some of the bite.
Isn’t that kinda like going “Joyce didn’t call Dina a Robot Girl, she just said Dina is like a Robot Girl or whatever.”
There’s like 600 comments by now and I can’t be arsed to read all of ’em, so I’m gonna assume somebody’s earnestly said exactly that and meant it.
Holy shit I just noticed that.
What the fuck.
We were so caught up with demonising Joyce that we forgot to drag Dina to Hell along with her. Rough interactions are inexcusable and need to be punished, and that includes our favorite characters. Dina has to go in The Box as well.
I can’t believe Dina would act so offended, right after she kept punching Joyce repeatedly in the face while she begged her to stop.
Damn you Dorothy, this is your fault!
This is not a serious statement, by the way. I feel I shouldn’t have had to say that. But I am anyway
Ya gotta hand it to her though, Dina has a mean right hook.
Maybe I would not blame Dorothy if she were not in the room using her dark magicks to drive Dina into this violent frenzy, and then mindwiping everyone involved so she can escape without blame to kill again.
in my experience, to refer to someone specifically as “a machine” is always a compliment. does that phrase poke the sore spot for spectrum folks?
Y’know it’s funny, I was gonna write a response above wondering if folks here going “robot’s a compliment!” were missing that context.
But, yes. What you’re thinking of is someone working real hard in an efficient and optimal way. “Robot” in reference to the neurodivergent and, in particular, folks with autism is that we’re muted, quiet, subservient, and respond in mechanical, almost pre-programmed ways.
This exactly. It’s complimentary to say “Wow, she’s a machine!” when she fills out a lot of paperwork fast. Or even “He’s like a machine!” when they do sex to you real good. This is not the same as being called a robot.
My sister sometimes get so mad at me because I don’t show emotion the way she wants me to, and calls me a robot. Which it’s weird because we’re both (probably) neurodivergent (neither of us has a diagnosis from a doctor). Now, she cries on a dime and I can too in the right circumstances (I cried during several scenes in The Batman recently, for instance), but when I don’t display emotions the way she wants me to, she will often call me things like an emotionless robot, and well, it just starts to sting after a bit.
Weirdly now lately she’s almost going the opposite way… For instance I’ll say, start watching the newest series of Digimon and want to talk about all the cool monsters and she’ll be like “Oh, that’s so cute! Your autistic brain is hyperfixating! ^_^” Which… I also hate for a number of reasons. Not the least being that I don’t even have a diagnosis from a doctor, and like… I’m fucking 34. Just because I like a children’s show about monsters, don’t infantilize me.
Someone else is probably gonna have a better answer, but saying “You’re a machine” is usually used to describe some as tireless and/or hardworking, and in that sense is a compliment (so long as it’s not then used as an excuse to give one person too much work). “Robot” has much more specific connotations of operating under specific parameters and being incapable of having or understanding the human experience.
I don’t understand how calling someone a machine being a compliment even works in this context because ‘machine’ being a complement seems specifically only to BE a compliment if the context of it is about someone’s ability to work. There is nothing about this discussion that’s about Dina’s ability to work, this discussion about feelings, emotions, and trauma. So that’s clearly not what’s being said, so there’s no way to reasonably interpret this is a compliment without having to bend over backwards with how far you’re reaching. Because it’s not one.
no i was just taking advantage of the… engagement… to double check that one of my go-tos isn’t a slur 🙂
There’s a difference when using the terms to refer to effort/efficiency and to refer to behaviour/psychology.
BEAUTRIX’S ADVICE CORNER: If you say someone with a disability is a ‘robot’, I will personally beat you with TWO wooden spoons!!
The sheer fucking consternation about the outcome of this conversation…why is anyone surprised by this? Joyce and Dina do not like one another! For pretty good character-based reasons! Dina even knows Joyce is an atheist now (or at ABSOLUTE MINIMUM knows that Becky thinks Joyce has strayed from Christianity, and that Becky is trying to bring Joyce back into the fold). She doesn’t care, and this doesn’t meaningfully change her feelings about Joyce, because Dina doesn’t care about Joyce! Dina cares about BECKY. She dislikes Joyce because (among other reasons) Joyce has historically been vocally anti-science and because she is the living face of a lot of what Dina despises about Becky’s past. She didn’t come ask Joyce these questions because she cares about BOTH Joyce and Becky, and that is why she wasn’t terribly careful or concerned about Joyce’s reactions to those questions. She came to pump Joyce for answers about her Becky-based concerns. She does not care whether this upsets Joyce.
Joyce’s emotional state, or frame of mind, or her background, or anything else, also doesn’t matter to Dina when she decides how to process Joyce saying something cruel and shitty to her, in this conversation. And you know what! All perfectly valid! All of this makes perfect sense for Dina, Dina’s emotional priorities, and Dina’s past interactions with Joyce.
I *will* say that if I was Joyce, I would have fucking flipped Dina off that bunk three strips ago, and Joyce’s tolerance for a conversation that has been physically and emotionally painful for her just because it was her BFF’s frequently-hostile girlfriend asking those questions is really impressive.
Joyce being ignorant and gross about someone else’s neurodivergence is a fun thing to grab onto, but it’s really a much smaller part of the fundamental conflict here.
Dina’s stiff but i wouldn’t think she’s emotionless to be called ‘robot girl’
Please don’t deny others’ humanity.
Unless they’re really awesome. It’s extremely rare that someone deserves a compliment on that level.
You don’t wanna devalue it by just tossing it around willy-nilly.
Oh, Joyce.
Hitting someone is, ipso facto, abuse.
Hitting a child is, ipso facto, child abuse.
Hitting a child within the context of a cult is THE MOST CHILD ABUSE.
I’m glad characters are calling out Joyce on being an asshole. I think it would be worse if they let her have a pass on being awful to people just because of what she’s gone through. When you’re healing and on the other side, it makes it harder to look back and see how much you have also hurt other people while you were hurting.
I know I’m late to the game here, because I read this comic in semi-weekly batches, but this was the funniest strip ever from this comic.
Yikes, Joyce. The “it happened to me and i’m fine so it’s a valid method“ gets used mostly by people who have repressed trauma and who are very much not in touch with their own emotions. Yes, it was child abuse. Yes, there’s a spectrum between “spanked with bare palm once or twice at a time after it was announced you would be if you didn’t listen“ (happened to me and i’m not entirely fine), and “beaten up in anger with objects that break due to the impact“…. abuse has different forms and different severity, but it’s abuse all the way. The existence of worse abuse doesn’t make the “abuse light“ go away.