Joyce, Joe isnt homophobic or transphobic for not being attracted to trans women. And a list he made like, a year ago shouldnt be held against him the rest of his life.
Sure but I’m guessing you didn’t subsequently post it online with an RSS feed and subscribers so people could make their own cum tallies and compare their ‘scores’.
From what I can tell, not really. An RSS feed is supposed to help you keep track of your favourite webpages and you can’t really do that without a webpage.
You can’t, really, but you can have a password protected RSS feed that’s intended only for you. A rss feed is a list of time ordered html “items” (encoded into XML) each describing a single update; typically they’ll have some free HTML (for text, any image tags, etc), a title, and a link which points to the actual resource they’re an item for (so for a comic the link will point to the page of the comic, or if it’s badly coded, the image itself).
No, it was not a private doc for his own use. It was online with an RSS fee and subscribers. There was a password for it but he gave it out to people regularly. You don’t set up an option to SUBSCRIBE to your private digital black book.
Okay but that is like, just something about you and what you do in your spare time. It’s kind of very different when it involves rating the psysical apparence of other people, if you were doing it in your head, it would still be a bit weird but it’s whatever, writting it down in a really easy to access document it’s when it gets to creepy territory. That is absolutely the kind of things that should follow you at least for a bit.
How many times you nut doesn’t hurt anyone. But the do-list could’ve put the women on it in danger. It wasn’t just Joe’s personal list, he released it publicly.
And he gave multiple people the damn password on-screen. I’ve suspected Raidah of leaking it in particular, since he straight up said “Oh, I haven’t given you the password yet? How remiss!” to her.
H– how though? Like, who is transphobic and keeping up with THIS comic? THIS comic!!!! Like, I could see a misinformed good faith “Okay, I like (dead name), but I’m concerned about (parroted talking point)”, and to have a ton of comments pointing out all the problems with all that, but who the hell is still going out of their way to troll about trans people in THESE comments!? Like, this comic is not big enough to get a real shitstorm going, and the people reading THIS comic for a decade plus probably aren’t about to be swayed by anti-trans arguments. “You know, I’ve been getting invested in Jocelyne for about a decade, and I really care about her, and she seems happy now, but then I saw a comment suggesting (whatever would get a transphobe banned), and I suddenly forgot all of that and now think (transphobic gobbledygook).” Like, is that likely to fucking happen HERE!?
I was going to ask if patreon allowed banning. Also I wonder if the Russian agents (this is a real thing I’ve read legit news stories about) who sow this kind of discontent have started paying for the privilege.
WHAT!? Bu– how— WHO THE HELL LOVES THIS COMIC SO MUCH THEY’LL PAY MONEY TO SUPPORT IT, AND HASN’T CLUED IN THAT THIS COMIC IS VERY MUCH PRO DIFFERENT PEOPLES!!!
COMMENTS ARE CLOSED EVEN!?!?!? WHAT THE FUCK!? AND THAT’S ONE OF MY FAVORITE COMICS!!! I’ve been using that term “acceptable losses” ever since, it’s genuinely useful to understanding that behavior. How!? Wh- I don’t- How!?
See, some people might say “Come now, you can’t be so shocked by these things, you naive Cockney orphan!”, but I honestly think we (as a species) should be more shocked about that level of nonsense, and then act our best in an attempt to crowd it out and stuff its voice into a matchbox in the corner of the deepest cabinet we can find.
That we know of. They live on the same floor and she skates down the hallway all the time and at least once (on Patreon) blared loud ass music while she did so for Carla Awareness Week.
No, but it IS transphobic to make a list of almost everyone you know (assuming people like his mom aren’t on it) and rank them by fuckability and then not include the one out trans woman in the group of women you know.
If he’s genuine about not knowing her, that’s probably his only real way out of this awkward talk. I think if it were true though he’d have been more emphatic about it by now though.
It feels dangerous to wade into this conversation with anything other than complete agreement but I think that’s a stretch. If he’s not attracted to trans people the same way he’s not attracted to men or to family then it makes just as much sense to exclude them from the list as anyone else who was excluded. Are we really going to police peoples minds and force them to consider all trans people as potential partners? In an ideal world we wouldn’t even know people were trans but the medical technology just isn’t there yet. You can’t culturally guilt someone into biological attraction.
I think a lot of this hinges on what getting a low score on his list means. Was he still open to fooling around with girls with low scores? Personally I don’t think he would bother adding someone to the list that he actually had no interest in.
He had other women he wasn’t attracted to on the list. There were zeros. This was not a list of potential partners for Joe. It was a list of women he knew around campus organized by fuckability that he gave out to other guys to help them get laid. If Joe simply wasn’t attracted to her, he’d have given her a zero.
I think being included on the list at all implies a level of interest. Joyce specifically asks if she’s the only zero because she didn’t see any others in the list.
Nobody’s policing minds, nobody’s forcing anyone, nobody’s culturally guilting anyone. It’s not happening. It’s not a real thing. It’s made up. For your own health, it’s best to purge those thoughts from your mind and not worry about things that aren’t, won’t, and can’t happen.
This is a fictional situation we are discussing and we are the ones policing Joes thoughts. Please quit trying to cast me as some sort of trans conpiracy theorist. Trust me, I’m well aware that IRL nobody except my partner cares who I am attracted to.
I’m not trying to cast you as anything, I just genuinely didn’t pick up on the subtext of Joe’s fake thoughts being the policed ones. Although if that’s the case, it makes thought policing Fine, Actually™ because if the thoughts are in a fake person’s head, there’s no possible way to harm that character by circumcising their thoughts. It’s a victimless non-crime.
But Joe did not only put women he was attracted to on the list, he put all the female students on it, or all most all, and left Carla out. Meaning, he does not see her has a woman.
That does not mean he has to be an absolute shit transphobic person for that, it just means that he might have some subconscious transphobic bias he can work on.
I didn’t see this mentioned because the first part of what you said is objectionable enough on it’s own but “a few months” is hardly “for the rest of his life”. That’s so dramatic. People are within reason to mention something you did literally this school year lmao.
Maybe trans women will stop having an opinion on your opinion of their fuckability when you stop sharing that opinion completely unsolicited. It can be an inside thought. Wasn’t that the whole point of the do list storyline?
I thought I was the only one that psuedo-shipped it. (Just for a soap opera like drama moment when Joe and her kiss cuz she looks like Joyce and Joyce catches them and now she’s thrust into a love triangle between her boyfriend and her older sister.)
Yeah, gender affirming via objectification is certainly a thing among transwomen (according to my biased three sources) but i think most people would just prefer Joe to keep his opinions to himself.
Weird inverse I had, past hookup ghosted me because he realized he was straight. Being ghosted isn’t the best, but that was a pretty gender affirming reason for it, so on the whole, not terrible.
Right, but her point is “the only info I had on whether you thought of trans women as women implied that you did not”. He didn’t keep his opinions to himself, and they said something to Joyce that she’s trying to talk about.
That’s not the damn point Charles. Even if the list was gross and misogynistic, it was a HUGE list and seemed to have pretty much every girl on Joyce’s floor EXCEPT Carla. Joyce was on there and had literally been rated ZERO. Carla’s omission reveals the list was also transphobic
Joyce being a zero was a special situation, that was Joe making a statement about her as a person. I think the lowest proper score we know of is a 3 but I didn’t reread the entire comic to check.
Joe, please, I am BEGGING you, turn off the nonchalance and get into genuine feelings territory for like ten minutes or this is gonna get really ugly really fast.
Not being into any individual trans woman (or any individual characteristic) is one thing, but categorically excluding them from a ‘women you could bang’ guide you want people to subscribe to is gonna raise an ugly question. Not that any woman loves being misogynistically objectified but when you’re excluded because the person doesn’t see you as a woman? It’s a horrible rock and hard place.
It’s not even about Joe considering her ‘bangable’ really. It’s about whether or not he considered her a woman and therefore worth ranking, even if some of his subscribers may be interested in knowing how to get with her.
Honestly my guess is that Joe excluded Carla for entirely unrelated reasons (maybe he didn’t even know she existed, judging from yesterday’s strip) and Joyce is zooming into ‘it’s because she’s trans, isn’t it?!’ as a possible reason.
Yeah, Joe might have been transphobic before the gender studies class, it doesn’t mean he is now. He was also a gross misogynist back then, and I don’t think Joyce even knew trans people existed. He also literally might just not have a clue who Carla is.
What matters is who he is NOW, and he’s 100% chill with Jocelyne and definitely seems to see her as a woman.
Yep, I’m being reminded of other moments in the comic where Joyce specifically has been asked to answer for horrible shit she no longer believes. Interesting (but not surprising) that she’s asking Joe to do a similar thing now.
She isn’t though. She’s asking him IF he believes that Carla is a woman (ofc she IS whether he believes that or not). Joyce is letting Joe speak for himself on a topic she has concerns about. The mention of the list is evidence for WHY she thought he might not be trans positive.
Honestly, I’m leaning towards an internal “oh, huh” realization, combined with realizing ramifications, and not having time to process that while being put on the spot and pressured.
Yeah. He could do a lot better by saying “Hey, I’m trying really hard to disavow that list in all ways, it doesn’t reflect who I am or my beliefs right now” instead of being annoyingly evasive like this. While Joyce is pretty much dredging stuff up that she’s been letting lie for their whole relationship, he’s reacting in a really defensive and unproductive way.
To be honest I would assume him not including Carla has more to do with him not wanting to do anything to risk pissing off the child of billionaires before I thought it had anything to do with Carla being trans
The fact that her not being included would be more likely to piss off Carla specifically is just Joe miscalculation and he is extremely lucky she chose not to look
I’m actually curious what Joyce’s endgame is with this.
She knows that Joe’s cool with Jocelyne (and presumably other trans people, by definition), but it feels like she’s trying to gotcha him with ‘ha, you’re not actually THAT cool with them, are you!’
She was saying yesterday that she wasn’t sure where Joe stood on trans stuff, and this is something that was in her mind as part of her uncertainty about it. So she’s explaining how the list connected to her views on his views.
Yeah, her trying to have a conversation about a concern is definitely a “gotcha” moment. Definitely not the normal adult thing to do when you have a concern.
It would be lovely if more cis people had these kinda conversations with each other! Trans people are so very, very tired of having to hand hold defensive cis people through even the most superficial amount of self-reflection on how they view trans people!
I know what you are saying, that social justice requires individual action. But that’s an awkward way of saying it and technically wrong. To justice, though unconventional, works to describe relivant actions to bring about justice. To social justice doesn’t because social is not an adverb. It would have to be, to justice socially.
Look, if you take social justice into your own hands, does that make you a social vigilante?
like we literally talked about this last time, it ain’t about no white english grammar shit
wat im sayin is Social Justice ain’t about where ya at, it’s about what ya doin and the direction ya goin, about active commitment to making the world a more inclusive place for folk like us :)
I’m sorry, I’m sure there’s cogent analysis to be had about this strip and how we approach attraction and gender identity and sexuality because its a really fascinating topic…
…but I’m just here snickering at “to bestow womanhood with my boner”.
This weirdly reminds me of the people who argued whether Linda’s mom was racist against Sal because she was darker skinned than her brother even after Willis said, “Oh yes, that was absolutely going on.”
Basically, it seems very much set up this is about Joe confronting a real issue of his and all the evidence is there but a lot of people want to find an excuse that precludes prejudice being the root.
Because we should always assume innocence until guilt is proven. The author out-right saying the character is guilty of the accusation (in this strip’s case, transphobia/transmisia, and in the previous case you refer to, racism) is definitely proof, and arguing it after the fact is dumb for sure, but the people arguing in defense of the character before evidence to the contrary is presented are entirely justified.
What evidence is there that Joe was transphobic/misic back then? If the author says so either in or out of story, sure, but iirc that hasn’t been established, so assuming the character is/was isn’t fair to the character, and indicates that one might have a predisposition to doing so IRL as well, which is a terrible primary mode of thought to have. It very much is what we’re talking about.
Well, that’s what they’re talking about. Joyce brought up Carla being omitted from the list, despite the presence of everyone else, and how that looks. She’s looking for an assurance he sees trans women as women because the limited information she has on his views may suggest he does not.
Also… this might just be a difference of opinion but innocent until proven guilty is a legal standard, not a social one. It’s an important legal standard, but nobody needs to hold to it in their personal interactions and sometimes, when it comes to bigotry, it’s safer not to. Hell, even with some crimes, it’s safer not to in day to day interactions. Most rapists never spend a single day in court, never mind jail, so a lot of women are not willing to hang around a man with a credible accusation of rape against them. Sure, maybe the guy is in the slim minority that is really falsely accused but very few are willing to risk their safety to find out.
And also….Joe is a fictional character. I think it’s a little silly to assume that because someone thinks something is okay to do with a fictional character where all the information that exists is in the comics and the author’s comments is automatically fine to do to a real person. I’ve wished pretty grizzly deaths on fictional villains that I would NEVER wish on a real person. Hell, I wouldn’t ship real people or speculate about their inner lives the way I do fictional character backstories, thoughts and personality quirks. They just aren’t the same thing. I do think a lot of people think it would be a stronger narrative and a more thematically consistent thing if this is a real unexamined issue Joe had and so that’s what they think will happen.
Isn’t this conversation… ridiculous? Does not wanting to sleep with a transgender woman make me a bad person? Baloney! Does Joyce want to have sex with transgender men?
You k ew what your audience what’s like, you knew that people were gonna be weird about it. (Genuinely sorry for the amount of bullshit you probably gonna see as this unfold)
Not wanting to sleep with a trans woman? Not necessarily. Not considering her a woman as may be evidenced by your very public ‘List of Women Ranked By Fuckability’? Yes.
It WAS intended to be public. It had an RSS feed and subscribers. The fact it wasn’t supposed to get back to the women on the list doesn’t make it not so.
The problem Joyce is pointing out is that it was a list of all the women he knew, ranked by how much he wanted to have sex with them, including ones he did not want to have sex with. Carla was not on the list at all, and Joyce is interpreting this as him deliberately excluding her because he did not see her as a woman. If he doesn’t want to sleep with a trans woman, she should be a 0 on the list, not excluded from it.
Now, we don’t actually know if Joe even knows who Carla is, and even if he did exclude her for being trans, this was pre-Gender Studies class and pre-character development Joe, who was already a gross misogynist, and says nothing about how he sees Jocelyne.
In order to be attracted to ONLY cis women, you would need to be able tell which women were trans on sight, with 100% accuracy
This is not possible. What IS possible is being shitty and weird if you find out someone you find attractive is trans and/or refusing to date them even if you totally would date an identical cis woman, which is transphobic for the same reason it would be racist to refuse to date or acknowledge even the POTENTIAL for attractiveness of Black women
And before anyone tries to bring up “genital preferences”, let me say
(1) You don’t actually know what’s in a trans person’s pants
(2) No you wouldn’t be able to tell
(3) Fuck off
Thats… Mostly true.
You can actually stop being attracted to someone at any point in a relationship. I’m mostly only attracted to geeks but I obviously can’t tell if a girl is a geek or not until I talk to her about dragonball.
You can stop being attracted to someone because of trouble in the bedroom. You can not be attracted to people cuz they snore or cuz they have a kink you don’t share. The act of attraction is not just “love at first sight”. Personally I’m a personality first, features 2nd. Of the girls I’ve dated none have been my “type” physically but I clicked emotionally. Which I wouldn’t have found out unless we talked. Same for people I find suuuuper attractive but wanna flee the room when they speak.
I’m a bit put off by the genital preference bit cuz having sexual preferences is valid as hell. Sure you might not know what genitals someone had on sight but it’s also not like you can “only” find out by bedding them or that you’re completely in the wrong for even having a preference. If someone doesn’t like something they do not have to like it. Doesn’t make you any less a man or woman just because your partner doesn’t vibe with your parts.
t. A heterosexual cis male who doesn’t like vaginas
Notice I didn’t say genital preferences were invalid. I said they were fucking irrelevant, because trans people can have any genital configuration cis people have
Technically you didn’t say it was irrelevant either. You just kinda brought it up. And sure trans people can. If you’re with a trans person and you like everything about them but get squicked out cuz they’re trans that’s rude. But if you’re just not into their parts then it’s not necessarily transphobic , especially if sex is important to you.
I find this a very complex issue cuz human rights are easy. We know what everyone is owed. But nobody is owed attraction. And attraction isn’t always purposeful or conscious. And of all the things we can police I think this is the one we cannot.
Even if someone is objectively not attracted to black women. I can call that racist but my mom isn’t attracted to white men. I’m attracted to Asian and black women more than other races. I. Also prefer heavier girls to skinny girls. Tall girls to short girls. Black hair to blonde hair. Short blonde skinny girls are objectively NOT my type. I always question how appropriate it is to call out these standards but at the end of the day this shit kinda complex.
“Even if someone is objectively not attracted to black women. I can call that racist but my mom isn’t attracted to white men”
You aren’t saying those two things are equivalent right? Please tell me that isn’t what you are saying.
😛
Haha I had a feeling that would make someone mad. I make it a point to be aware of biases even when they’re backed by systemic oppression. If you’re not down with that it’s ok. But I don’t want to ever judge anyone for the crime of being born, even into a system where they benefit from it.
I AM Trans, I’ve been trans longer than most of this forum has been alive and yes whats in your pants can matter a LOT, Not everybody is BI, the idea that you think your sense of entitlement is more important that other peoples sexuality choices is mind boggling.
Its perfectly OK to not want to sleep with a person who’s genitals are not something you find sexually attractive. That does not mean you are transphobic, it means you are not BI! Not everybody is BI, some of us have been raped and do NOT handle the sight of a penis well.
Supporting someones gender identity does mot mean you are obligated to consider them a sexual partner, or to interact with genitals that go against your own personal orientation, you have to treat people with respect, but you are allowed your own orientation. Its ok to not want a penis, its ok to not want a vagina. stop telling other people how they have to run their sexual feelings.
Also, this is totally irrelevant to the rest of your post but I think you’re wildly underestimating how young this forum is. A lot of people are here from when Willis was posting It’s Walky or Roomies, which WAS back in the 90s when you said yesterday that you realized your identity. Hell, I was born in the late 90s so maybe longer than I’ve been alive but I’d wager not a good chunk of us.
That might be a good poll idea for a less stressful day. Get an idea of how many of us are still around the age of these characters. XD
I get where both of them are coming from on here, even if, as the alt-text points out, Joyce isn’t really on the steadiest ground passing judgments on this topic.
I do think it’s a fantastic thing to establish in a relationship where you stand on certain stuff, so I get why Joyce really wants to know here. I also get why Joe is uncomfortable with the topic.
For the record, that’s not me saying Joe can’t have had transphobia. DoA is about a bunch of people in their late teens and early 20s and their personal growth, and it’s very possible Carla wasn’t on the list due to him dismissing her for transphobic reasons, I am strictly talking about why Joe would be irreverent instead of engaging with this fully seriously from the word go, since regardless of where he stood, he’s probably antsy about the conversation’s implications, given he’s under scrutiny.
Joe was extremely misogynistic at the beginning of the comic, so pre-Gender Studies class Joe also being transphobic wouldn’t be a surprise to me.
He’s grown since then and respects women now, and I’d say he definitely respects trans women based on his reaction to Jocelyne.
Well, Joyce knows he’s outwardly respectful of Jocelyne around her. That may not reflect his feelings on the matter more generally and I think that’s what concerns her right now.
Similarly, the alt text raises a really good point.
Interested to see where this story goes. Feel like a lot of very direct invitations from the author to stay silent and be thought a fool rather than speak and confirm it, or however that quote goes.
While this is certainly not for/at/involving me in any way, let me nonetheless say that I appreciate the format you have used here for this response. If there’s a next time I call you an asshole, you can and should throw this in my face.
As the alt text points out, Joyce is a very interesting person to be bringing this up. Makes sense in the context of two new partners trying to have tough conversations, but Joyce is also asking Joe about a time period in which she herself was only just beginning to escape being a full-on evangelical Christian — and I can attest from very firsthand experience that that crowd isn’t, uh, known for being kind to trans people.
Joe needs to answer this honestly and admit the implications, but I’m willing to bet that early-first-semester-Joyce would have had some truly awful things to (ignorantly, cheerfully) say if prompted directly. Which I predict will also come up in this conversation.
Hope these two knuckleheads can be honest and open about this: it’s really hard to untangle some of these prejudices though thankfully they’re both trying to make it work (instead of actively using it as ammo in a fight, etc)
Honestly, I think Joe’s best answer, which I think Joyce should be considering, is that the Do-List is something that was a terrible thing that he is ashamed of in general and he absolutely considers Jocelyn a woman.
Also, whatshername, the redhead.
Basically, Joyce is right to call him out but does she realize the Do-List is something he’s disgusted he did in the past? That bringing it up may awaken trauma?
I suspect Joyce realizes that it’s not fair to use the Do List as an indictment of Joe’s current feelings: it’s something he actively regrets and has worked hard to live down, and she knows that.
Whether or not he was transphobic in the PAST, and is willing to admit that, maybe is still on the table as a valid question. Not sure the best way to broach that is to invoke the worst thing Joe has likely ever done, but it’s a fraught conversation and there’s likely no true “good” way to broach it.
3 strips in which they both appeared, no actual interactions shown, except I guess Joe lurking while Carla looked at Joyce’s toe… at a time when Joe had moved well beyond keeping his list. Heck, I think all three strips are post-List and Apology.
Let’s see…
First is Joe barely on-screen, and given the previous strip, likely directing the vast majority of his attention to either Joyce’ wellbeing and/or ire towards Jacob out of jealousy
Second’s one where they’re in notably separate locations, assumedly with Carla as an observer from afar with Joe’s awareness of it being dubious at best
Third’s with Carla implied in the background off-screen with Joe’s attention being solely on Joyce
Conclusion – Joe has little to no awareness of Carla’s existence due to all canonical interactions between them being even less than between Legolas and Frodo in LotR (Legolas had one five-word line in which he spoke to Frodo, Joe and Carla haven’t even had a single word spoken between them)
there also don’t exist strips with joe and sal until a scene where he apologizes for the list. and he did rate her. (this is likely also true for multiple other women on there, but sal IS another main character). we just don’t spend every waking moment of their lives with every character.
I’m just confused. Based on yesterday’s strip Joe doesn’t even know who Carla is. Have they even met? I assumed Joe’s list was just based on girls he’s seen. Joyce even has to describe Carla to Joe. And honestly if you’ve been in the vicinity of Carla you would remember her, even if you were transphobic. The bright red head roller skating and throwing pies and shouting her own name would be hard to miss or forget. Is Carla the literal only girl in the whole school who is not on the list? Is there a quantity of other trans women at this school that are also not on his list. Is there not a quantity of cis women at this school who are not on Joe’s list?
I genuinely can’t tell if Joyce’s argument is meant to be reasonable or if she’s just being paranoid here.
I think on one strip someone in the dorms said about the list, “we’re all on here”. Other than, well we know, Carla.
But presumably not every woman at the school is on the list, given that Joe didn’t even know the engineering school had women and he only wanted to add Rachel to the list like… months into the semester (when Becky visited).
It’s entirely possible that Joe was being transphobic and it’s entirely possible that he excluded Carla for other reasonable reasons, Joyce is just very concerned about the first possibility.
“Months” is overstating it: I’m pretty sure his Do List got leaked before the leaves changed, and “Season One” (I.e. the first ten years) ended before Halloween. Everything we see in first semester happens in, like, five weeks.
He described both Jennifer and Sal without names and it doesn’t seem like he’d had substantial interaction with Sal so he’d have to have literally never even seen Carla walking around.
Joyce seems to be working through some thoughts in real time, tbh. It’s probably better to have Joe here to respond directly, as opposed to her building some kind of story in her head in private and being Weird™ at him for it. The two of them do tend to work out their quibbles best in person.
I’m reading his comments as a bit of a self-conscious dodge, to be honest. That he’s downplaying his actions because he’s anxious about where Joyce is going with this and, while he accepts that he was being a sexist jerkass back then, he’s not exactly eager to add another thing he was shitty about to the pile.
I don’t think its ever been stated outright if Carla was on the list, but if everyone in the ladies wing of that dorm was on the list *except* Carla, then it kinda does make claims of “i just didn’t know who she was” a fair bit dubious.
Still, we’re mid-scene. This is the time to comment on funny bits and laugh and let things play out, and save the deep commentariat stuff until we actually know the full facts of the situation.
To be fair I get that. I usually deflect with humor when I’m nervous too. And there’s kinda no way to confront people about biases, subconscious or otherwise that doesn’t come across as an attack on their character.
I think a big issue I see people run into is getting really mad when people don’t wanna admit when they were wrong or have biases they don’t consider cuz in all honesty. It is hard. Your ego almost exists solely to protect you from perceived social harm to yourself. Everyone wants to think they’re s good person when people get fight or flighty when they feel like they’re under attack.
Wait I’m confused, was Joe even aware of Carla’s existence when he originally made the list? Not that Joe having unconscious transphobic bias is impossible (it certainly is, even for well-meaning people), but if Joe wasn’t even aware of her existence (let alone if she was trans) when the list was made, isn’t that more the primary factor for Carla not even being on the list than anything else?
I think if Joe had no recognition at all of Carla, this strip would’ve played out differently.
From a purely meta level, I think we’re past the point where “Joe didn’t know Carla therefore the question is moot” is going to be the resolution. I think we’re gearing up for a discussion at minimum, and possibly an argument/conflict.
But didn’t Joe literally just express having no recognition at all of Carla in yesterday’s strip? That’s why I am confused, because so far I haven’t seen anything (or remember anything at the moment) indicating that Joe’s previous lack of recognition of Carla shouldn’t be treated as genuine?
Joe probably doesn’t know her name but knows her by sight. I recognized 10x more people than I “knew” at my college campus.
So when Joyce described her physically in this strip, Joe’s brain likely went “uh oh, Carla must be the trans woman I never took an interest in and didn’t even include on the list, and Joyce noticed her absence. This does not reflect well on past me being good at treating trans women like women.”
See also Willis’s comment up higher, that Joe marked multiple women as really low or zeroes. Joe isn’t obligated to be ATTRACTED to Carla. But not putting her on a list where he put every other woman, regardless of attraction to them, would have dicey implications.
If that’s the intended assumption we’re supposed to make (that Joe is familiar enough to recognize Carla by sight, and thus would had the minimal awareness of her an individual to rank when he made his list) then that hasn’t been conveyed very well in the comic so far. Now I agree what you’re describing is easily very possible, but I simply haven’t seen enough apparent textual evidence for that to be my default understanding of the narrative text so far.
Joe included a bunch of women he didn’t know, like Sal. He just included them under pseudonyms. Even if he genuinely doesn’t know Carla’s name, that wouldn’t preclude him from including her. And Carla is loud, obnoxious and skates around the hallways all the time. It’d be hard to miss her. So that is a pretty surprising turn of events if it’s true.
yeah legitimately like. How could ya actually know that about his bang list, let alone if he knows someone is trans she doesn’t know…? And also, as joe points out here: Literally what would that even mean or not. Its also a list and behavior he dont do and has genuinely grown from so Who Care.
(she care, bc she’s trying to work out how to deal with being cool with trans people at all)
I proclaim them both: Dumb Chuckleheads I am very fond of and think are doin ok. I thank them for havng this convo with each other, and bothering no trans people about it.
I have to admit (to my shame) I would probably be in the same boat as Joe.
I recognize that Trans people are fully deserving of the right to be treated as the gender they identify with. They should be allowed to participate in sports, should be provided the necessary medical care. They are people, and in general deserving of dignity. (I don’t know anyone who is trans, at least not that I could identify, but I have been around family who have brought the subject up for some weird reason, and I have defended them.)
However, I have to admit I probably would not consider one to be a sexual partner. There is a more… primitive… part of my brain that says “this person had/has the genitals that you aren’t interested in”, even though logically I know that that should not matter.
Assuming Joe did exclude Carla because she is trans…
The problem isn’t that he doesn’t want to sleep with a trans woman, you can’t exactly control what genitals you are attracted to and that doesn’t make you transphobic. The problem is that he made a list of women ranked in order of how much he wanted to have sex with them, and Carla should have been at the bottom of the list in that case, not absent from it. Of course, he might have excluded her just because he actually didn’t know who she was.
I mean, not everything does, but the context is a list of woman Joe ranked by fuckability, and fucking is probably going to involve genitals at some point, so it does kinda become relevant.
Why does everybody assume everybody trans has a unit? She is an adult of extremely rich parents. Her status is entirely up in the air until the cartoonist says otherwise.
…what makes you think I am assuming that? The only person who might have in this context is Joe, a character in the comic, and whether or not he did and if he used that as part of ranking Carla is the critical factor of this current set of strips.
I don’t doubt, but when you reply to someone with that kind of line, it comes off as a pretty aggressive and targeted accusation.
We can take a breath and keep relaxed over it all. This is a suuuuuper leftist space, if there’s a place to assume people aren’t being transphobic dickheads, its going to be in this comment thread.
But lets say he saw her enough to at least (in theory) put her on the list. Then you get the question… is it “worse” (more insulting) to include a person on the list but with a low rank or to just leave them off totally (which at least gives some plausibile deinability.)
Am I the only person who thinks Carla not being on the do list was a good thing?
No, not “the do list was a stupid thing and anybody on it was bad”, but as in, “If Joe decided to keep trans people off the do-list as a policy, that would specifically be a good action with good intentions”?
Consider the audience for a list like this. A bunch of frat boys in an area that (I could be wrong) leans conservative, where we’ve seen a sampling of several creeps already, and provably has people like Mary. The kinds of people that make jokes about killing trans people, and vote for Trump to enact such hopes, in a society where trans fear was so hyped and popular that less than 31% of voters would get out to vote for Kamala. I think if Joe is aware of the trans issue at all, he might recognize that the purpose wouldn’t be “lets go flirt and get laid”, the purpose would be “rocks and knives”.
Even if Carla is “so very very out”, it’s spotlighting her and other trans people for every creepazoid that’s had a bad day and wants to look up where the local (derogatory word)s are. Imagine it without the rest of the do-list, a compendium of all the trans people on a campus circling around, among other things, the local white nationalist ring. Obviously the whole thing is a danger, but that feels like an escalation that would take a special kind of ignorance to think up the trans issue and still put it into the hands of these violent people, and the kind of thing that would need its own apology.
That would be true but I don’t think Joe would’ve thought about it so deeply. He didn’t consider the risk to the other girls and didn’t seem all that worried once Rachel brought it up. I think someone would need to point out that risk.
I think genitals DO matter. Not for how someone identifies but in cases of attraction. You are valid in what you do or don’t find attractive so long as you don’t use that lack of attraction deny someone else’s identity.
The conflict in this case is that Joe should have put Carla on the list just to show he respects her identity as a woman, but he did not. I think it’s honestly a lateral move from “she’s on the list but I rank her a 0 cuz I’m not into trans women” but I do feel like disincluding her is kinda implying he doesn’t view her as a woman at all.
Never once said you do. I’m assuming in this situation they’re stating a case in which they do know. In which case I defer to my previous statement. You’re allowed to not be attracted to genitals you don’t like. If you don’t know then it won’t matter until you do know unless you don’t care.
I guess you could pants ’em in public, but that’s generally frowned upon in most circumstances already. It’s pretty much only ever okay if you’re doing it to your friend who wears baggy white boxer shorts with big red hearts on ’em, your jerkwad boss on your way out of the office after a cathartic lambasting in front of everyone, your mermaid ex-wife, or that one little prick at the grocery store. You know the one, he doesn’t work there but he always fucking seems to be there no matter what day or time you go, and he’s always got some odd fucking remark about what’s in your cart and you’re just there for a fucking club soda and some mixed nuts, why does he even have opinions on your snack, Dylan, how about we show the whole fucking store his piss-and-marinara-stained ahegao boxers, see if he’s got a smart fucking remark about that, the little prick
On a biological level my mind only really cares what it sees down there in the present. However, surgery bothers me a lot (I almost passed out when TALKING to a dentist about getting a tooth pulled).
Someday we’ll have perfect medical technology where you can’t even tell someone is trans. But having a continuous reminder of such an intimate surgery, especially with a new partner… I don’t think I could do it. Maybe later in life I’ll be more desensitized to stuff and it would be fine. This is all a low stakes issue for me though because I’ve been with my partner my entire adult life.
I get the feeling Joyce is pretty bad at forgiving herself for the kind of things she espoused at the beginning of the year. She’s changed and she wants people to acknowledge she’s changed because dammit she’s put in the work, and people don’t really let her forget how she was…
But she can’t let it go, either.
And since this topic hits her from really up close, she’s kinda judging Joe by the same meter she judges herself, which isn’t usual.
Meanwhile we don’t even know if indeed Joe knew about Carla’s existence, as Nono pointed out. Joyce is kinda jumping into conclusions. If he did, though…
PS: I really like this conversation. It highlights Joe has grown, too. I do think he started paying way more attention to the Gender Studies class after the Do List incident, even though he postured like he wasn’t.
Yep, I think that’s it exactly. She’s judging herself really harshly and projecting that onto Joe, because both of them had some awful views at the beginning of the school year.
And she’s honestly doing really well. She’s only known Jocelyne as her sister for less than a day, when she knew her as her brother for 18 years. That’s a big adjustment, nobody is expecting her to be perfect on the literal first day! Becky has had time to learn, and none of the other characters knew Jocelyne, so of couse it will be easier for them. But she just keeps overthrowing it and keeps being so harsh on herself.
Which is funny because one of the most memorable strips from It’s Walky!Joyce in my memory was when she told Walky “they’re my standards, not yours. It would be unfair for me to judge you on them.”
I mean, if he did know she existed and I need to be less trusting of the pop up comic then he probably just needs to say my bad, I should be better in the future. Carla is a woman. (Of course this situation won’t come up again because I learned not to objectify women like that and I’m in a monogamous relationship now, but in other less sexist circumstances.). He can model how to deal with mistakes.
Also even when I think about the idea of him not putting Carla on the list I can see non-transphobic reasoning. Ie. Not including her just cuz he feels like it would be unfair to put her at the bottom based on her gender identity but would be disingenuous to put her higher since its based on personal preference. Joyce only got a -0 for literally beating the shit out of him. I’m playing devil’s advocate of course but it gives very “if you don’t have something nice to say say nothing at all”.
(Less jsutifiable,ironically, when you remember he made the list as a public service. Cuz at that point you should include Carla and hit it with a “I’m not into her but if you are there ya go” which is morally wrong for other reasons but would be morally…allyship?)
the funny(?) part about “playing devil’s advocate” is of course that the devils are doing plenty of advocating themselves. it’s usually unnecessary.
in this case, cis people every day everywhere are talking up storms about how actually x thing they did or said wasn’t transphobic, not even a little. you might even find some of them in this very comment section!
Joyce, you were a hair’s breadth from having to Google “how to be normal around trans people” not all that long ago. Don’t pull “that tells a story” on your boyfriend, especially now that he cares about more than just getting his dick wet.
She’s fucking right. And JOE only recently started treating women as full human beings. They BOTH used to be worse people, and they’ve both got plenty of room for further improvement. She’s not bringing this up to attack Joe. She’s bringing it up because it’s something she wants him to think about
Even if it’s not intended as an attack, it can still have the same effects. Joe is clearly getting defensive, which is not a good foot to be on when thinking about what you believe, and Joyce is partly responsible due to how the question was framed (“I have reason to question what you believe” instead of “what do you believe”)
Reminder on the To “Do” List since it’s been a few years. Joe put basically any woman he saw on the list and rated them from negative zero (Joyce, after their bad first date) to 11 (Rachel, who broke the usual 1 to 10 scale). Some women were on there by name but most were just described or had nicknames. I’m gonna back up what I’m saying with strips
In this strip (early in the storyline) Joe starts to introduce himself to Other Rachel and seems not to know her. However, he has already rated her as a 3.
There is a confrontation between Joyce and Joe in this strip. She paraphrases several entries of their mutual friends/acquaintances. In the previous strip, she read her own entry to him.
In this strip, several of the women in Read Hall discuss the list. Mandy says she’s sure it includes every woman in their residence hall. Carla is there. She has not looked at the list herself and prefers not to know whether or not she is on it.
It’s a shitty, sexist list and Carla’s exclusion from it is transphobic. It’s not just everyone that Joe wants to fuck. He includes women he isn’t interested in. He was rating all women on their fuckability. I’m not saying he has to be sexually interested in Carla to not be transphobic. Excluding her from a list of women – albeit a super gross list – is transphobic.
It’s not the most transphobic thing in the world but it is bigotry on top of bigotry
I had forgotten that Joe’s list included that many women that Joe only knew by sight (and not name)c that definitely makes it more likely that Joe back then would have had at least minimal awareness of Carla’s existence to rank her on the list. Though I do think it is still possible that Joe genuinely never even knew Carla by sight at the time when he originally made his list, though definitely less so than before.
Not to be a skank here, but let’s not forget “I’m especially sorry to ‘Bean-bag With Glasses”. So he put that on his publicly-shared list but not Carla, which is just a bad look regardless of the reason.
I’m assuming “Bean-bag With Glasses” is Purple Rachel, by the by? Not sure why her in particular, but… If she’s a bean-bag though, she’s a damn sexy bean-bag.
I’m adding this one because I’m once again seeing people saying that Joe’s list was private and not meant to be seen by anyone else and I need that misconception to DIE.
“And that thing’s got grannies on it” pretty much also puts to bed (if Willis’ comments hadn’t already) the idea that the list was in any way exclusive or discerning in who was on it.
I really want to get on the same page as everybody else, but I’m just having a hard time believing that, though.
I mean, that same strip you mention says that Joe “practically excised” Joyce from the list. That wasn’t because she stopped being a woman. That was because he would, under no circumstances, ever consider sleeping with her.
Same with the strip where he mentions the RSS feed for the first time. That is the point where Dorothy is ADDED to the list. She wasn’t previously because she was Danny’s girlfriend and therefore someone he would never consider. Not because she wasn’t a woman.
Rachel’s a 3, but he’s still sweet-talking her. The list has “grannies” on it, but honestly, you don’t know what Joe finds attractive. GILF is an acronym that existed before I typed it in this window.
Like I said, I honestly really really want to get on the same page as everyone else. It’s not fun feeling like a transphobic shitbag cis male. But it just doesn’t add up to me, and *especially* if it’s something distributed as a reference for others, and intended as an objective score.
Like. If I’m rating cartoon characters by how fuckable they are. I might put Futurama’s Leela mid, and Simpsons’ Marge low, and Sailor Moon’s Usagi high. But I’m not going to add Lilah’s mom, or Simpsons’ Agnes, or Sailor Moon’s Chibiusa, because they are not even on the radar. Just like I wouldn’t add Lumpy Space Princess, or Cheer Bear, or Sandy Cheeks.
Is Sandy Cheeks fuckable? Probably. What should she rate? Hell if I know. What should I rate her? I honestly can’t. She is exactly as fuckable as an umbrella, or the letter R, or the concept of space time. I feel no sexual attraction nor revulsion.
If I do not put Sandy Cheeks on my list, does that mean I think she is not a woman, or that she is not a cartoon character? No. It simply means that it is not an exhaustive list, and I am not going to fill it with entry upon entry of disclaimers, simply because someone might see it, get the wrong idea, and think that I was stating that they weren’t women.
I can’t think of a single reason why Joe would, on a non-exhaustive list, include people that he has zero sexual feelings for, either positive or negative. And as far as I can tell, he has never stated the parameters that everyone assumes here – that it’s a list of every woman that Joe encounters regularly, and that Carla’s exclusion implies that he didnt think of her as a woman – and the evidence posed here, implies many times that there are women not on the list because he doesnt consider “doing” them.
Please prove me wrong. I want to be wrong. I want to be convinced. But my stupid brain is keeping me up and I can’t let this go. If Willis said somewhere that Joe didnt think of Carla as a woman, or if he said that Joe ranked *everyone,* then I will happily, gratefully, shut my yap and agree wholeheartedly that it was transphobic, because it demonstrated that Joe didnt *really* think of her as a woman, instead of just one that he felt nothing for.
You’re thinking of this as a ‘my list’ thing, not a ‘list of women I see ranked by fuckability’. Joe left Dorothy off while she was dating Danny but immediately added her back. He added women he did not know well enough to know their names like Jennifer and Sal. The point of the RSS feed is to establish the public nature of the list and that he did in fact want other men to read it for tips, so his personal attractions only go so far.
Every other woman in their dorm is on the list. Carla is not some shy butterfly who never comes out – she regularly skates up and down the halls, sometimes blaring loud music, demanding attention from new people she sees. The odds he doesn’t know her at least to the same extent he knew Sal, who is far more reclusive, is, shall we say, unlikely.
When Joe says “and that thing has grannies on it” it’s as an indicator for how LOW Joyce is that she isn’t being ranked at all. Joyce was a zero minus and Joe was angry when he saw her, so that ‘grannies are on it’ comment is not a positive about the women in question.
He sweet talks Rachel as a way to demonstrate to Danny how desperate lower scored women are. Not out of attraction. And we know Joyce is not the only zero on there.
You keep people you’re not into of your ‘potential partner’ list. You don’t keep them off your ‘help guys get laid’ list.
I support this. It’s just for a little while, cis people go grab a juice box and a snack for a bit. You’ll get gender and attraction opinions back soon.
I mean I feel like part of their argument is that there is no cis attraction. Or at least nobody can be attracted or unattached to people based on cis or trans cuz nobody can truly tell whom is what.
Look, I promise I’m not being a shithead here, it’s just that “there is no cis attraction” is a fucking hilarious phrase to read and I’m cackling like a coven of hen witches.
yeah people sure seem really excited to volunteer Their Personal Opinions about how fuckable they do or do not find people based on their Literal Genitals in here, he says in exhausted fucking trans dude.
They’ve been so busy having this argument in their heads, waiting for some librul to try and FORCE them to say something nice about [genital configuration] and they just won’t be silenced any longer.
There’s an episode of The King of Queens (starting Paul Blart) where the main guy, Doug, mentions getting a boat. I forget why, maybe he got some money from somewhere or maybe it was hypothetical. Anyway, he has this unusually firm, almost aggressive tone when he says what he wants to name it and why, and his wife is like “Wow, you’ve had this argument in your head a lot, huh.”
It’s like that, but with hypothetical quantum supercocks.
1. ‘Cis’ is a slur. Please do not use it.
2. EVERYONE gets to have an opinion about what they’re attracted to. As Roger Ebert put it years ago, humour and eroticism are the two things it is absolutely pointless to argue about. You can talk to me for an hour and a half about why your foot fetish is great, and I still won’t share it. Likewise, Hannah Gadsby isn’t funny.
No but for real, the only people offended by being called cisgender, are knuckle-scraping dipshits who don’t deserve a seat at the grown-up table. You’re not offended, you’re delirious from the lack of water in your system.
“No but for real, the only people offended by being called [tranny/ kike/ faggot/cisgender/ retard [CIRCLE ALL THAT APPLY]] are knuckle-scraping dipshits who don’t deserve a seat at the grown-up table. You’re not offended…”
Go away, troll. Either you listen to people when they tell you you’re being offensive, or you don’t.
Really fucked up that you’re okay throwing minorities and victimized groups of people under the bus to pretend you’re offended by a normal word that’s not a slur. Go fuck yourself, you pathetic bigot. People like you are the reason I’ve tried to kill myself four times in the past three years.
Cis isn’t a slur. That’s right up there with people who act as if pronouns are some sort of ‘trans dogwhistle’ or whatever when everyone has pronouns. What, are we going to say het or hetero is a slur next? C’mon. Be real.
It is. People keep telling you they are offended by it, and you don’t care.
Worse, you DO care, and just want to keep using it because you think it’s clever to ‘annoy the chuds’, or whatever.
I’m… not doing that at all? I think you’re projecting. I’m just stating the literal fact that using the word cis or cisgender isn’t a slur. What this tells me is that you’ve never experienced having a REAL slur thrown your way, and I think you should count your blessings and go to sleep and maybe have a hard think about the life you’re living.
It isn’t. You can whine and cry all you want, but “cisgender” is not a fucking slur. Grow up and deal with it, you pointless fucking child. Get a grip on fucking reality, before it smacks you on the ass and you’re left wondering why nobody wants you around anymore.
Since we’re just taking words turning them into slurs so we can have an offended Olympics apparently, I’m going to say that referring to pizza as a pie is a slur. That’s not a pie at all. I’m greatly insulted when other people use words and it makes me sad. My pizza is not a pie 🙁
I’m havin’ a real rough day. Somebody called me a brunette at the grocery store this morning. A different person saw me playing my guitar and called me a musician, a few weeks ago. It was awful.
Smh. I was called a brunette the other day as well, and it was just awful. The world that we live in today is so hard for brunettes! They say that word JUST to annoy us!!
A rude man looked at my furry child and called him a ‘cat’, I had to cover his ears and give him extra tuna treats to offset the trauma of the experience.
One time, I was at the auto shop and they called my 2006 Honda Civic a “car”. I set their building on fire that very night, after everyone has left. I was ten and five years old at the time (disgusting people will call that “fifteen”) though, so I was given a warning about disproportionate retribution.
https://i.imgur.com/pyt6N4s.jpeg I made this meme for you to commiserate this moment until this jackass and his comments disappear, feel free to save it or just enjoy it for a giggle!
You’re very brave to have set that building on fire. Maybe next time they’ll think twice before labeling items based on “dictionaries” and “words”! That’ll show them!
Better watch out, the cis catchers are driving around the neighborhood in their cis wagon, scooping innocent cisgender people up in their giant butterfly net to take them to the gender pound. Cis people are getting dragged out of their homes and gendered correctly by 99% of the population without complaint, be careful out there. Hey, watch your back, I heard there are roving gender gangs out and about this weekend, pointing at cis people and purchasing things with debit cards.
Again, thank you for so eloquently proving my point.
You’re a troll, who uses slurs for the express purpose of annoying people.
Nothing is served by further contact, because you have no purpose other than abuse and hate
I don’t know if you’ve seen this one but there was once a section so bad, it got completely deleted and replaced with a gif of Bugs Bunny sawing Florida off the continent.
Yeah that is specifically what I am referring to, was gonna be more explicit about it but couldn’t think how to phrase it. Hopefully most of the people that caused that had leave since then.
I’m post op trans, strictly female attracted. My rule is I’m in this till I’m told “I” am transphobic for not wanting a partner with a penis. The rate this conversation is going that’s about 25 more minutes. A precision orbital strike on this whole comment section will probably be the only way it stops.
Haha ok I was worried it was just me. I feel like you’re allowed to have genital preferences. I’m not implying that everyone psychically know what’s going on in everyone else’s pants. But if we’re talking attraction and coupling you’re valid to say “oh sorry not into that. Thank you for your time.”
I’m kind of the same on this topic. It’s fine to not be attracted to trans people sexually (as long as that’s your genuine reaction upon meeting them, not some pre-formed “if they’re trans I don’t want them” attitude), as long as you don’t treat them hatefully or negatively because of it. People honestly cannot help what they do or do not find attractive. It’s an instinctual reaction that happens pretty much within split seconds of meeting someone.
Kinda feels like there’s some level of mystique being/been built up around the private parts thing, yeah? As if it’s difficult to learn the information (literally just ask if you find a good spot in the conversation!) or requires wacky sitcom espionage. Like, if you’re super into somebody and learn they’ve got something downstairs you’re just not into, that’s going to require tact and an adult conversation.
Y’all know what else requires those things?
Literally every single other aspect of dating/courtship/fuckaroundery. All of them. If you can’t be normal about where the pee comes from, your partner can’t trust you to pick what to eat for breakfast, they can’t trust you to choose what music you’ll play in the car on the way to the bookstore, and they most definitely can’t trust you to help them up out of a chair you got a little too comfy in.
I want to agree with this. I really do. I adore .hack//, I love it to bits (okay the first 3 games which is all I’ve played ($200-$400 for the fourth game is fucking unreasonable)), but SIGN is boring. It’s boring. Nothing happens and they never shut the hell up about it.
Serial Experiments Lain is a mindfuck sci-fi series made back when the internet seemed weird and magical. Its been 20 years and I still don’t fully “get it”
Konosuba is “what if the protagonist of your isekai was a dipshit loser and all his party were also useless and stupid”
Overlords is “what if isekai but you’re the final boss” (so think. Truth be told I haven’t watched overlord)
The first one sounds groovy.
Is it just me (probably not), or does media about the Internet seem to have more interesting things to say about it before about 2008?
You know what, Joe, it’s fine. I’ll say the same thing I’ve said to the terfs since a few years ago when they made up this type of trans woman to be mad at; one who tells you you’re a transphobe if you aren’t attracted to her:
It’s fine if you aren’t looking for a woman to have a relationship or some sort of connection with, but rather a set of tits and a par of legs with a fuck hole between them.
In other words, if you made Joe’s Do list, I wouldn’t expect to be included on it. Now, if you wanted reassurance that your ideas about women, relationships and trans people are all fine despite defending that decision I may have worse news.
i feel like people are glossing over the fact that it isn’t just Carla that was excluded from the list but *any* trans people at IU of which there, both in real life and in comic, are likely dozens if not hundreds
I mean that’s sorta what I’m asking. Is Carla the only trans girl on that floor (narratively she’s the only one we know about) or are there others that were neglected. Joyce didn’t even know Carla was trans until yesterday. Does she know of any other trans girls on her floor? Would she recognize their names or descriptions? I’ll believe word of God but this is an ongoing conversation and I wanna feel it out.
Is this a fair point to bring up? Not defending the dumbass list here, but how many of those dozens-to-hundreds of people can we reasonably expect Joe to have encountered in his daily routine, take notice of, and then rate? I don’t think it’s quite as comprehensive a list as you’re making it sound here. He’s an idiot and a skeeze for making it, yes, but he’s one idiot skeeze.
It’s sorta my gripe. I wanna see more narrative but I feel like the comment section is pushing the idea that what Joyce is saying must be true or else she wouldn’t be saying it. Which like…as a reader I’m prone to ask questions and see where this is going and I feel like a lot of people see that as bad faith defense.
I’m gonna laugh my perfect ass off if tomorrow we find out Joyce is just wrong about this entirely. Everyone taking as gospel the spoken dialogue of characters who are constantly proven to be fallible little dipshits (AKA teenagers), and then Joe pulls up the list and is like “Oh wait no, here she is. 7/10, redhead with glasses #2” and these two go get ice cream or whatever the fuck straights do.
Boy am I glad to be AroAce! I get to opt out of this whole conversation and focus on how much I really like the details like their breath coming out in lil puffs to represent the temperature~!
Salmon and teal is such a pretty colour combination! Our neighbour has the PRETTIEST turquoise garage door and I really hope they paint the other pink one day.
I think that Joyce wasn’t as bothered by the inconsistencies presented by Joe or his insensitivity. But by the fact the conversation was suddenly about Joe and Dan and not about anything related to herself.
As of this particular moment, all evidence is not looking good for Joe.
I do wonder if it was a factor that, to rate Carla honestly, he would have to include the fact that she is trans, and not wanting to publish that, even about someone as out as Carla is. But the more I think about it the more it sounds like post hoc rationalization at best. Also as others have mentioned, he doesn’t actually know what’s in her pants, so if penis is a dealbreaker for him, he could just put “insufficient data” as he did for Asma (presumably for different reasons) (citation: https://www.dumbingofage.com/chubby/ )
I also wonder if, for example, Dina was on there, who I don’t believe Joe particularly considered a sexual being until significantly after the Do List was shut down. Which wouldn’t actually make Carla’s exclusion better, it’s just another thing I tangentally wonder.
Really, short of finding out there was another trans woman on the list who Joe knew was a trans woman at the time, I think the best we can hope for is some self-reflection that it turns out that there was yet another in the multitude of ways that the Do List was a shitty thing.
Gonna say this just to say it, Joe performing a transphobia in the past doesn’t doom him to the forever box of permanently performing transphobia. He can knock it off and stop that, and everyone in-universe and out can still admit he did it without saying he’s doing it now. In fact, it’s actually a good thing if he stops it and doesn’t do it anymore. This applies to real people too, but real people aren’t people so we’re not talking about them right now. It’s fine and not illegal to admit the character who isn’t currently misbehaving did misbehave previously.
Yeah. Step one would be owning up to his past actions and understanding a new way on which they were bad.
I pretty seriously doubt that’s gonna happen here, this conversation is already unsalvageable. But hey, maybe in-universe tomorrow (so in like a month?) we’ll get to see Joe do some pondering about it.
Not about Joe specifically but anyone who says “it’s not transphobic of me to not be attracted to any trans people ever”–the only thing all trans people have in common is being trans. Genitals you’re squicked by? Not all trans people of [x] gender have those. Other arbitrary feature you’re not into? Again: not every trans person has that, even if it’s the stereotype. People are people, and we all look different.
Literally THE. only. thing. they’d all have in common is being trans.
I’m definitely not saying anyone who’d say that HAS to go and hook up with a trans person–in fact, nearly all of us wouldn’t want to hook up with someone who’d make that statement to begin with–but when the one and only universal factor in common is being trans…. yyyyeah, I mean. Ya might wanna unpack the stereotypes/latent bigotry you might have going on there.
(Obviously this doesn’t apply to ace people or people who wouldn’t be attracted to *cis* people of a certain gender, either. It’s the crowds of people who come out any time the subject is even brushed against to proclaim “I’d never date a trans woman” or “I’d never date a trans man” while being perfectly happy to chase cis people of those genders. As if anybody actually asked.)
I don’t have the bandwidth to wade through the whole comment section on *this* subject to see if anyone else said it first (in which case, sorry to them) but I’m glad somebody appreciated it ^_^
This whole thing has me thinking that maybe Joe isn’t covering by not knowing who Carla is. I can’t think of a single time they’ve interacted, especially before he tried to reform himself. To him, she was probably nameless girl on the sidelines. Of course, we don’t have his list to see if say “girl with blonde hair” is on there or other similar descriptors. Unless… Has someone compiled it?
most girls aren’t on there by name. Sal was “chick with spider tattoo”, Asma “hijabi front desk girl” etc. (Notably he and Sal had also never interacted onscreen before, their first shared scene is one of Joe apologizing for the list.)
If you want to see more about it, it’s easiest to look through the chapter “The Do-List”.
Ooooh first fight incoming? I don’t think Joe is actually transphobic. Seems like he’d probably be fine if he found out a girl he was with was trans. But I think him being flippant about it is not going to work well with Joyce.
I get that Joe has rated women just on sight, but if he did that with Carla, how would he then deliberately exclude her from the list for being trans? He could only do that if he knew who she was.
I don’t differentiate my attraction to people based on gender (partially because I’m a sex-repulsed asexual) but you know what WILL make me decide real quick that you’re not attractive? Being a bigot. I’ve known far too many women who look the other way when their boyfriend or husband reveals himself to have some fucked up views because “teehee well… we can’t agree on everything”. So I appreciate Joyce bringing this up to actually discuss it at length with Joe!
Wait, The List was a (password) shared non-consensual ranking of female students’ hotness, with a news feed and subscribers, inviting Joe’s pals to review & compare scores…
How did I not click that Joe invented OG Facebook? (Ironically his tech / inventor stuff mostly went to Carla herself in this universe!)
Loading ...
Both.
You. Can. Be. BOTH.
I’m pretty sure that’s what Joyce is saying. Malaya responds to she or they.
oh Dan DEFINITELY wants to suck it
…Joe’s? dunno
Show Dan a photo of Joe posing nude with the head cropped off, then show him the full photo.
Joe posing nude–on a dragon.
Well that’s just cheating.
Is that a hannelore gravatar?
No.
absoLUTEly joe’s
in dan’s head they have been married since 4th grade
Joyce, Joe isnt homophobic or transphobic for not being attracted to trans women. And a list he made like, a year ago shouldnt be held against him the rest of his life.
the list wasn’t just women he was attracted to
that was kind of the point of the ratings
there were some zeroes
And I used to keep a record of how many times I could nut in a single day. Guys make all kinds of stupid lists.
Sure but I’m guessing you didn’t subsequently post it online with an RSS feed and subscribers so people could make their own cum tallies and compare their ‘scores’.
The technology didnt exist yet
This mf older than arcade cabinets
Joe didn’t post it online either – it was a word/google drive doc or whatever for his own use that someone else leaked to shame him
Yeah, for his own use and the use of anyone he gave the password to, which was anyone who’d listen.
Serious question, since I don’t know much about computer stuff. Can you have an RSS feed without posting it online? Is that a thing?
From what I can tell, not really. An RSS feed is supposed to help you keep track of your favourite webpages and you can’t really do that without a webpage.
You can’t, really, but you can have a password protected RSS feed that’s intended only for you. A rss feed is a list of time ordered html “items” (encoded into XML) each describing a single update; typically they’ll have some free HTML (for text, any image tags, etc), a title, and a link which points to the actual resource they’re an item for (so for a comic the link will point to the page of the comic, or if it’s badly coded, the image itself).
No, it was not a private doc for his own use. It was online with an RSS fee and subscribers. There was a password for it but he gave it out to people regularly. You don’t set up an option to SUBSCRIBE to your private digital black book.
Tenner says the right search term brings up at least a dozen of those.
Okay but that is like, just something about you and what you do in your spare time. It’s kind of very different when it involves rating the psysical apparence of other people, if you were doing it in your head, it would still be a bit weird but it’s whatever, writting it down in a really easy to access document it’s when it gets to creepy territory. That is absolutely the kind of things that should follow you at least for a bit.
How many times you nut doesn’t hurt anyone. But the do-list could’ve put the women on it in danger. It wasn’t just Joe’s personal list, he released it publicly.
Joe didn’t release it and it wasn’t public.
He was, however, shitty for making it and sharing it with any guy he met.
It was semi-public. It had an RSS feed for people to subscribe to. You don’t do that for a private webpage nobody is meant to see.
And he gave multiple people the damn password on-screen. I’ve suspected Raidah of leaking it in particular, since he straight up said “Oh, I haven’t given you the password yet? How remiss!” to her.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Carla turned out to have done it, not really knowing about the number of predators on campus.
Relevance??????
….. nowhere near the same motherfucking thing.
Nobody ever needed (or wanted) to know that about you, cowpoke. Not a single person has to know what you do with your own business.
Thank you this, I didn’t want to watch those arguments go around more.
ha ha ha ha you think they’re not going to still go around today, despite my interjections
*cries*
*hugs if wanted* Its gonna be a long night.
At least now people can say “As per Willis’s previous comment on this very page…”
Well, I mean, how much does he know really?
Willis thinks Linda is racist!
Here’s some fitting music, at least.
https://youtu.be/PGNiXGX2nLU
https://crowd.gamesdonequick.com/
super mario world and speedruns for charity happenin for when you need a break from that crap
H– how though? Like, who is transphobic and keeping up with THIS comic? THIS comic!!!! Like, I could see a misinformed good faith “Okay, I like (dead name), but I’m concerned about (parroted talking point)”, and to have a ton of comments pointing out all the problems with all that, but who the hell is still going out of their way to troll about trans people in THESE comments!? Like, this comic is not big enough to get a real shitstorm going, and the people reading THIS comic for a decade plus probably aren’t about to be swayed by anti-trans arguments. “You know, I’ve been getting invested in Jocelyne for about a decade, and I really care about her, and she seems happy now, but then I saw a comment suggesting (whatever would get a transphobe banned), and I suddenly forgot all of that and now think (transphobic gobbledygook).” Like, is that likely to fucking happen HERE!?
You’d think not, but OOF Patreon was messy last night.
Looks like I was lucky that my subscription expired that day.
Believe it or not, it was worse than this. At least one person, possibly two, got banned.
I was going to ask if patreon allowed banning. Also I wonder if the Russian agents (this is a real thing I’ve read legit news stories about) who sow this kind of discontent have started paying for the privilege.
For. Real.
WHAT!? Bu– how— WHO THE HELL LOVES THIS COMIC SO MUCH THEY’LL PAY MONEY TO SUPPORT IT, AND HASN’T CLUED IN THAT THIS COMIC IS VERY MUCH PRO DIFFERENT PEOPLES!!!
as it turns out, being able to pay for patreon subscription doesn’t automatically mean less bigoted, WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?
9-9
More than one person, unfortunately.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/antagonize/
believe me, this HARDLY the only time that shit happens 👀
COMMENTS ARE CLOSED EVEN!?!?!? WHAT THE FUCK!? AND THAT’S ONE OF MY FAVORITE COMICS!!! I’ve been using that term “acceptable losses” ever since, it’s genuinely useful to understanding that behavior. How!? Wh- I don’t- How!?
See, some people might say “Come now, you can’t be so shocked by these things, you naive Cockney orphan!”, but I honestly think we (as a species) should be more shocked about that level of nonsense, and then act our best in an attempt to crowd it out and stuff its voice into a matchbox in the corner of the deepest cabinet we can find.
A TERF forum found that one. Closing the comments was necessary, believe me.
TERFs suck so much.
Some people were arguing yesterday wherever there actually was other zeroes besides Joyce, so thanks for the confirmation.
Feels like a retcon given what Joyce had said but at least it’s confirmed one way or the other now.
Lots of transphobes even fetishize trans women.
Dream Girl’s actress is beautiful on Supergirl but attraction to her doesn’t mean you’re more or less transphobic.
Just whether you acknowledge their humanity.
Ok yes but thats not my point.
He ISNT transphobic for NOT being attracted to someone
so he should’ve put her on the list with a zero
instead of not on the list at all
That is true.
It’s a slight definitely and a deliberate one.
You have great insight into Willis, Willis.
It’s like he’s got a direct line to the author’s mind. Trippy, but kinda cool.
Wouldn’t giving the one trans woman on his list a zero be pointedly worse than just not putting her on the list at all?
Depends what he says in the description. Could be as simple as ‘not my type, your mileage may vary’.
Hell, you could even say it’s because Carla’s not into men so don’t waste your time trying.
joyce herself was canonically a negative zero for a while
“Yes, for the sensible reason of engaging in domestic violence.”
– From the Committee of Defending Joe Regardless of Logic
well negative zero IS very much a thing in floating point arithmetic on computer hardware, such as in the widespread IEEE 754 standard such that
1 / -0 = -infinity
… not quite sure how that would fit into the specifics of his rating scheme, but neat food for thought i guess XD
He didn’t know she existed at the time, as per his not knowing who she is now
Well, he doesn’t know her by name anyway.
He has seen her canonically a grand total of one time
That we know of. They live on the same floor and she skates down the hallway all the time and at least once (on Patreon) blared loud ass music while she did so for Carla Awareness Week.
An important difference.
But yesterdays thing said she hadn’t been introduced yet! So Joe didn’t know she existed. I believed it!
No, but it IS transphobic to make a list of almost everyone you know (assuming people like his mom aren’t on it) and rank them by fuckability and then not include the one out trans woman in the group of women you know.
Almost every WOMAN you know. I wish this was Patreon with it’s edit button.
But Joe even know Carla existed?
If he’s genuine about not knowing her, that’s probably his only real way out of this awkward talk. I think if it were true though he’d have been more emphatic about it by now though.
Joe knew pretty much every girl on Joyce’s floor existed, and a girl as loud, tall and annoying as Carla would be rather difficult to miss
Maybe she is on the list but not AS carla
Maybe this will affect the trout population.
It feels dangerous to wade into this conversation with anything other than complete agreement but I think that’s a stretch. If he’s not attracted to trans people the same way he’s not attracted to men or to family then it makes just as much sense to exclude them from the list as anyone else who was excluded. Are we really going to police peoples minds and force them to consider all trans people as potential partners? In an ideal world we wouldn’t even know people were trans but the medical technology just isn’t there yet. You can’t culturally guilt someone into biological attraction.
I think a lot of this hinges on what getting a low score on his list means. Was he still open to fooling around with girls with low scores? Personally I don’t think he would bother adding someone to the list that he actually had no interest in.
He had other women he wasn’t attracted to on the list. There were zeros. This was not a list of potential partners for Joe. It was a list of women he knew around campus organized by fuckability that he gave out to other guys to help them get laid. If Joe simply wasn’t attracted to her, he’d have given her a zero.
I think being included on the list at all implies a level of interest. Joyce specifically asks if she’s the only zero because she didn’t see any others in the list.
There were others listed on it. As Willis said, if it was only that he wasn’t interested in Carla, she’d just be a zero.
Nobody’s policing minds, nobody’s forcing anyone, nobody’s culturally guilting anyone. It’s not happening. It’s not a real thing. It’s made up. For your own health, it’s best to purge those thoughts from your mind and not worry about things that aren’t, won’t, and can’t happen.
This is a fictional situation we are discussing and we are the ones policing Joes thoughts. Please quit trying to cast me as some sort of trans conpiracy theorist. Trust me, I’m well aware that IRL nobody except my partner cares who I am attracted to.
I’m not trying to cast you as anything, I just genuinely didn’t pick up on the subtext of Joe’s fake thoughts being the policed ones. Although if that’s the case, it makes thought policing Fine, Actually™ because if the thoughts are in a fake person’s head, there’s no possible way to harm that character by circumcising their thoughts. It’s a victimless non-crime.
But Joe did not only put women he was attracted to on the list, he put all the female students on it, or all most all, and left Carla out. Meaning, he does not see her has a woman.
That does not mean he has to be an absolute shit transphobic person for that, it just means that he might have some subconscious transphobic bias he can work on.
It was a year ago for us – not for Joyce.
Yeah, for Joyce the list came out like 4 months ago. It’s still following Joe around.
Only a year?
i mean i know we’re dealing an extreme case of comic book time, but in-universe the do list went public like, months ago max
sorry, dropped a word somehow there; that should have been “four months ago, max”
I didn’t see this mentioned because the first part of what you said is objectionable enough on it’s own but “a few months” is hardly “for the rest of his life”. That’s so dramatic. People are within reason to mention something you did literally this school year lmao.
Oh it was mentioned just lower down lol STILL THO
Maybe trans women will stop having an opinion on your opinion of their fuckability when you stop sharing that opinion completely unsolicited. It can be an inside thought. Wasn’t that the whole point of the do list storyline?
Joe is in to Joe x Jocelyne! The crack ship has some hope!
I thought I was the only one that psuedo-shipped it. (Just for a soap opera like drama moment when Joe and her kiss cuz she looks like Joyce and Joyce catches them and now she’s thrust into a love triangle between her boyfriend and her older sister.)
Ditto, Joyce.
I’m also increasingly disliking this conversation, but for different reasons.
somewhere across campus, Sal is suddenly pissed off and doesn’t know why
Yeah, gender affirming via objectification is certainly a thing among transwomen (according to my biased three sources) but i think most people would just prefer Joe to keep his opinions to himself.
hey no more than it is among anybody else
Weird inverse I had, past hookup ghosted me because he realized he was straight. Being ghosted isn’t the best, but that was a pretty gender affirming reason for it, so on the whole, not terrible.
Right, but her point is “the only info I had on whether you thought of trans women as women implied that you did not”. He didn’t keep his opinions to himself, and they said something to Joyce that she’s trying to talk about.
r/ewwphoria
That’s not the damn point Charles. Even if the list was gross and misogynistic, it was a HUGE list and seemed to have pretty much every girl on Joyce’s floor EXCEPT Carla. Joyce was on there and had literally been rated ZERO. Carla’s omission reveals the list was also transphobic
I agree it was.
IIrc wasn’t it a “fuckability” list, not an “appearance” list? As in, like, if he could get in their pants or not.
Well, if a guy could/would want to get her pants anyway.
Joyce being a zero was a special situation, that was Joe making a statement about her as a person. I think the lowest proper score we know of is a 3 but I didn’t reread the entire comic to check.
I’m pretty sure anybody who knows Carla is trans ALSO knows that she is, I am pretty sure, at least mostly a lesbian.
And also that she’s 100% a pain in the neck!
Carla ardently identifies as an asexual who is very sex repulsed
Joyce didn’t and I think there’s lots of clueless people who don’t realize Carla is famous.
Joe too, probably, considering he doesn’t even know who she is.
Joe is not a reliable narrator. Particularly when he’s doubling down.
Have Joe and Carla ever been on a page together?
Someone checked and they’ve literally only interacted once and briefly.
Was it before or after the list being revealed and/or his attempts to change his negative behavior?
They’ve been on less than a handful of pages together, and they’ve never really directly interacted.
These two are such a riot.
Joe, please, I am BEGGING you, turn off the nonchalance and get into genuine feelings territory for like ten minutes or this is gonna get really ugly really fast.
Not being into any individual trans woman (or any individual characteristic) is one thing, but categorically excluding them from a ‘women you could bang’ guide you want people to subscribe to is gonna raise an ugly question. Not that any woman loves being misogynistically objectified but when you’re excluded because the person doesn’t see you as a woman? It’s a horrible rock and hard place.
I feel like Joe absolutely does not want to revisit that period of his life and is grossed out that Joyce is making it a litmus test of his behavior.
Mind you, I think he’s absolutely ducking the question.
Because it really is, “Joe, when you were a gross misogynist, did you not consider Carla bangable because of her trans status?”
It’s not even about Joe considering her ‘bangable’ really. It’s about whether or not he considered her a woman and therefore worth ranking, even if some of his subscribers may be interested in knowing how to get with her.
Honestly my guess is that Joe excluded Carla for entirely unrelated reasons (maybe he didn’t even know she existed, judging from yesterday’s strip) and Joyce is zooming into ‘it’s because she’s trans, isn’t it?!’ as a possible reason.
I think it’s less “is zooming into” and more “is worried that could be it”
Yeah, Joe might have been transphobic before the gender studies class, it doesn’t mean he is now. He was also a gross misogynist back then, and I don’t think Joyce even knew trans people existed. He also literally might just not have a clue who Carla is.
What matters is who he is NOW, and he’s 100% chill with Jocelyne and definitely seems to see her as a woman.
Honestly, at this point, somehow genuinely not knowing who Carla is is his best shot at getting out of this.
Yep, I’m being reminded of other moments in the comic where Joyce specifically has been asked to answer for horrible shit she no longer believes. Interesting (but not surprising) that she’s asking Joe to do a similar thing now.
She isn’t though. She’s asking him IF he believes that Carla is a woman (ofc she IS whether he believes that or not). Joyce is letting Joe speak for himself on a topic she has concerns about. The mention of the list is evidence for WHY she thought he might not be trans positive.
Honestly, I’m leaning towards an internal “oh, huh” realization, combined with realizing ramifications, and not having time to process that while being put on the spot and pressured.
This.
Yeah. He could do a lot better by saying “Hey, I’m trying really hard to disavow that list in all ways, it doesn’t reflect who I am or my beliefs right now” instead of being annoyingly evasive like this. While Joyce is pretty much dredging stuff up that she’s been letting lie for their whole relationship, he’s reacting in a really defensive and unproductive way.
Yep, we have to realize and admit our unconscious biases to work on them and become better people.
To be honest I would assume him not including Carla has more to do with him not wanting to do anything to risk pissing off the child of billionaires before I thought it had anything to do with Carla being trans
The fact that her not being included would be more likely to piss off Carla specifically is just Joe miscalculation and he is extremely lucky she chose not to look
Joe ignoring Carla🤝🏻 Joyce making Carla uncomfortable.
Joe: “Not that I’m THINKING about boning your hot sister, who looks like you but older. That certainly isn’t doing things to my brain”
Joyce: “I shouldn’t have let you meet my mom”
Joe, biting his lip: “No, you shouldn’t have”
Mike’s Ghost: “Lots of people met her …at a nickel a piece.. “
Joe’s chemistry with Jocelyn was off the charts.
When Joyce and Dorothy hook up, Joe should get with Jocelyn.
I would be funny if DoA could break the “atheist rule” once or twice and, like, to make ghosts or some other-than-christian entity appears.
I mean… Amazi-girl and Amber had Tulpa(?)!Mike for a bit?
“Joyce. Do NOT invite me to any family reunions”
I’m actually curious what Joyce’s endgame is with this.
She knows that Joe’s cool with Jocelyne (and presumably other trans people, by definition), but it feels like she’s trying to gotcha him with ‘ha, you’re not actually THAT cool with them, are you!’
She was saying yesterday that she wasn’t sure where Joe stood on trans stuff, and this is something that was in her mind as part of her uncertainty about it. So she’s explaining how the list connected to her views on his views.
Yeah, her trying to have a conversation about a concern is definitely a “gotcha” moment. Definitely not the normal adult thing to do when you have a concern.
Don’t you know that everyone is always out to get you all the time for no reason?
Yeah, I take 20mg of escitalopram daily for that.
Well, I’m supposed to. I take 1mg of guanfacine daily for that.
Well, I’m supposed to.
Fun fact: being polite to trans people’s faces is a good start, but even better is actually thinking of us as our gender!
She’s had to grow a lot as a person. She’s trying to help Joe do the same
It’s sweet of her, really.
It would be lovely if more cis people had these kinda conversations with each other! Trans people are so very, very tired of having to hand hold defensive cis people through even the most superficial amount of self-reflection on how they view trans people!
I agree pretty strongly. It’s cool that the conversations happen at all, but golly if it ain’t slow goin’ even nowadays.
right? i mentioned this a few strips ago and might as well mention it again:
Social Justice is a verb
I know what you are saying, that social justice requires individual action. But that’s an awkward way of saying it and technically wrong. To justice, though unconventional, works to describe relivant actions to bring about justice. To social justice doesn’t because social is not an adverb. It would have to be, to justice socially.
Look, if you take social justice into your own hands, does that make you a social vigilante?
I’m social Spider-Man.
*slams desk* BRING ME PICTURES OF SOCIAL SPIDER-MAN!!
like we literally talked about this last time, it ain’t about no white english grammar shit
wat im sayin is Social Justice ain’t about where ya at, it’s about what ya doin and the direction ya goin, about active commitment to making the world a more inclusive place for folk like us :)
I’m sorry, I’m sure there’s cogent analysis to be had about this strip and how we approach attraction and gender identity and sexuality because its a really fascinating topic…
…but I’m just here snickering at “to bestow womanhood with my boner”.
Smooth as butter, Joe :D.
This weirdly reminds me of the people who argued whether Linda’s mom was racist against Sal because she was darker skinned than her brother even after Willis said, “Oh yes, that was absolutely going on.”
Dammit, not Linda’s mom but Linda.
Sigh, I second the wish for an edit button.
Could I ask what specifically remind you of that?
Basically, it seems very much set up this is about Joe confronting a real issue of his and all the evidence is there but a lot of people want to find an excuse that precludes prejudice being the root.
Ah yeah that makes sense. And it would probably be more heated since it comes from a character people actually cares about.
Because we should always assume innocence until guilt is proven. The author out-right saying the character is guilty of the accusation (in this strip’s case, transphobia/transmisia, and in the previous case you refer to, racism) is definitely proof, and arguing it after the fact is dumb for sure, but the people arguing in defense of the character before evidence to the contrary is presented are entirely justified.
Okay but that is not what we are talking about. This is specifically about the ones that continue to argue it after the evidence has been shown.
Evidence is for libcuck pronoun SJWs.
Would I regret Googling libcuck?
You could leave the last word off and assume the answer is always “yes”.
What evidence is there that Joe was transphobic/misic back then? If the author says so either in or out of story, sure, but iirc that hasn’t been established, so assuming the character is/was isn’t fair to the character, and indicates that one might have a predisposition to doing so IRL as well, which is a terrible primary mode of thought to have. It very much is what we’re talking about.
Well, that’s what they’re talking about. Joyce brought up Carla being omitted from the list, despite the presence of everyone else, and how that looks. She’s looking for an assurance he sees trans women as women because the limited information she has on his views may suggest he does not.
Also… this might just be a difference of opinion but innocent until proven guilty is a legal standard, not a social one. It’s an important legal standard, but nobody needs to hold to it in their personal interactions and sometimes, when it comes to bigotry, it’s safer not to. Hell, even with some crimes, it’s safer not to in day to day interactions. Most rapists never spend a single day in court, never mind jail, so a lot of women are not willing to hang around a man with a credible accusation of rape against them. Sure, maybe the guy is in the slim minority that is really falsely accused but very few are willing to risk their safety to find out.
And also….Joe is a fictional character. I think it’s a little silly to assume that because someone thinks something is okay to do with a fictional character where all the information that exists is in the comics and the author’s comments is automatically fine to do to a real person. I’ve wished pretty grizzly deaths on fictional villains that I would NEVER wish on a real person. Hell, I wouldn’t ship real people or speculate about their inner lives the way I do fictional character backstories, thoughts and personality quirks. They just aren’t the same thing. I do think a lot of people think it would be a stronger narrative and a more thematically consistent thing if this is a real unexamined issue Joe had and so that’s what they think will happen.
Wow I didn’t know “gymnastics” was a language now.
Walkin’ through the comments with a boombox, blaring “Entry of the Gladiators” at maximum volume.
Isn’t this conversation… ridiculous? Does not wanting to sleep with a transgender woman make me a bad person? Baloney! Does Joyce want to have sex with transgender men?
s’gonna be a long day huh
You k ew what your audience what’s like, you knew that people were gonna be weird about it. (Genuinely sorry for the amount of bullshit you probably gonna see as this unfold)
yo better braaaace…
Yep.
<3
Hopefully some people will read the Word of God/Cheese above.
CoolioAAAhereItGOES.gif
👀
ILU Willis, I’m not sure how to word this but it’s really cool you’re here to nudge the comments section into the right direction
Not wanting to sleep with a trans woman? Not necessarily. Not considering her a woman as may be evidenced by your very public ‘List of Women Ranked By Fuckability’? Yes.
*very made-public-against-your-will-and-wasn’t-intended-to-be-public list of women ranked by fuckability
It WAS intended to be public. It had an RSS feed and subscribers. The fact it wasn’t supposed to get back to the women on the list doesn’t make it not so.
The problem Joyce is pointing out is that it was a list of all the women he knew, ranked by how much he wanted to have sex with them, including ones he did not want to have sex with. Carla was not on the list at all, and Joyce is interpreting this as him deliberately excluding her because he did not see her as a woman. If he doesn’t want to sleep with a trans woman, she should be a 0 on the list, not excluded from it.
Now, we don’t actually know if Joe even knows who Carla is, and even if he did exclude her for being trans, this was pre-Gender Studies class and pre-character development Joe, who was already a gross misogynist, and says nothing about how he sees Jocelyne.
In order to be attracted to ONLY cis women, you would need to be able tell which women were trans on sight, with 100% accuracy
This is not possible. What IS possible is being shitty and weird if you find out someone you find attractive is trans and/or refusing to date them even if you totally would date an identical cis woman, which is transphobic for the same reason it would be racist to refuse to date or acknowledge even the POTENTIAL for attractiveness of Black women
And before anyone tries to bring up “genital preferences”, let me say
(1) You don’t actually know what’s in a trans person’s pants
(2) No you wouldn’t be able to tell
(3) Fuck off
Thats… Mostly true.
You can actually stop being attracted to someone at any point in a relationship. I’m mostly only attracted to geeks but I obviously can’t tell if a girl is a geek or not until I talk to her about dragonball.
You can stop being attracted to someone because of trouble in the bedroom. You can not be attracted to people cuz they snore or cuz they have a kink you don’t share. The act of attraction is not just “love at first sight”. Personally I’m a personality first, features 2nd. Of the girls I’ve dated none have been my “type” physically but I clicked emotionally. Which I wouldn’t have found out unless we talked. Same for people I find suuuuper attractive but wanna flee the room when they speak.
I’m a bit put off by the genital preference bit cuz having sexual preferences is valid as hell. Sure you might not know what genitals someone had on sight but it’s also not like you can “only” find out by bedding them or that you’re completely in the wrong for even having a preference. If someone doesn’t like something they do not have to like it. Doesn’t make you any less a man or woman just because your partner doesn’t vibe with your parts.
t. A heterosexual cis male who doesn’t like vaginas
Notice I didn’t say genital preferences were invalid. I said they were fucking irrelevant, because trans people can have any genital configuration cis people have
Technically you didn’t say it was irrelevant either. You just kinda brought it up. And sure trans people can. If you’re with a trans person and you like everything about them but get squicked out cuz they’re trans that’s rude. But if you’re just not into their parts then it’s not necessarily transphobic , especially if sex is important to you.
I find this a very complex issue cuz human rights are easy. We know what everyone is owed. But nobody is owed attraction. And attraction isn’t always purposeful or conscious. And of all the things we can police I think this is the one we cannot.
Even if someone is objectively not attracted to black women. I can call that racist but my mom isn’t attracted to white men. I’m attracted to Asian and black women more than other races. I. Also prefer heavier girls to skinny girls. Tall girls to short girls. Black hair to blonde hair. Short blonde skinny girls are objectively NOT my type. I always question how appropriate it is to call out these standards but at the end of the day this shit kinda complex.
“Even if someone is objectively not attracted to black women. I can call that racist but my mom isn’t attracted to white men”
You aren’t saying those two things are equivalent right? Please tell me that isn’t what you are saying.
😛
Haha I had a feeling that would make someone mad. I make it a point to be aware of biases even when they’re backed by systemic oppression. If you’re not down with that it’s ok. But I don’t want to ever judge anyone for the crime of being born, even into a system where they benefit from it.
I wasn’t mad as much as weirded out, just like with this responses. Because that is a weird way to look at this specific topic.
Things can be analogous without being at all equivalent.
I AM Trans, I’ve been trans longer than most of this forum has been alive and yes whats in your pants can matter a LOT, Not everybody is BI, the idea that you think your sense of entitlement is more important that other peoples sexuality choices is mind boggling.
Its perfectly OK to not want to sleep with a person who’s genitals are not something you find sexually attractive. That does not mean you are transphobic, it means you are not BI! Not everybody is BI, some of us have been raped and do NOT handle the sight of a penis well.
Supporting someones gender identity does mot mean you are obligated to consider them a sexual partner, or to interact with genitals that go against your own personal orientation, you have to treat people with respect, but you are allowed your own orientation. Its ok to not want a penis, its ok to not want a vagina. stop telling other people how they have to run their sexual feelings.
While people cannot help what genitals they are and are not interested in, you do not need to be bi to not care about a trans partners genitals.
Also, this is totally irrelevant to the rest of your post but I think you’re wildly underestimating how young this forum is. A lot of people are here from when Willis was posting It’s Walky or Roomies, which WAS back in the 90s when you said yesterday that you realized your identity. Hell, I was born in the late 90s so maybe longer than I’ve been alive but I’d wager not a good chunk of us.
That might be a good poll idea for a less stressful day. Get an idea of how many of us are still around the age of these characters. XD
What the fuck, this could be the biggest bombshell of the night. I swear to god I thought you were like 50, 56. Couldn’t explain why, but wow.
XD You’re not the first person to overestimate my age online and won’t be the last. I turn 29 in April.
That should be how OLD this forum is.
I get where both of them are coming from on here, even if, as the alt-text points out, Joyce isn’t really on the steadiest ground passing judgments on this topic.
I do think it’s a fantastic thing to establish in a relationship where you stand on certain stuff, so I get why Joyce really wants to know here. I also get why Joe is uncomfortable with the topic.
For the record, that’s not me saying Joe can’t have had transphobia. DoA is about a bunch of people in their late teens and early 20s and their personal growth, and it’s very possible Carla wasn’t on the list due to him dismissing her for transphobic reasons, I am strictly talking about why Joe would be irreverent instead of engaging with this fully seriously from the word go, since regardless of where he stood, he’s probably antsy about the conversation’s implications, given he’s under scrutiny.
Joe was extremely misogynistic at the beginning of the comic, so pre-Gender Studies class Joe also being transphobic wouldn’t be a surprise to me.
He’s grown since then and respects women now, and I’d say he definitely respects trans women based on his reaction to Jocelyne.
Well, Joyce knows he’s outwardly respectful of Jocelyne around her. That may not reflect his feelings on the matter more generally and I think that’s what concerns her right now.
When did this list appear? In which strip?
It’s come up many times, but the earliest mention is in the first storyline where Joe asks Danny if he’s subscribed to the list’s RSS feed.
Have
Have you read the comic
Like at all
Never mind, I figured it out. Thanks.
Most excellent. Sorry if my other comment came across as harsh or nasty.
Came across? It was. Weaksauce apology.
Respectlessly, it’s not for you.
A perfect answer.
The more important part of the strip is that my bi Joe dreams remain alive?
He has canonically hooked up with more than one gender. Bi Joe lives and rides eternal!
Hava Nagila! <3 ^^
NGL this makes me really happy
https://www.dumbingofage.com/pissier/ appropriate link
That’s a good link, thank you.
Similarly, the alt text raises a really good point.
Interested to see where this story goes. Feel like a lot of very direct invitations from the author to stay silent and be thought a fool rather than speak and confirm it, or however that quote goes.
Semi-related tangent, but did we ever find out how the list got out in the first place?
Serious answer: Not yet, no.
Fun answer: Somebody left the window open.
While this is certainly not for/at/involving me in any way, let me nonetheless say that I appreciate the format you have used here for this response. If there’s a next time I call you an asshole, you can and should throw this in my face.
Who are you?
As the alt text points out, Joyce is a very interesting person to be bringing this up. Makes sense in the context of two new partners trying to have tough conversations, but Joyce is also asking Joe about a time period in which she herself was only just beginning to escape being a full-on evangelical Christian — and I can attest from very firsthand experience that that crowd isn’t, uh, known for being kind to trans people.
Joe needs to answer this honestly and admit the implications, but I’m willing to bet that early-first-semester-Joyce would have had some truly awful things to (ignorantly, cheerfully) say if prompted directly. Which I predict will also come up in this conversation.
Hope these two knuckleheads can be honest and open about this: it’s really hard to untangle some of these prejudices though thankfully they’re both trying to make it work (instead of actively using it as ammo in a fight, etc)
Honestly, I think Joe’s best answer, which I think Joyce should be considering, is that the Do-List is something that was a terrible thing that he is ashamed of in general and he absolutely considers Jocelyn a woman.
Also, whatshername, the redhead.
Basically, Joyce is right to call him out but does she realize the Do-List is something he’s disgusted he did in the past? That bringing it up may awaken trauma?
I suspect Joyce realizes that it’s not fair to use the Do List as an indictment of Joe’s current feelings: it’s something he actively regrets and has worked hard to live down, and she knows that.
Whether or not he was transphobic in the PAST, and is willing to admit that, maybe is still on the table as a valid question. Not sure the best way to broach that is to invoke the worst thing Joe has likely ever done, but it’s a fraught conversation and there’s likely no true “good” way to broach it.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/joe+carla/
3 strips in which they both appeared, no actual interactions shown, except I guess Joe lurking while Carla looked at Joyce’s toe… at a time when Joe had moved well beyond keeping his list. Heck, I think all three strips are post-List and Apology.
Let’s see…
First is Joe barely on-screen, and given the previous strip, likely directing the vast majority of his attention to either Joyce’ wellbeing and/or ire towards Jacob out of jealousy
Second’s one where they’re in notably separate locations, assumedly with Carla as an observer from afar with Joe’s awareness of it being dubious at best
Third’s with Carla implied in the background off-screen with Joe’s attention being solely on Joyce
Conclusion – Joe has little to no awareness of Carla’s existence due to all canonical interactions between them being even less than between Legolas and Frodo in LotR (Legolas had one five-word line in which he spoke to Frodo, Joe and Carla haven’t even had a single word spoken between them)
there also don’t exist strips with joe and sal until a scene where he apologizes for the list. and he did rate her. (this is likely also true for multiple other women on there, but sal IS another main character). we just don’t spend every waking moment of their lives with every character.
I’m just confused. Based on yesterday’s strip Joe doesn’t even know who Carla is. Have they even met? I assumed Joe’s list was just based on girls he’s seen. Joyce even has to describe Carla to Joe. And honestly if you’ve been in the vicinity of Carla you would remember her, even if you were transphobic. The bright red head roller skating and throwing pies and shouting her own name would be hard to miss or forget. Is Carla the literal only girl in the whole school who is not on the list? Is there a quantity of other trans women at this school that are also not on his list. Is there not a quantity of cis women at this school who are not on Joe’s list?
I genuinely can’t tell if Joyce’s argument is meant to be reasonable or if she’s just being paranoid here.
I think on one strip someone in the dorms said about the list, “we’re all on here”. Other than, well we know, Carla.
But presumably not every woman at the school is on the list, given that Joe didn’t even know the engineering school had women and he only wanted to add Rachel to the list like… months into the semester (when Becky visited).
It’s entirely possible that Joe was being transphobic and it’s entirely possible that he excluded Carla for other reasonable reasons, Joyce is just very concerned about the first possibility.
“Months” is overstating it: I’m pretty sure his Do List got leaked before the leaves changed, and “Season One” (I.e. the first ten years) ended before Halloween. Everything we see in first semester happens in, like, five weeks.
The list was leaked mid-late October, it’s now mid-late January.
He might have seen her, and could describe her appearance/characteristics, but he might just not know her name.
(I think there’s been at least one other person on his list that he described without giving a name.)
He described both Jennifer and Sal without names and it doesn’t seem like he’d had substantial interaction with Sal so he’d have to have literally never even seen Carla walking around.
Sal and Jennifer are next door neighbors to Joyce. The Rachels, Mary, etc also all live like very near her.
Carla’s at the end of the hall. That doesn’t mean Joe couldn’t have seen her, but it makes it possible.
Carla skates up and down the halls all the time and is very loud, doing stuff like playing loud music to get attention. She’s hard to miss.
Joyce seems to be working through some thoughts in real time, tbh. It’s probably better to have Joe here to respond directly, as opposed to her building some kind of story in her head in private and being Weird™ at him for it. The two of them do tend to work out their quibbles best in person.
I’m reading his comments as a bit of a self-conscious dodge, to be honest. That he’s downplaying his actions because he’s anxious about where Joyce is going with this and, while he accepts that he was being a sexist jerkass back then, he’s not exactly eager to add another thing he was shitty about to the pile.
I don’t think its ever been stated outright if Carla was on the list, but if everyone in the ladies wing of that dorm was on the list *except* Carla, then it kinda does make claims of “i just didn’t know who she was” a fair bit dubious.
Still, we’re mid-scene. This is the time to comment on funny bits and laugh and let things play out, and save the deep commentariat stuff until we actually know the full facts of the situation.
To be fair I get that. I usually deflect with humor when I’m nervous too. And there’s kinda no way to confront people about biases, subconscious or otherwise that doesn’t come across as an attack on their character.
I think a big issue I see people run into is getting really mad when people don’t wanna admit when they were wrong or have biases they don’t consider cuz in all honesty. It is hard. Your ego almost exists solely to protect you from perceived social harm to yourself. Everyone wants to think they’re s good person when people get fight or flighty when they feel like they’re under attack.
Wait I’m confused, was Joe even aware of Carla’s existence when he originally made the list? Not that Joe having unconscious transphobic bias is impossible (it certainly is, even for well-meaning people), but if Joe wasn’t even aware of her existence (let alone if she was trans) when the list was made, isn’t that more the primary factor for Carla not even being on the list than anything else?
I think if Joe had no recognition at all of Carla, this strip would’ve played out differently.
From a purely meta level, I think we’re past the point where “Joe didn’t know Carla therefore the question is moot” is going to be the resolution. I think we’re gearing up for a discussion at minimum, and possibly an argument/conflict.
But didn’t Joe literally just express having no recognition at all of Carla in yesterday’s strip? That’s why I am confused, because so far I haven’t seen anything (or remember anything at the moment) indicating that Joe’s previous lack of recognition of Carla shouldn’t be treated as genuine?
Joe probably doesn’t know her name but knows her by sight. I recognized 10x more people than I “knew” at my college campus.
So when Joyce described her physically in this strip, Joe’s brain likely went “uh oh, Carla must be the trans woman I never took an interest in and didn’t even include on the list, and Joyce noticed her absence. This does not reflect well on past me being good at treating trans women like women.”
See also Willis’s comment up higher, that Joe marked multiple women as really low or zeroes. Joe isn’t obligated to be ATTRACTED to Carla. But not putting her on a list where he put every other woman, regardless of attraction to them, would have dicey implications.
If that’s the intended assumption we’re supposed to make (that Joe is familiar enough to recognize Carla by sight, and thus would had the minimal awareness of her an individual to rank when he made his list) then that hasn’t been conveyed very well in the comic so far. Now I agree what you’re describing is easily very possible, but I simply haven’t seen enough apparent textual evidence for that to be my default understanding of the narrative text so far.
There’s a good chance we’ll have some of this answered in the next strip, tbh.
Joe included a bunch of women he didn’t know, like Sal. He just included them under pseudonyms. Even if he genuinely doesn’t know Carla’s name, that wouldn’t preclude him from including her. And Carla is loud, obnoxious and skates around the hallways all the time. It’d be hard to miss her. So that is a pretty surprising turn of events if it’s true.
FYI – I think we’re meant to take that Joe not knowing who Carla is, is something he’s absolutely lying about,
Especially if she’s his cousin.
😀
Carla is Joe’s cousin?
It’s a joke that Carla must be related to Joe and Rachel somehow due to being their child in another reality.
Snorts quietly at the alt text.
yeah legitimately like. How could ya actually know that about his bang list, let alone if he knows someone is trans she doesn’t know…? And also, as joe points out here: Literally what would that even mean or not. Its also a list and behavior he dont do and has genuinely grown from so Who Care.
(she care, bc she’s trying to work out how to deal with being cool with trans people at all)
I proclaim them both: Dumb Chuckleheads I am very fond of and think are doin ok. I thank them for havng this convo with each other, and bothering no trans people about it.
I have to admit (to my shame) I would probably be in the same boat as Joe.
I recognize that Trans people are fully deserving of the right to be treated as the gender they identify with. They should be allowed to participate in sports, should be provided the necessary medical care. They are people, and in general deserving of dignity. (I don’t know anyone who is trans, at least not that I could identify, but I have been around family who have brought the subject up for some weird reason, and I have defended them.)
However, I have to admit I probably would not consider one to be a sexual partner. There is a more… primitive… part of my brain that says “this person had/has the genitals that you aren’t interested in”, even though logically I know that that should not matter.
Humans sure are messy.
That’s why I prefer dinosaurs.
Pretty sure that violates at least one or two federal laws, heyoooo
Assuming Joe did exclude Carla because she is trans…
The problem isn’t that he doesn’t want to sleep with a trans woman, you can’t exactly control what genitals you are attracted to and that doesn’t make you transphobic. The problem is that he made a list of women ranked in order of how much he wanted to have sex with them, and Carla should have been at the bottom of the list in that case, not absent from it. Of course, he might have excluded her just because he actually didn’t know who she was.
Why’s it always gotta come down to genitals?
I mean, not everything does, but the context is a list of woman Joe ranked by fuckability, and fucking is probably going to involve genitals at some point, so it does kinda become relevant.
Why does everybody assume everybody trans has a unit? She is an adult of extremely rich parents. Her status is entirely up in the air until the cartoonist says otherwise.
…what makes you think I am assuming that? The only person who might have in this context is Joe, a character in the comic, and whether or not he did and if he used that as part of ranking Carla is the critical factor of this current set of strips.
The assumption here has been made more than once,
I don’t doubt, but when you reply to someone with that kind of line, it comes off as a pretty aggressive and targeted accusation.
We can take a breath and keep relaxed over it all. This is a suuuuuper leftist space, if there’s a place to assume people aren’t being transphobic dickheads, its going to be in this comment thread.
See, you’d think that, but
People are FREQUENTLY transphobic dickheads in this comic’s comment threads, unfortunately.
And “take a breath and keep relaxed” isn’t as helpful as you’d think when it comes to topics about personhood.
Its possible that she doesn’t know who she is.
But lets say he saw her enough to at least (in theory) put her on the list. Then you get the question… is it “worse” (more insulting) to include a person on the list but with a low rank or to just leave them off totally (which at least gives some plausibile deinability.)
Am I the only person who thinks Carla not being on the do list was a good thing?
No, not “the do list was a stupid thing and anybody on it was bad”, but as in, “If Joe decided to keep trans people off the do-list as a policy, that would specifically be a good action with good intentions”?
Consider the audience for a list like this. A bunch of frat boys in an area that (I could be wrong) leans conservative, where we’ve seen a sampling of several creeps already, and provably has people like Mary. The kinds of people that make jokes about killing trans people, and vote for Trump to enact such hopes, in a society where trans fear was so hyped and popular that less than 31% of voters would get out to vote for Kamala. I think if Joe is aware of the trans issue at all, he might recognize that the purpose wouldn’t be “lets go flirt and get laid”, the purpose would be “rocks and knives”.
Even if Carla is “so very very out”, it’s spotlighting her and other trans people for every creepazoid that’s had a bad day and wants to look up where the local (derogatory word)s are. Imagine it without the rest of the do-list, a compendium of all the trans people on a campus circling around, among other things, the local white nationalist ring. Obviously the whole thing is a danger, but that feels like an escalation that would take a special kind of ignorance to think up the trans issue and still put it into the hands of these violent people, and the kind of thing that would need its own apology.
That would be true but I don’t think Joe would’ve thought about it so deeply. He didn’t consider the risk to the other girls and didn’t seem all that worried once Rachel brought it up. I think someone would need to point out that risk.
I think genitals DO matter. Not for how someone identifies but in cases of attraction. You are valid in what you do or don’t find attractive so long as you don’t use that lack of attraction deny someone else’s identity.
The conflict in this case is that Joe should have put Carla on the list just to show he respects her identity as a woman, but he did not. I think it’s honestly a lateral move from “she’s on the list but I rank her a 0 cuz I’m not into trans women” but I do feel like disincluding her is kinda implying he doesn’t view her as a woman at all.
You have absolutely no idea what’s in a trans person’s pants without asking.
Never once said you do. I’m assuming in this situation they’re stating a case in which they do know. In which case I defer to my previous statement. You’re allowed to not be attracted to genitals you don’t like. If you don’t know then it won’t matter until you do know unless you don’t care.
I guess you could pants ’em in public, but that’s generally frowned upon in most circumstances already. It’s pretty much only ever okay if you’re doing it to your friend who wears baggy white boxer shorts with big red hearts on ’em, your jerkwad boss on your way out of the office after a cathartic lambasting in front of everyone, your mermaid ex-wife, or that one little prick at the grocery store. You know the one, he doesn’t work there but he always fucking seems to be there no matter what day or time you go, and he’s always got some odd fucking remark about what’s in your cart and you’re just there for a fucking club soda and some mixed nuts, why does he even have opinions on your snack, Dylan, how about we show the whole fucking store his piss-and-marinara-stained ahegao boxers, see if he’s got a smart fucking remark about that, the little prick
That;s an assumption on your part, a lot trans people have surgery, but you are 100% allowed to pick who you find attractive.
On a biological level my mind only really cares what it sees down there in the present. However, surgery bothers me a lot (I almost passed out when TALKING to a dentist about getting a tooth pulled).
Someday we’ll have perfect medical technology where you can’t even tell someone is trans. But having a continuous reminder of such an intimate surgery, especially with a new partner… I don’t think I could do it. Maybe later in life I’ll be more desensitized to stuff and it would be fine. This is all a low stakes issue for me though because I’ve been with my partner my entire adult life.
You can’t just bestow womanhood by— You can’t be retroactive by— …fudge it all.
Report comments, ya say? Report: The Patreon description for this comic is a disaster-level threat
I get the feeling Joyce is pretty bad at forgiving herself for the kind of things she espoused at the beginning of the year. She’s changed and she wants people to acknowledge she’s changed because dammit she’s put in the work, and people don’t really let her forget how she was…
But she can’t let it go, either.
And since this topic hits her from really up close, she’s kinda judging Joe by the same meter she judges herself, which isn’t usual.
Meanwhile we don’t even know if indeed Joe knew about Carla’s existence, as Nono pointed out. Joyce is kinda jumping into conclusions. If he did, though…
PS: I really like this conversation. It highlights Joe has grown, too. I do think he started paying way more attention to the Gender Studies class after the Do List incident, even though he postured like he wasn’t.
Yep, I think that’s it exactly. She’s judging herself really harshly and projecting that onto Joe, because both of them had some awful views at the beginning of the school year.
As Willis once said, she thinks the best of everyone else and the worst of herself.
And she’s honestly doing really well. She’s only known Jocelyne as her sister for less than a day, when she knew her as her brother for 18 years. That’s a big adjustment, nobody is expecting her to be perfect on the literal first day! Becky has had time to learn, and none of the other characters knew Jocelyne, so of couse it will be easier for them. But she just keeps overthrowing it and keeps being so harsh on herself.
Which is funny because one of the most memorable strips from It’s Walky!Joyce in my memory was when she told Walky “they’re my standards, not yours. It would be unfair for me to judge you on them.”
I mean, if he did know she existed and I need to be less trusting of the pop up comic then he probably just needs to say my bad, I should be better in the future. Carla is a woman. (Of course this situation won’t come up again because I learned not to objectify women like that and I’m in a monogamous relationship now, but in other less sexist circumstances.). He can model how to deal with mistakes.
So, weird question here but have Joe and Carla ever actually interacted? I cannot rightly recall.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/joe+carla/
apparently no,
not surprising, given Joe’s *reputation* and Carla being openly sex-repulsed XD
Not even once, no.
Also even when I think about the idea of him not putting Carla on the list I can see non-transphobic reasoning. Ie. Not including her just cuz he feels like it would be unfair to put her at the bottom based on her gender identity but would be disingenuous to put her higher since its based on personal preference. Joyce only got a -0 for literally beating the shit out of him. I’m playing devil’s advocate of course but it gives very “if you don’t have something nice to say say nothing at all”.
(Less jsutifiable,ironically, when you remember he made the list as a public service. Cuz at that point you should include Carla and hit it with a “I’m not into her but if you are there ya go” which is morally wrong for other reasons but would be morally…allyship?)
the funny(?) part about “playing devil’s advocate” is of course that the devils are doing plenty of advocating themselves. it’s usually unnecessary.
in this case, cis people every day everywhere are talking up storms about how actually x thing they did or said wasn’t transphobic, not even a little. you might even find some of them in this very comment section!
Me too Joyce, me too. *looks suspiciously at the comment section*
*hides the sniper rifle behind my back*
Joyce, you were a hair’s breadth from having to Google “how to be normal around trans people” not all that long ago. Don’t pull “that tells a story” on your boyfriend, especially now that he cares about more than just getting his dick wet.
She’s fucking right. And JOE only recently started treating women as full human beings. They BOTH used to be worse people, and they’ve both got plenty of room for further improvement. She’s not bringing this up to attack Joe. She’s bringing it up because it’s something she wants him to think about
Even if it’s not intended as an attack, it can still have the same effects. Joe is clearly getting defensive, which is not a good foot to be on when thinking about what you believe, and Joyce is partly responsible due to how the question was framed (“I have reason to question what you believe” instead of “what do you believe”)
Glass houses and whatnot. I think that’s why shes trying not to be too accusatory or anything. Just that he echewed her fears
Yes. How dare she learn better and then talk with her boyfriend to see if they agree on a fundamental issue.
[dog with frisbee meme] no grow, only improve
“Fundamental issue”.
Jeez, Are you Carla’s press agent? She’s not THAT important yo Joe’s fictional life.
Reminder on the To “Do” List since it’s been a few years. Joe put basically any woman he saw on the list and rated them from negative zero (Joyce, after their bad first date) to 11 (Rachel, who broke the usual 1 to 10 scale). Some women were on there by name but most were just described or had nicknames. I’m gonna back up what I’m saying with strips
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/stinkeye/
In this strip (early in the storyline) Joe starts to introduce himself to Other Rachel and seems not to know her. However, he has already rated her as a 3.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/chubby/
There is a confrontation between Joyce and Joe in this strip. She paraphrases several entries of their mutual friends/acquaintances. In the previous strip, she read her own entry to him.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/pissier/
In this strip, several of the women in Read Hall discuss the list. Mandy says she’s sure it includes every woman in their residence hall. Carla is there. She has not looked at the list herself and prefers not to know whether or not she is on it.
It’s a shitty, sexist list and Carla’s exclusion from it is transphobic. It’s not just everyone that Joe wants to fuck. He includes women he isn’t interested in. He was rating all women on their fuckability. I’m not saying he has to be sexually interested in Carla to not be transphobic. Excluding her from a list of women – albeit a super gross list – is transphobic.
It’s not the most transphobic thing in the world but it is bigotry on top of bigotry
I had forgotten that Joe’s list included that many women that Joe only knew by sight (and not name)c that definitely makes it more likely that Joe back then would have had at least minimal awareness of Carla’s existence to rank her on the list. Though I do think it is still possible that Joe genuinely never even knew Carla by sight at the time when he originally made his list, though definitely less so than before.
Not to be a skank here, but let’s not forget “I’m especially sorry to ‘Bean-bag With Glasses”. So he put that on his publicly-shared list but not Carla, which is just a bad look regardless of the reason.
I’m assuming “Bean-bag With Glasses” is Purple Rachel, by the by? Not sure why her in particular, but… If she’s a bean-bag though, she’s a damn sexy bean-bag.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/prediction/
I’m adding this one because I’m once again seeing people saying that Joe’s list was private and not meant to be seen by anyone else and I need that misconception to DIE.
JOE’S LIST WAS NEVER PRIVATE, FOLKS!!! NOT PRIVATE!!!
You understand me. Never leave, Taffy.
I shall further offer https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/boyspizzaretreat/ in support of this statement, wherein he offers it to his gym bro’s girlfriend unprompted. It was intended to be invite-only, but any claims that it was private in the sense of for his own eyes only are pure nonsense.
Oh sweet, that’s the exact strip I was paraphrasing earlier. Based and Raidahpilled, good work.
“And that thing’s got grannies on it” pretty much also puts to bed (if Willis’ comments hadn’t already) the idea that the list was in any way exclusive or discerning in who was on it.
I really want to get on the same page as everybody else, but I’m just having a hard time believing that, though.
I mean, that same strip you mention says that Joe “practically excised” Joyce from the list. That wasn’t because she stopped being a woman. That was because he would, under no circumstances, ever consider sleeping with her.
Same with the strip where he mentions the RSS feed for the first time. That is the point where Dorothy is ADDED to the list. She wasn’t previously because she was Danny’s girlfriend and therefore someone he would never consider. Not because she wasn’t a woman.
Rachel’s a 3, but he’s still sweet-talking her. The list has “grannies” on it, but honestly, you don’t know what Joe finds attractive. GILF is an acronym that existed before I typed it in this window.
Like I said, I honestly really really want to get on the same page as everyone else. It’s not fun feeling like a transphobic shitbag cis male. But it just doesn’t add up to me, and *especially* if it’s something distributed as a reference for others, and intended as an objective score.
Like. If I’m rating cartoon characters by how fuckable they are. I might put Futurama’s Leela mid, and Simpsons’ Marge low, and Sailor Moon’s Usagi high. But I’m not going to add Lilah’s mom, or Simpsons’ Agnes, or Sailor Moon’s Chibiusa, because they are not even on the radar. Just like I wouldn’t add Lumpy Space Princess, or Cheer Bear, or Sandy Cheeks.
Is Sandy Cheeks fuckable? Probably. What should she rate? Hell if I know. What should I rate her? I honestly can’t. She is exactly as fuckable as an umbrella, or the letter R, or the concept of space time. I feel no sexual attraction nor revulsion.
If I do not put Sandy Cheeks on my list, does that mean I think she is not a woman, or that she is not a cartoon character? No. It simply means that it is not an exhaustive list, and I am not going to fill it with entry upon entry of disclaimers, simply because someone might see it, get the wrong idea, and think that I was stating that they weren’t women.
I can’t think of a single reason why Joe would, on a non-exhaustive list, include people that he has zero sexual feelings for, either positive or negative. And as far as I can tell, he has never stated the parameters that everyone assumes here – that it’s a list of every woman that Joe encounters regularly, and that Carla’s exclusion implies that he didnt think of her as a woman – and the evidence posed here, implies many times that there are women not on the list because he doesnt consider “doing” them.
Please prove me wrong. I want to be wrong. I want to be convinced. But my stupid brain is keeping me up and I can’t let this go. If Willis said somewhere that Joe didnt think of Carla as a woman, or if he said that Joe ranked *everyone,* then I will happily, gratefully, shut my yap and agree wholeheartedly that it was transphobic, because it demonstrated that Joe didnt *really* think of her as a woman, instead of just one that he felt nothing for.
Oh fuck I’m going insane. I’m sorry.
Me every ten minutes at any given social gathering
Isn’t Usagi Tsukino like 15?
14 to 16 depending what arc you look at.
You’re thinking of this as a ‘my list’ thing, not a ‘list of women I see ranked by fuckability’. Joe left Dorothy off while she was dating Danny but immediately added her back. He added women he did not know well enough to know their names like Jennifer and Sal. The point of the RSS feed is to establish the public nature of the list and that he did in fact want other men to read it for tips, so his personal attractions only go so far.
Every other woman in their dorm is on the list. Carla is not some shy butterfly who never comes out – she regularly skates up and down the halls, sometimes blaring loud music, demanding attention from new people she sees. The odds he doesn’t know her at least to the same extent he knew Sal, who is far more reclusive, is, shall we say, unlikely.
When Joe says “and that thing has grannies on it” it’s as an indicator for how LOW Joyce is that she isn’t being ranked at all. Joyce was a zero minus and Joe was angry when he saw her, so that ‘grannies are on it’ comment is not a positive about the women in question.
He sweet talks Rachel as a way to demonstrate to Danny how desperate lower scored women are. Not out of attraction. And we know Joyce is not the only zero on there.
You keep people you’re not into of your ‘potential partner’ list. You don’t keep them off your ‘help guys get laid’ list.
Me here just assuming Joe is speaking in good faith and being completely honest because why wouldn’t I? Idk why people are arguing.
Some people just need to be deeply affronted to function.
Because he is a person, and people tend to not like to think about having subconscious prejudices?
It’s a rough topic with a lot of very serious repercussions for trans people when it pops up in real life, so it’s tied to a lot of HUGE feelings.
Sometimes shit’s worth arguing about idk what to tell you.
He is going to need medical intervention to get the foot out of his mouth.
Some of these posts not only tripping over themselves to defend Joe’s diet prejudice but also his sexism. lol
like, even when the author of this very comic calls them out both here and on BlueSky
for reals. just. ugh
Man, nobody’s allowed to make mistakes in this comic, huh. Wasn’t that long ago that people wailed and gnashed their teeth whenever Joyce showed up.
I’m gonna need cis people to stop feeling qualified to express opinions about gender and attraction for a bit
But my opinions about groups I don’t belong to and topic I don’t know shit about must be heeeeeeeaerd!
I wish you good luck on this, no one has ever gotten them to shut up before and I don’t rate your chances now, but BEST of luck. 🙁
Flawed wording, you’re also implying that cis people don’t get to have opinions about cis attraction.
They don’t. I’m revoking those too. 🔇
I support this. It’s just for a little while, cis people go grab a juice box and a snack for a bit. You’ll get gender and attraction opinions back soon.
Honestly we deserve that. We really can’t be trusted with those
I mean I feel like part of their argument is that there is no cis attraction. Or at least nobody can be attracted or unattached to people based on cis or trans cuz nobody can truly tell whom is what.
Look, I promise I’m not being a shithead here, it’s just that “there is no cis attraction” is a fucking hilarious phrase to read and I’m cackling like a coven of hen witches.
But the comic is about two cis people expressing opinions about gender and attraction.
If the people on the comic jumped off a cliff, would you do it? Didn’t think so.
What if it was a sexy cliff
Ok in that case it’s fine, live your Truth.
I might.
yeah people sure seem really excited to volunteer Their Personal Opinions about how fuckable they do or do not find people based on their Literal Genitals in here, he says in exhausted fucking trans dude.
They can’t wait, dude.
It make one want to throw things at someone, dude.
They’ve been so busy having this argument in their heads, waiting for some librul to try and FORCE them to say something nice about [genital configuration] and they just won’t be silenced any longer.
There’s an episode of The King of Queens (starting Paul Blart) where the main guy, Doug, mentions getting a boat. I forget why, maybe he got some money from somewhere or maybe it was hypothetical. Anyway, he has this unusually firm, almost aggressive tone when he says what he wants to name it and why, and his wife is like “Wow, you’ve had this argument in your head a lot, huh.”
It’s like that, but with hypothetical quantum supercocks.
1. ‘Cis’ is a slur. Please do not use it.
2. EVERYONE gets to have an opinion about what they’re attracted to. As Roger Ebert put it years ago, humour and eroticism are the two things it is absolutely pointless to argue about. You can talk to me for an hour and a half about why your foot fetish is great, and I still won’t share it. Likewise, Hannah Gadsby isn’t funny.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHA
Yo, check out Elon Musk over here! “Cis is a slur” oh my fucking GOD, mate!
GET UP, COME ON GET DOWN WITH THE CIS-NESS
See? You’re using it PURELY because you know it offends people.
It’s not that you don’t care it offends people, you actively WANT to offend people. You intend it as for the sole purpose to offend.
Thank you for demonstrating my point.
GENDER
IMPRISONING ME
ALL THAT I SEE
ABSOLUTE HORROR
*yawn*
Is it nice under that bridge, or do the billy-goats keep you up all night with their ‘trip-trip-tripping’?
BUZZ LOOK A PRONOUN
No but for real, the only people offended by being called cisgender, are knuckle-scraping dipshits who don’t deserve a seat at the grown-up table. You’re not offended, you’re delirious from the lack of water in your system.
Sure. Play along:
“No but for real, the only people offended by being called [tranny/ kike/ faggot/cisgender/ retard [CIRCLE ALL THAT APPLY]] are knuckle-scraping dipshits who don’t deserve a seat at the grown-up table. You’re not offended…”
Go away, troll. Either you listen to people when they tell you you’re being offensive, or you don’t.
You deliberately want to offend.
Really fucked up that you’re okay throwing minorities and victimized groups of people under the bus to pretend you’re offended by a normal word that’s not a slur. Go fuck yourself, you pathetic bigot. People like you are the reason I’ve tried to kill myself four times in the past three years.
Cis isn’t a slur. That’s right up there with people who act as if pronouns are some sort of ‘trans dogwhistle’ or whatever when everyone has pronouns. What, are we going to say het or hetero is a slur next? C’mon. Be real.
It is. People keep telling you they are offended by it, and you don’t care.
Worse, you DO care, and just want to keep using it because you think it’s clever to ‘annoy the chuds’, or whatever.
I’m… not doing that at all? I think you’re projecting. I’m just stating the literal fact that using the word cis or cisgender isn’t a slur. What this tells me is that you’ve never experienced having a REAL slur thrown your way, and I think you should count your blessings and go to sleep and maybe have a hard think about the life you’re living.
It isn’t. You can whine and cry all you want, but “cisgender” is not a fucking slur. Grow up and deal with it, you pointless fucking child. Get a grip on fucking reality, before it smacks you on the ass and you’re left wondering why nobody wants you around anymore.
Since we’re just taking words turning them into slurs so we can have an offended Olympics apparently, I’m going to say that referring to pizza as a pie is a slur. That’s not a pie at all. I’m greatly insulted when other people use words and it makes me sad. My pizza is not a pie 🙁
I’m havin’ a real rough day. Somebody called me a brunette at the grocery store this morning. A different person saw me playing my guitar and called me a musician, a few weeks ago. It was awful.
Smh. I was called a brunette the other day as well, and it was just awful. The world that we live in today is so hard for brunettes! They say that word JUST to annoy us!!
My mother’s mother got called a grandma and died of shock on the spot.
A rude man looked at my furry child and called him a ‘cat’, I had to cover his ears and give him extra tuna treats to offset the trauma of the experience.
One time, I was at the auto shop and they called my 2006 Honda Civic a “car”. I set their building on fire that very night, after everyone has left. I was ten and five years old at the time (disgusting people will call that “fifteen”) though, so I was given a warning about disproportionate retribution.
https://i.imgur.com/pyt6N4s.jpeg I made this meme for you to commiserate this moment until this jackass and his comments disappear, feel free to save it or just enjoy it for a giggle!
You’re very brave to have set that building on fire. Maybe next time they’ll think twice before labeling items based on “dictionaries” and “words”! That’ll show them!
Better watch out, the cis catchers are driving around the neighborhood in their cis wagon, scooping innocent cisgender people up in their giant butterfly net to take them to the gender pound. Cis people are getting dragged out of their homes and gendered correctly by 99% of the population without complaint, be careful out there. Hey, watch your back, I heard there are roving gender gangs out and about this weekend, pointing at cis people and purchasing things with debit cards.
Again, thank you for so eloquently proving my point.
You’re a troll, who uses slurs for the express purpose of annoying people.
Nothing is served by further contact, because you have no purpose other than abuse and hate
Cry more, loser.
I think everybody, myself included is really really overthinking this whole thing.
Ooh this is going to get toxic isn’t it. Hopefully not “Willis has to nuke the comment section” levels of toxic.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this one but there was once a section so bad, it got completely deleted and replaced with a gif of Bugs Bunny sawing Florida off the continent.
Yeah that is specifically what I am referring to, was gonna be more explicit about it but couldn’t think how to phrase it. Hopefully most of the people that caused that had leave since then.
Which comic was it, if you don’t mind me asking?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/antagonize/
Here
I’m post op trans, strictly female attracted. My rule is I’m in this till I’m told “I” am transphobic for not wanting a partner with a penis. The rate this conversation is going that’s about 25 more minutes. A precision orbital strike on this whole comment section will probably be the only way it stops.
Haha ok I was worried it was just me. I feel like you’re allowed to have genital preferences. I’m not implying that everyone psychically know what’s going on in everyone else’s pants. But if we’re talking attraction and coupling you’re valid to say “oh sorry not into that. Thank you for your time.”
I’m kind of the same on this topic. It’s fine to not be attracted to trans people sexually (as long as that’s your genuine reaction upon meeting them, not some pre-formed “if they’re trans I don’t want them” attitude), as long as you don’t treat them hatefully or negatively because of it. People honestly cannot help what they do or do not find attractive. It’s an instinctual reaction that happens pretty much within split seconds of meeting someone.
Kinda feels like there’s some level of mystique being/been built up around the private parts thing, yeah? As if it’s difficult to learn the information (literally just ask if you find a good spot in the conversation!) or requires wacky sitcom espionage. Like, if you’re super into somebody and learn they’ve got something downstairs you’re just not into, that’s going to require tact and an adult conversation.
Y’all know what else requires those things?
Literally every single other aspect of dating/courtship/fuckaroundery. All of them. If you can’t be normal about where the pee comes from, your partner can’t trust you to pick what to eat for breakfast, they can’t trust you to choose what music you’ll play in the car on the way to the bookstore, and they most definitely can’t trust you to help them up out of a chair you got a little too comfy in.
Dating someone for a year and you find out they love Sword Art Online and not .Hack/Sign
I want to agree with this. I really do. I adore .hack//, I love it to bits (okay the first 3 games which is all I’ve played ($200-$400 for the fourth game is fucking unreasonable)), but SIGN is boring. It’s boring. Nothing happens and they never shut the hell up about it.
Should I have said Serial Experiments Lain then haha.
Can a Konosuba girl love an Overlord boy?
Having never seen any of those, I will assume at least two of them are generally regarded as Good™.
Serial Experiments Lain is a mindfuck sci-fi series made back when the internet seemed weird and magical. Its been 20 years and I still don’t fully “get it”
Konosuba is “what if the protagonist of your isekai was a dipshit loser and all his party were also useless and stupid”
Overlords is “what if isekai but you’re the final boss” (so think. Truth be told I haven’t watched overlord)
The first one sounds groovy.
Is it just me (probably not), or does media about the Internet seem to have more interesting things to say about it before about 2008?
It definitely falls into the metal gear solid 2 category of video assists saying “wow it’s like they predicted modern day!”
well like,
this is why the “Report comment” button exists
and why he reminded us that it exists
You know what, Joe, it’s fine. I’ll say the same thing I’ve said to the terfs since a few years ago when they made up this type of trans woman to be mad at; one who tells you you’re a transphobe if you aren’t attracted to her:
It’s fine if you aren’t looking for a woman to have a relationship or some sort of connection with, but rather a set of tits and a par of legs with a fuck hole between them.
In other words, if you made Joe’s Do list, I wouldn’t expect to be included on it. Now, if you wanted reassurance that your ideas about women, relationships and trans people are all fine despite defending that decision I may have worse news.
Hypothetical Joe entry for Carla:
“Rollerderby”
Pros: Redhead, Tall, Rich
Cons: Not into dudes, loud personality (+++), Pie fetish
Joemmentary: Transgirl, which isn’t my thing but I aint one to judge. Super duper famous rich parents. Gets in your face.
Rating: N/A (not into dudes)
—
Ugh, I felt awful writing that
Sounds authentically pre-timeskip Joe. Would have added a section mentioning cream pies and then Joe clarifying he means the literal dessert.
He would absolutely include that, yes.
i feel like people are glossing over the fact that it isn’t just Carla that was excluded from the list but *any* trans people at IU of which there, both in real life and in comic, are likely dozens if not hundreds
so, you know, whether or not he knows who Carla is is irrelevant to the point Joyce (and Willis himself) are making
I mean that’s sorta what I’m asking. Is Carla the only trans girl on that floor (narratively she’s the only one we know about) or are there others that were neglected. Joyce didn’t even know Carla was trans until yesterday. Does she know of any other trans girls on her floor? Would she recognize their names or descriptions? I’ll believe word of God but this is an ongoing conversation and I wanna feel it out.
Is this a fair point to bring up? Not defending the dumbass list here, but how many of those dozens-to-hundreds of people can we reasonably expect Joe to have encountered in his daily routine, take notice of, and then rate? I don’t think it’s quite as comprehensive a list as you’re making it sound here. He’s an idiot and a skeeze for making it, yes, but he’s one idiot skeeze.
And yes, I realize “Well hang on, surely he hasn’t covered the entire campus!” is not a very strong defense.
It’s sorta my gripe. I wanna see more narrative but I feel like the comment section is pushing the idea that what Joyce is saying must be true or else she wouldn’t be saying it. Which like…as a reader I’m prone to ask questions and see where this is going and I feel like a lot of people see that as bad faith defense.
I’m gonna laugh my perfect ass off if tomorrow we find out Joyce is just wrong about this entirely. Everyone taking as gospel the spoken dialogue of characters who are constantly proven to be fallible little dipshits (AKA teenagers), and then Joe pulls up the list and is like “Oh wait no, here she is. 7/10, redhead with glasses #2” and these two go get ice cream or whatever the fuck straights do.
An the word of Willis up there that confirms that the point is a valid one.
Bah, what would the author know about the characters?
I don’t think Willis is quite at the level of that lady that wrote Harry Potter.
i think “at least one” is a pretty reasonable assumption
If we assume even distribution (I will), then you’re probably right.
Oh this is futile, I’m going to quit before this really melts down, happy bickering! 🙂
PeaceDisappear.gif
Boy am I glad to be AroAce! I get to opt out of this whole conversation and focus on how much I really like the details like their breath coming out in lil puffs to represent the temperature~!
Great, love it, chefs kiss Muah!~
I love that too! It’s very relatable to me and my Canadian winters.
Also just now noticed Joyce’s salmon colored jacket and how it really draws attention to her eyes and teal frames! Very pretty color choice~
Salmon and teal is such a pretty colour combination! Our neighbour has the PRETTIEST turquoise garage door and I really hope they paint the other pink one day.
That reminds me of the neighbor that had every new boyfriend she had repaint the trim of her house-
If a man can’t paint your trim properly, he ain’t worth nothin’ ’round these parts.
Ooooh, what colours did she pick for the trim of her house?
salmon… dammit now i want to eat it XD
NO FISH FOR YOU!
but then what am I gonna have with my horseradish? :/
Horse
Radishes
You made me laugh out loud so take your upvote in the form of a comment.
Suave that make you stupid
Revoking salmon is a hate crime against Canadians.
Come one, everyone knows Canadians aren’t people.
I’m not?????
all i know is i am denied fish and i am hungy ;-;
It’s okay, we’ll adopt you as an honorary Canadian and then you legally can’t be denied salmon.
awe thanksies :-;
I think that Joyce wasn’t as bothered by the inconsistencies presented by Joe or his insensitivity. But by the fact the conversation was suddenly about Joe and Dan and not about anything related to herself.
As of this particular moment, all evidence is not looking good for Joe.
I do wonder if it was a factor that, to rate Carla honestly, he would have to include the fact that she is trans, and not wanting to publish that, even about someone as out as Carla is. But the more I think about it the more it sounds like post hoc rationalization at best. Also as others have mentioned, he doesn’t actually know what’s in her pants, so if penis is a dealbreaker for him, he could just put “insufficient data” as he did for Asma (presumably for different reasons) (citation: https://www.dumbingofage.com/chubby/ )
I also wonder if, for example, Dina was on there, who I don’t believe Joe particularly considered a sexual being until significantly after the Do List was shut down. Which wouldn’t actually make Carla’s exclusion better, it’s just another thing I tangentally wonder.
Really, short of finding out there was another trans woman on the list who Joe knew was a trans woman at the time, I think the best we can hope for is some self-reflection that it turns out that there was yet another in the multitude of ways that the Do List was a shitty thing.
like, not including Carla was inevitably still a transphobic thing to do, for literally the same reason why the list itself was a bigoted thing to do,
it all boils down to,
“how DARE a woman ever exist in any way outside the ideal package for pleasing men”
Gonna say this just to say it, Joe performing a transphobia in the past doesn’t doom him to the forever box of permanently performing transphobia. He can knock it off and stop that, and everyone in-universe and out can still admit he did it without saying he’s doing it now. In fact, it’s actually a good thing if he stops it and doesn’t do it anymore. This applies to real people too, but real people aren’t people so we’re not talking about them right now. It’s fine and not illegal to admit the character who isn’t currently misbehaving did misbehave previously.
Yeah. Step one would be owning up to his past actions and understanding a new way on which they were bad.
I pretty seriously doubt that’s gonna happen here, this conversation is already unsalvageable. But hey, maybe in-universe tomorrow (so in like a month?) we’ll get to see Joe do some pondering about it.
You think it’s unsalvageable? Nah, you got too little faith in these kooky kids. They’re good at talking through stuff.
Yeah maybe I should be more optimistic about my (now second-favorite) ship
Not about Joe specifically but anyone who says “it’s not transphobic of me to not be attracted to any trans people ever”–the only thing all trans people have in common is being trans. Genitals you’re squicked by? Not all trans people of [x] gender have those. Other arbitrary feature you’re not into? Again: not every trans person has that, even if it’s the stereotype. People are people, and we all look different.
Literally THE. only. thing. they’d all have in common is being trans.
I’m definitely not saying anyone who’d say that HAS to go and hook up with a trans person–in fact, nearly all of us wouldn’t want to hook up with someone who’d make that statement to begin with–but when the one and only universal factor in common is being trans…. yyyyeah, I mean. Ya might wanna unpack the stereotypes/latent bigotry you might have going on there.
(Obviously this doesn’t apply to ace people or people who wouldn’t be attracted to *cis* people of a certain gender, either. It’s the crowds of people who come out any time the subject is even brushed against to proclaim “I’d never date a trans woman” or “I’d never date a trans man” while being perfectly happy to chase cis people of those genders. As if anybody actually asked.)
yes to all of this, and I’m glad someone (possibly someones, if more posts above/below) already said it
I don’t have the bandwidth to wade through the whole comment section on *this* subject to see if anyone else said it first (in which case, sorry to them) but I’m glad somebody appreciated it ^_^
yeah I gave up on it
This whole thing has me thinking that maybe Joe isn’t covering by not knowing who Carla is. I can’t think of a single time they’ve interacted, especially before he tried to reform himself. To him, she was probably nameless girl on the sidelines. Of course, we don’t have his list to see if say “girl with blonde hair” is on there or other similar descriptors. Unless… Has someone compiled it?
most girls aren’t on there by name. Sal was “chick with spider tattoo”, Asma “hijabi front desk girl” etc. (Notably he and Sal had also never interacted onscreen before, their first shared scene is one of Joe apologizing for the list.)
If you want to see more about it, it’s easiest to look through the chapter “The Do-List”.
*I* am increasingly disliking this conversation ^^u
Ooooh first fight incoming? I don’t think Joe is actually transphobic. Seems like he’d probably be fine if he found out a girl he was with was trans. But I think him being flippant about it is not going to work well with Joyce.
(Ah, missed Willis saying it *was* something for Joe to address so jury’s still out on the first part as well)
I get that Joe has rated women just on sight, but if he did that with Carla, how would he then deliberately exclude her from the list for being trans? He could only do that if he knew who she was.
I don’t differentiate my attraction to people based on gender (partially because I’m a sex-repulsed asexual) but you know what WILL make me decide real quick that you’re not attractive? Being a bigot. I’ve known far too many women who look the other way when their boyfriend or husband reveals himself to have some fucked up views because “teehee well… we can’t agree on everything”. So I appreciate Joyce bringing this up to actually discuss it at length with Joe!
#not touching the rest of the discussion#
Wait, The List was a (password) shared non-consensual ranking of female students’ hotness, with a news feed and subscribers, inviting Joe’s pals to review & compare scores…
How did I not click that Joe invented OG Facebook? (Ironically his tech / inventor stuff mostly went to Carla herself in this universe!)
I feel like there’s a fight between these two coming on. I’m unsure how cleanly it’ll resolve, or in how timely a manner.
I’m appreciating that Joyce cares, though, even if she’s still just figuring it all out.