What’s hilarious about it (and why I suspect it really has to be a parody) is that if the person who wrote this was serious, I’m assuming they have to be a fundamentalist, but then wouldn’t that also make them creationists?, young-earthers?, and yet they’re admitting dinosaurs went extinct, which implies God didn’t just put the fossils in the Earth for fun or something, and they did exist more than a few thousand years ago.
As a former creationist, I’d like to clarify what they believe. The tl;dr version is that they believe Dinosaurs were just really giant-sized lizards that lived before the Great Flood, the great flood created all the geologic layers at the same time therefore creating fossils, and the few dinosaurs after the flood didn’t survive in great numbers due to the changed climate (something about huge forests making more oxygen and therefore allowing said giant lizards to be giant, and then the flood wiped out the forests so the oxygen levels went down).
Yeah, lots and lots of bullshit. I’m so glad I managed to heal from that self-delusion.
My personal theory (Which is totally made up as I’ve never been relgious at all) is that God was playing a spore like game but then decided the dinosaurs weren’t working and then wiped them out with a metor 😛
@ Saki, Onihikage – remember that “creationists” is a pretty broad demographic, as are most of their subcategories. They’re not all going to believe the same things.
@ Time Sage – To quote a Bo Burnham song, You’re not my children, you’re a bad game of Sims…
Yeah, “creationist” is basically a very broad term. EVERY christian is a creationist, as are most religious people. Basically, it just means “belief that the world/universe was created by a higher power instead of just randomly occuring”. THEN you have the various groups/fundamentalists chiming in and adding stuff like (“yeah, but if the universe was created, that means EVERYTHING was hand-crafted” or “When something is created, it STAYS that way, never mind all other stuff humans created that change over time, GODs creations are permanent”. Basically just stuff they already want to believe, which they can shoo-horn into the word “creation”.
There is nothing stopping a “creationist” from being an astrophysicst, the only difference would be that a god started the whole shebang, instead of nothing. All the the other stuff has basically nothing to do with “creation” itself.
Not every christian is a creationist – even using the broadest definition. There are plenty of atheist and agnostic christians, and even among theists there are definitions of god that place in inside the universe (I can’t remember details, but process theology has a lot of stuff like that).
I’m Christian and I am in no way, shape or form a Creationist.
I am a Scientists and I have no conflict with that and religion.
In fact, I have an opinion about Creationists that I won’t mention
here because it might make Willis upset if it causes controversy.
wwwhhatt, I have to ask, as I cannot get my head around it, but what, exactly, is an atheist Christian? Seems to me that those would be mutually exclusive terms.
@Roborat – Wikipedia breaks Christian atheism into two types (and then seems to get confused while describing them), but essentially Christian atheists don’t believe in God as an omni-everything, overseeing being, and they look to Jesus as a guide for their morals and behavior. (Aside from the God thing, this is technically what *all* Christians are supposed to be doing. Being a “Christ-ian” means to be “pertaining to Christ” or “living in Christ,” ie, following Christ as a spiritual and ethical leader.) Some schools of thought maintain that Jesus himself flat out rejected the God being worshipped by his contemporaries and felt they were being misled, that the true God remained hidden from the world. Others refer to Jesus’s referencing himself as the “Son of Man” rather than “Son of God” as downplaying the role of divinity in his life. Even for Christians who might drift away from either of those belief bases, a concept of God to respect Jesus is no more necessary than it would be to respect Buddha.
I appreciate everyone trying to clear things about creationists and everything, but I’m not sure why several of you felt the need to say not all Christians are creationists? No one here even remotely implied that. ^^”
@Timemonkey & Time Sage I like your theories! XD
@begbert2 IDK Zac McCrackenm but basically… Creatinists are reptile equivalents of the Raxacoricophalapatorians in Doctor Who? 😀
@The others So, I just learned atheist Christians are a thing, and what they are, yay new knowledge! 🙂 As for the Christians can be into science thing, yes, I remember from the Ham v Nye debate how Ken Ham tried to explain that they’re not mutually exclusive, he was so desperate in trying to prove things that were kinda off-topic that he forgot what a debate is supposed to be (and maybe the format didn’t really help with that either).
Anyways. Where was I going with this? Oh right. Even creationists can be scientists. Yay? XD
@Roborat – basically what Betty Anne said. The only defining aspect of Christianity is the attempt to follow Christ*, however that gets interpreted. It’s easy enough to see belief in God as an optional extra here (even if it’s traditionally been a major part). The same goes for the Bible, incidentally.
*And there’s probably exceptions here to, somehow. Christianity’s been around too long and has spread too far to reliably fit into a single definition.
@Saki – *points finger at Mindlink like an angry 2 year old* They sed we wuz! They star’ed i’!
Why does the comment system here loose the “reply” button after a certain number of replies, is it to stop the threads becoming too long and unwieldy ?
In that case, let me add to the “unwieldy” part 😉
Lot’s of good answers here, but I’ll stick to my opinion that “creationism” has become a misused term, but that you can basically call yourself a creationist if you believe that the big-bang happened on purpose instead of an accident (and that there actually was a form of “existence” before that time (or even time)) Then people add all sorts of things to that, according to their own believes.
Then, on the subject of christian atheism, which also got some good answers, so I’ll be disrespectful and try to condence all of those well thought of sentences into a single sentence:
Christianity does not have to be a religion, like Buddhism, but just a philosophy based on the teachings of Christ, which, if you read the New Testament, is basically what Jesus told us to do. (Don’t worship me, follow my words, to paraphrase Jesus)
And a Christian agnostic ? Angosticism started as a “mystery cult” based in Christianity, which is way more complicated than I used to think, so I’m not even going to try condensing THAT.
I really don’t know. I found it on google and wasn’t able to trace it back to its source. When putting it into google.images, you can see a lot of sites picked it up, but I can’t tell which are parody&satire sites and which aren’t.
I didn’t know birds in particular displayed rather high numbers of homosexuality, so I looked it up. What I found out in my quick, way-not-in-depth research, is that:
1) 1 in 4 black swan pairings are of two males
2) Some guy in 1911 documented homosexual behaviours in penguin, labeled it depraved, and “The report was considered too shocking for public release at the time, and was suppressed. The only copies that were made available privately to researchers were translated into Greek, to prevent this knowledge becoming more widely known”.
3) In 1998, the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo gave two male vultures who had built a nest together a vulture chick which they raised with care. More here
And this is just what I got from Wikipedia. I am so going to look into this more later. <3
I always assumed animals who aren’t outwardly dimorphic differentiated each other through hormone emissions and smell and stuff? (I don’t understand or remember all that much about the chemical side of biology so maybe this sounds completey aberrant?)
I read somewhere that at least some birds can see in the ultraviolet range, so they looked at some birds that weren’t outwardly dimorphic with uv cameras and found that the plumage is different in uv.
“The Penguins of Madagascar” TV show addressed this, lol. I mean, er, about not being outwardly dimorphic. Not gay. Kids show and all, although Private has his moments…
I must chime in here and say that the Gems are genderless, yet they choose to use feminine pronouns when referring to each other. So what we see isn’t really what it _is_, as little sense as that makes.
Steven Universe is wonderful. It’s also only one show though, so it can’t have this “covered”. ALL kids’ shows should be as awesome as it is or even more so, with LGBTQIA and body diversity and racial diversity and also gender diversity, because no one needs these things more than kids.
As much as I love it when they do this in cartoons (Korrasami <3), I want to see it in films. I feel like it might be harder to pull off in a film, or seen as harder to pull off by producers, because a film only airs once and relies a lot on what people say about it, while cartoons, having lots of episodes, can survive one episode some parents won't want their kids to see. Therefore I feel it'll be a greater achievement when it happens in a film, especially a Disney for example, because it'll mean the producers trust that the queerness won't scare away enough people to have any significant impact on their ticket and later BR/DVD sales. :3
Part of me feels like we’re unlikely to see a Trans character handled respectfully in a Disney movie. But I never thought I’d see the White House light up with rainbows, either. It would be a good day.
The black swans, at least, seem to go counter to that, as one of the observed behaviors in male-male relationships is to steal eggs/nests from females, or even bring a female into the mix to lay eggs for them, so they seem to be perfectly aware of their inability to breed.
Like, really? In what fucking way is it more “logical” or “obvious” to believe animals are having sex with each other and indeed sometimes forming lifelong bonds by mistake instead of just admitting that the heteronormativity we’ve been projecting into other species is bullshit?
What reason do we even have for saying birds are “unusually” not-straight? None. We can’t even accurately measure our own species’ sexuality breakdown (it’s by survey, so you’ll need to reconfigure society into one where people aren’t raised with virulent heterosexism to the point of believing themselves straight when they aren’t?), and we sure as hell haven’t studied animals of any OTHER species frequently enough. We also tend to sex animals based on their visual behavior, when it isn’t practical to tag them, so a lot of past animal studies have just been assuming male/female couplings. This is even true with animals that have “obvious” dimorphism, as female lions with manes and male lions without both exist.
(Only rarely, you say? But again, WE DO NOT KNOW THAT. Our methods for studying animals are shit. The only result from an animal study that shouldn’t immediately be treated with interested skepticism is one that shocked the person studying, because at least then you know their expectations didn’t get projected onto what they found, or something with decent methodology where the animals were tagged.)
One thing I feel I need to comment on what you said: “believing oneself to be straight when they really aren’t.” I’ve heard that line before, and it’s always struck me as very hypocritical. Aren’t we supposed to be accepting of what others believe is their sexuality as the truth? If we assume that other people are wrong about their own sexuality and just haven’t come to terms with it, isn’t that the same thing as saying to someone who is gay that it’s just a phase?
The way I see it, if someone believes themselves to be a certain orientation, then by definition, that’s what they are. It doesn’t matter what a person’s genetic predisposition is, what matters is their self-identity.
It was poorly worded, but they were essentially correct. I’m way the hell up there on the Kinsey scale, but still able to feel attraction to women. until I was 18, I genuinely believed myself to be straight, but have since come to recognize my behaviors and perceptions from my adolescence as homosexual. I lacked the context, the willingness, and, importantly, the belief to have declared myself anything but straight. As far as I was concerned, being gay was something that happened to other people, not me. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t gay (which, due to how rarely I feel attraction to women, is more often how I identify than bisexual, which I have used in the past as an identifier as well), it just means I lacked the capacity to acknowledge or even really recognize it.
Um, no? I was talking only about people who are actively unaware of or in denial of their sexuality when surveyed, not straight people who I’m just randomly assuming aren’t straight.
Heteronormativity is a very powerful force, friend, and where it and stigma against LGBA sexualities exist these two powers combine to do serious damage to people’s ability to self-report their sexuality.
Your comparison is ridiculously flawed because there is no systemic, external pressure on people to be sexually queer. So no, it’s pretty much nothing like you assuming a non-straight person is “just confused”.
Pretty close, but no cigar! Birds actually have Z and W chromosomes instead of X and Y chromosomes. It’s essentially the mammalian system in reverse – males are homogametic (ZZ) while females are heterogametic (ZW), so it is the egg that determines sex, not the sperm. I don’t think we have any idea what sex determination systems dinosaurs used, but I really, really hope was wacky. Or even lots of wacky systems! Dinosauria was a large enough group that different species probably had completely different sex determining mechanisms. Platypus, anyone?
Also, I hate to bring this up again, but gender ≠ sex
Don’t use this to say a trans woman is female in gender but male in sex. Okay? Don’t do it. Sex is as much a social construct as gender — especially with the existence of intersex people, and almost NO ONE has actually been genotyped so it’s just inaccurate to claim we are assigning gender based on chromosomes.
Practically speaking, a trans woman does not have male sex organs. She has female sex organs, because she’s female and they belong to her.
Period.
(This gender/sex divide was popular among the trans community for a while as a stepping stone to being legitimized, but it’s falling out of favor because it’s fundamentally misgendering and transphobic. It’s also intersex-exclusionary, and not very nonbinary friendly.)
Hi Li,
The comment wasn’t actually made in relation to trans people, but to the fact that when discussing sex determining mechanisms, it is sex, not gender, that is being discussed. Since most animals lack culture (with some possible exception, such as ourselves), they cannot meaningfully have a gender, since it is a social construct. Since the original comment was about birds (not people), it seemed a reasonable distinction.
Please understand I wasn’t trying to insinuate anything about trans people, or the labels we use for human gender. As a biologist, I do understand that neither sex nor gender are binary, and that both are, to a greater or lesser extent, social constructs. I would argue that sex is so to a lesser extent (since, biologically speaking, you can describe sex at multiple levels – chromosomal, hormonal, primary sexual characteristics, etc., though these may not match), but that is for another conversation. I’m aware that we don’t assign sex based on chromosomes, and I would argue against it if it were proposed.
I would go to the barricades to defend the right of people to be identified with their own gender – a trans woman is a woman, and so her body is a woman’s body, and is frankly, none of my business. But if you’ll excuse the glibness, people are people, and platypi are platypi (or possibly platypusses)
It was intended as more of a PSA than a direct response to YOU, sorry that got lost. :\
I think rather than saying that animals cannot possibly have a concept of gender, it’s more accurate to say that we don’t and right now can’t know what they think about gender, or indeed sex. Just because we can’t communicate with them doesn’t mean they don’t communicate with each other, you know? And it’s rather self-aggrandizing to assume that humans are the only animal with any kind of social constructs.
Biology is biology, social constructs are social constructs, and transgendered actually HAVE different chromosomes than their assigned to birth sex, so it isn’t transphobic in any way.
And sex, like gender, is nowhere near binary. Biologicaly speaking, even humans have up to 20 different sexes. No, we don’t go around chromosome-testing every human that is born, that is usually only done in the cases where their sex is not apparent at the time of birth, or as a part of research/studies in gender and sex.
Of course, all of this is kind of new to me, as in my language, even in the scientific community, we only have ONE word for both “sex” and “gender”, they are both called “kjønn” (which is ALSO the same word for “genitals”, but usually only the female genitals (which makes it even stranger to hold serious gender-debates in Norwegian (lately, in those debates, we tend to simply use the English terms instead, which in turn confuses people without Extensive English comprehension)
I am confused. What makes one “female” and the other “male” if not the same vs different chromosomes? The females have the babies? But what about the male seahorses? :S #KnowsNothingAboutScience
Certain whiptail lizards (Cnemidophorus uniparens, frex) are known to engage in f/f mating behaviours. There are no males in these species and they reproduce parthenogenetically, which (can be) triggered by the mating behaviour.
Please, Dina can’t know. Sexuality doesn’t fossilize. Even if we found two fossils in passionate lovemaking, we know so little of how to sex dinosaurs the heteronormative tendencies of science would assume one to be male and the other female.
Now, she could speculate, as some scientists do, that some dinosaurs probably showed a degree of homosexual behavior, due to its prevalence in their closest living relatives, but she probably would not be so bold as to say she KNOWS their sexuality.
Depending on how she traveled back in time, she could use that means to escape dangerous situations. And we’ve established she’s very stealthy. As far as food goes, she could 1) find the edible things of that era (although, considering evolution and all, would humans be able to digest plants from that far before they existed?) or 2) travel back and forth to get food from our time. She’s smart. She could manage. :3
Dina likes dinosaurs because they’re extinct, they’re fixed in time so she can learn about them and they’ll never change. Interacting with them would be just as difficult for her as interacting with humans.
She likes dinosaurs because, unlike people, they don’t constantly change since they are extinct. IRRC, the main problem was that social rules and that stuff constantly change, which she has trouble with. If she were to live in the times of dinosaurs, the only change she’d be witnessing was baby dinos growing up and probably mabye also weather conditions altering the landscapes (such as a forest burning down). I think she could handle that okay. The way I see it, the thrill of being able to observe real-life dinosaurs, and possibly interact with the herbivorous species, and form non-conversation-forcing, non-throwing-unreadable-social-cues-at-her, etc, bonds would widely overweigh anything else. :3
It’s not that she’s not curious, she just isn’t questioning that curiosity. She’s fine with her sexual orientation whether it be gay, straight, or towards dinosaurs.
“Unconcerned” reads more like “I’m not questioning my sexuality” than “I’m not interested in sex” in this context. I can see how one could read it other ways, though.
“Unconcerned” doesn’t mean that you have less of a libido, or are asexual.
I have a very strong libido, very definitively not asexual, yet I’ve always had a very “unconcerned” attitude towards sex in general.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, I find to be one of the most pleasurable experiences two persons can have, and until I lost my virginity I was kind of fixated on it (but only in the sense that this was “something new I had not been able to experience, which is supposed to be great, and statistically there is a great chance I might go to my grave without having experienced this”), but after having that experience, I no longer think about it that often.
I still get “urges”, of course, and if I’m with a partner, that is one of the things I enjoy doing with her, but I still see it at just one of many, many, many, wonderful experiences a person can have either alone or with someone. Which makes me feel that “unconcerned” is a pretty good way to describe my attitude as well, without it actually having anything to do with my sexuality per se.
It *could* be my 150 autism score though, but that sounds like there is something I’m “missing” from my sexual encounters. “You just haven’t met the right person, you need to try different techinques, etc.” I DO have amazing experiences, similar to a potent psychedelic, I just get those extacys from many other experiences too, like sharing a 15 minute laugh with someone I’m very close too, like sleeping with someone that matches your sleeping style and you trust fully, like winning a small prize when you gathered up your last change and both of you have had a rough week, eating the best meal of your life, seing the sun rise over a landscape in a country you’ve never been before, etc.
This makes sense to me. I watched Vi Hart’s “On Gender” video a few months ago, and it clicked for me that although I am a woman and I have no interest in identifying as anything else, I don’t feel really attached to any sexual orientation labels. And your description here comes the closest I’ve ever seen to explaining why!
Oh, of course, definitely! I meant more that the statement I was replying to made it sound like (possibly unintentionally) that a lack of libido =/= asexual. I tried to phrase my statement as that being one thing that CAN be associated with identifying as asexual, but it’s definitely more complex than just that, you’re totally correct. (And of course you’d probably be more correct about what being asexual is like, since I’m heterosexual.)
Altho I’m curious, what in the world is a 150 autism score???? I’m autistic and I’ve NEVER heard of a scoring system for it???
I think unconcerned is more that Dina is a naturalists who believes that anything that happens in nature is normal and not something to agonize over. It doesn’t matter to her who her first sexual encounter will be with, and she doesn’t care what society thinks of it.
Of course! Galasso is questioning. In fact Galasso is questioning quite a lot. Galasso is questioning how to tell apart male and the other one! Galasso is questioning how to produce an heir! Galasso is questioning how he managed to produce a daughter if he did not even know the preceding! Galasso is questioning why autocorrect believes his name is actually Galas!
Dina’s logic is not very rigorous here. She has no way to know how large the pool of Amber’s ex-boyfriends is, or if she does she does not present it to support her conclusion.
Sweet of Joyce to try and cover for Ethan. Good of Ethan to finally sorta say it to someone new, get the ball rolling again. Though they seem to have forgotten Amber and him had an argument about him crawling back in the closet right ion front of her.
Yea, and even if you don’t UNDERSTAND you can hear it. Or SEE it.
Well, except for my dear granny, who was totally deaf and couldn’t hear a thing if you didn’t scream like a football coach. Fun times.
It wouldn’t. If Dina doesn’t go to the meeting, we’d keep following her, because I’m pretty sure Willis said or implied that this storyline lasts the entire day, which would mean we’ll hear about the meeting tomorrow from people talking about it. But thanks to MeganTheWorldEater finding / remembering the preview of Dina eating pizza, we don’t have to worry about it anyways. \ (•◡•) /
Triceratops is a herbivore, and needs to eat very frequently. Triceratops will attend any meeting for free pizza, maybe even a Ken Ham speech if she is hungry enough (last time that happened, Triceratops had to be escorted off the premises by security).
WELL actually it’s been proposed that ceratopsians may have also been opportunistic scavengers, not unlike modern deer eating birds for the occasional protein. So fear not, Dina; pepperoni is good for Triceratops.
D… Deers… Deers eat BIRDS? D: Butbutbut they’re so adorable… I just, I just pictured a deer with a bleeding bird in his mouth, feathers falling from it, and… it’s note like I was obsessive about deers but they were registered as cute in my brain and now… Now they’re suddenly under the psychopathic label. T_T
(not that I associate meat eating with psychopathic. I associate seeminlgy adorable but then being drenched in the blood of something you’ve killed with psycopathy.)
That I’m not surprised about. I didn’t know, but I’m not surprised. As far as insects and other tiny crawly animals go, I expect the worst of them anyways. Except butterflies. Butterflies are cool. And if there are blood-sucking butterflies out there somewhere, I don’t wanna to know.
@Bagge That was a fun read until I pictured the creature being at the proximity of 1/16 of an inch from someone’s eye. Still glad I could add this bit of literature to my culture. 🙂
Big difference between predation and opportunistic scavenging; scavenged meat won’t necessarily be as bloody, and pretty much by definition wasn’t killed by its consumer.
Oh internet. Why do you keep saddling me with all that unwanted knowledge. And curiosity. Why do you make me want to look up how exactly that murder-by-deer went down.
I don’t know that story, but deer can kick HARD. I grew up in a hunting family and it was standard procedure that the only person who was allowed to approach the deer after it was shot to be tagged was my 6’3″ uncle because he would probably only break a leg if he was kicked.
Oh YAY! So glad to have this confirmed :3 I might wanna consider saving all the previews so I can remind myself of them without crashing my computer in attempts to scroll all the way down on the Dumblr of Age page to where specific previews were posted. XD
I love Ethan’s “Oh” in panel 5. Perhaps he’ll relax from here and start to accept who he is and come out. What are the chances that Becky will offer him advice on how to come out?
That’s a good question, what other advice she would have to offer him. I hope will will. Come to think of it, we never got to hear what advice she would have to offer Danny
The whole 3-panel sequence of nervousness-panic-relief is great, but I like the panel before better. The sheer panic in his expression, you can basically hear his thoughts racing. “Omg Dina knew is it that obvious everyone must think I’m gay already what have I been doing with my life?!” And then the realisation that there’s a perfectly simple and logical explanation for her knowing.
Joyce IS Questioning in this strip: “Even if I weren’t [Gay], I … I … I should be [‘comfortable saying [I’m] gay], right?” Except that she knows the answer, I think. BUT attending the meeting could be good for her as much as Ethan. as she works out her understanding of sexuality (and gender).
But while an argument can be made that she should be okay with it if she was gay, the truth is, she isn’t gay. Which would make saying she was, lying. And we know how she feels about lying.
So it’s perfectly natural for her to be uncomfortable with claiming she actually is gay when she isn’t, just because of the truth/lie aspect of it.
I think what Joyce is trying to do is prove that her views have changed. So she’s fine saying she’s gay (to cover up for Ethan who is still inching out of the closet) because being gay isn’t something to be ashamed of.
I was not aware that dinosaurs had such a keen sense of hearing … even when wearing another one on their head. I still contend Dina is either a Ninja in training or the most stealthy Triceratops of the entire Jurassic Age.
Wikipedia:”Triceratops is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur that first appeared during the late Maastrichtian stage of the late Cretaceous period“
Triceratops were so stealthy that they managed to hide from [whichever event/s caused dinosaurs’ extinction] and are still alive to this day, hiding from humans, being stealthy and triceratops-y.
Thou shalt not bare false witness. Its one of the 10 commandments. What the heck kind of Christianity does she subscribe to that Frozen is forbidden but lying to people is fine?
Oh, it was definitely sabotage. My favorite scene from that whole movie will always be when the nun says “bless me father, for I have sinned,” and holds up an engine part and the other one says, “so have I” (or something similar) and holds up a second engine part.
Though shalt not bear false witness *against thy neighbour*. We’re all neighbours in the Kingdom of God, but lying to get someone off on a victimless crime isn’t witness against anyone. Furthermore, statements made to lynch-mobs and censorious busybodies probably aren’t really “witness”.
If you want something against lying in general, try Leviticus 19:11, Proverbs 12:22, Proverbs 13:5, Proverbs 24:28, Ephesians 4:25, Colossians 3:9, James 3:14, or Revelation 21:8 or 21:27.
Don’t you remember the strip where someone (Dorothy?) asked her how she felt about homosexuality and she replied she feels about it the same way she feels about hating, and when asked how she feels about lying, she puts on her angry-face and says she “HATES it”? 🙂 (I would’ve linked but I’m too lazy to dive into archives right now)
The kind that says helping to keep someone’s secret until they’re comfortable not letting it be a secret is a good thing.
I don’t expect her parents to agree with this, but she may be taking the notion that the “love thy neighbor is the highest commandment” to mean that it can override the one about lying in the right circumstances.
Fake it till you make it can work pretty well for certain things. I always pretend like I’m comfortable discussing intercourse, even though I’m not, but I am moreso than say 1 year ago. Saying and doing things you feel uncomfortable with can help becoming more comfortable, sorta by force of habit. Although of course you shouldn’t push yourself too hard either.
I can also see a possible, highly-accepting future wherein everyone is “unconcerned” because whatever they are is whatever they are, and there are no pressures of society to make them distrust or feel bad about whatever it is they are. So whenever they feel whatever they feel, they’ll know, and it’ll be just fine.
I didn’t have any problems, but I used to read engineering reports and translate them into user manuals so I’m probably not the guy you want to come to for judging readability.
I wish I saw that same future. It would be nice. And maybe people would even stop trying to live their neighbors lives, and mind their own business.
But, we have 16 Republican canidates already. They may win by sheer numbers at this rate. If so, Utopia will be set back a ways, while they repeal the gay weddings act, along with other non-repressive conditions.
Way to go Ethan, your may make it out of that closet yet. I think he is surprised by Dina’s total lack of concern: and happy about it I hope.
Oh, I’m certain I’ll be dead and decayed before this future actually comes about, but it’s a natural endpoint, I think. It’s our trajectory, even if that trajectory is slow, and we should get there someday.
On a western world level, I can see this being the case by the year 2100, 2200. Young people are more and more liberal, and as the generations go, I (want to) believe the world overall will become more liberal. Of course there’ll still be assholes, but… Well more and more countries are already legalising same-sex marriage, which, although ofc it doesn’t solve everything, is as many steps in the right direction.
But maybe I’m just being overly optimistic / naive.
Not quite how society works. Yes, the trend is towards liberalism -at the moment-, but it’s pretty much at the tail-end of that cycle. You see, these things tend to work in cycles, and it’s often that a very liberal society gives rise to a very conformist/rigid one. Think of how the excesses of the 20’s/30’s gave way to the rigid late 40’s and 50’s (ofc, WWII had a big say in this), or how the more decadent era’s in Europe’s history all led to austerity eventually (usually via a peasant revolt).
Basically what I’m saying is that economic/political stability fosters social liberalism because people tend to be less uptight when most of their needs are met. On the other hand, historically, peace and stability doesn’t last very long – a few decades at most; then it’s back to war and that tends to put people in a more dower, disciplined and conformist mindset rather quickly. Now if you think war won’t come a’ nockin’ anytime soon, just look at recent political happenings in Russia and especially the newly-created ISIS. Not to mention hundreds of hotspots of a similar volatile nature around the world. Even if war itself doesn’t engulf a major part of the world, ethnic tensions are building up to a breaking point in the near future – attitudes towards such issues have been going towards the more nationalistic and isolationist for a good few years now with signs of much more to come (this is in Europe – could be that the US won’t be affected much, but there is a domino effect in today’s world).
Or maybe we’ll be super lucky and things won’t take the usual turn for another few decades. Maybe something something science. We’ll see.
Hm, yes, I see what you’re saying, those are good points. But in my optimism I tell myself that the current world is so very different from before, what with the internet and all the new technologies, and the interdependencies between countries in matters of trade, etc. Then again I really am no expert in history or international relations and all that, this is just a gut feeling, lead by my belief that history always eventually goes towards progress and justice. I mean… 350 years ago, slavery was a widely accepted practice. 200 hundred years ago, it wouldn’t even occur to most people (well, men) to let women vote. 100 years ago, homosexuality and all other non-hetero-normative behaviours were considered deviancies and perversions. Ever since 2001, a dozen countries have accepted same-sex marriage. Slavery is considered in most places to be a terrible practice, and the countries where women can’t vote can be counted on one hand. Slowly but surely, we make progress. I want to believe in that. 🙂
lol. I always love that fearmongering. Yeah Russia totally is in a position to execute the wars they want. Like yeah, what they WANT to do is rather more severe, but uh. No. They’re getting screwed too hard by the economic sanctions in place for their saber rattling. Their best targets, ultimately, have the backing of a continent that has (mostly) organized their militaries for the sole purpose of defeating Russia. And Russia is pretty small, all told (Population, which is what actually matters, not geographical size, obv).
What’s most likely to be seen is a continuation of proxy wars and national bullying, not the kind of war that would actually cause this sort of change. It’s also very much worth noting that while societies become more conformist, they tend to internalize a lot of new norms in the interim.
The secret to actually whispering quietly is to lisp. It’s the sibilants that carry the most; lose them and most people won’t be able to hear you nearly as well as they otherwise would.
Mind you, if you’re just not quiet, there’s nothing I can do for you. 😛
I was once at a piano recital with a friend when I was 7 and we chatted whispering through the whole thing, and at the end our parents who were sitting 6 rows behind us scolded us disrespecting the musicians by chatting.
That’s when I realised, if you’re not careful to actually bring keep your voice down, whispering can be almost just as loud as speaking normally.
Hmm. Dina struck me as the kind of person who would want a label for everything, but I guess I can see how sexuality wouldn’t be important enough to her.
I think she means unconcerned as in whatever her sexuality is, she’s not gonna waste time & energy trying to figure it out (when she could be spending that time on thinking about dinosaurs!). I think it’s, like, “I’ll know when I know, till then, eh.”. 🙂
Joyce is still eaten up about not actually being gay and still feels like it was her duty to be able to fully accept what she views as the greatest gift to be given. It’s so sweetly tragic and misguided to watch her ram into her inability to change her sexuality or her attractions to make her loved ones happy.
i read her line as that too at first! like, “even if i weren’t (gay), i should be (unsure)”! but reading the comments she might have meant it as “even i i weren’t (gay), i should be (comfortable saying i am)”, just a heads up 😉
I don’t know, given her past comments surrounding love and Becky, I’m just not seeing her having a healthy enough view of LGBT issues yet to be coming from that angle of seeking comfortability on the subject.
I’m pretty sure she’s taking it as a personal failing that she can’t be what Becky wants and that it is causing her long-time friend some measure of distress.
eh, people making jokes relating to a character doesn’t necessarily mean people thinking that character is a joke. let’s just sit back, chill, and enjoy the horrible jurassic puns while the mood is still light.
Everyone seems to be worried about Ethan. But Dina is on the hunt still. Does no one feel for Sarah when she finds out the object of her affection may be gay?
Oh man, do you know, this is the first time that I’ve realized that those wibbly word balloon tails mean they’re whispering? I always thought it just meant they were kinda uncertain, probably because I’m used to the standard of comic whispers being indicated by a dotted line around the balloon instead of a straight one. Or are we not doing that one anymore?
It sort of makes sense that Dina wouldn’t feel any angst about her orientation. She strikes me as the ‘I am what I am’ sort who will go where her feelings lead, no matter where that is.
Joyce should never attempt to lie. Those tells are just too overt!
I don’t know if this was mentioned before but I really like Dina’s thought bubbles being green. Like the typical cartoon-y representations of dinosaurs.
I think she likes green, either because of that association or otherwise. Her hat and hoody have both been green, even the same shade of green, and I’m sure she could have gotten them in other colors. (Purple and yellow are also common “dinosaur” colors, especially in kid cartoons.)
Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), Joyce is not a convincing liar. If you were a criminal she is not who you’d want as your alibi.
Hahahaha, I’m the same way, actually. I’m autistic and it seems that that’s part of why I’m an atrociously bad liar, apparently. I generally don’t bother with lying, I never saw much of a point (besides white lies, like “I’m late because I overslept” when I’m late because I was goofing off instead of getting ready, etc). But yeah, I would be the WORST alibi.
I saw Dina as an asexual and was kinda disappointed with the kissy scene few days ago.
But (and its a big but, size of a butt-taco grande) this actually works better.
A lot of writers handle non straight-sexual characters as if their sexuality is one and only characteristic in their lives. Entirety of their personality and self identity is their sexuality.
Finding a character who is non-straight and having it actually not affect their self identity at all… I have to say, bravo Willis, that is masterfully handled.
Yes, I agree.
But in a very different way. To Billie its an expression of control. I am who I am, its none of your business, take me or leave me as you find me.
To Dina its more like “What I am doesn’t matter to me, really.”
Her self identity is so tied up in the dinosaurs that everything else just becomes unimportant.
Very geeky trait. I’ve known quite a few geek groups where their obsession is only thing that matters to them, and things that rest of us put importance on, positive or negative, like race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, social status just doesn’t compute.
I wish more people would be like that.
So on the one hand, yeah, sometimes writers make the mistake of having sexuality (or being black, or being a girl — whatever’s marginalized about the character) be the character’s only trait.
On the other hand? These traits ARE a big part of identity, in large part because we’re marginalized for them. So to say the “best” character, the most realistic one, is a character for whom it doesn’t matter at all… isn’t accurate, I don’t think.
We need more of the spectrum. Dina not caring is a great addition to Ethan’s anxiety and Becky’s overcompensation.
And who exactly said its the “best” or most realistic one?
Please don’t apply your biases to my posts.
What I said, and what I stand with is that in a world where many writers like to reduce non straight characters to their sexuality alone, having a character who is non straight, but also completely unconcerned about sexuality in general, is a stroke of great writing.
For the exact reasons you added, and I didn’t think needed saying. Because it adds to diversity not takes away from it.
It’s been said a LOT, mostly by people fed up with Becky, right here in the comment sections.
I hear it a lot in other ransoms, too.
So yeah, I thought that might’ve been where you were coming from, but was I super rude to you? Did my comment come off as some kind of attack? :\ So awful and unproductive you wish I hadn’t said anything at all?
If I’m misinterpreting you again, I apologize. It’s just that “bias” is such a loaded word, combined with the rest of the language it makes me think you’re kind of angry. 🙁
Seeing as he’s referred to dude smut binges, I’m willing to take Ethan at his word that he’s gay. I mean I know sexuality is not a rigid thing, but Ethan seems pretty sure he’s gay. He’s stated it multiple times, and has shown to have an attraction to other guys. (While his onscreen relationship with another girl has been pretty obviously fake).
Panel one reminds me a lot of something I used to do. I used to joke that I was gay to my parents and always asked “if I were would it change your perception of me” whenever they tried to go deeper on it.
Back then I knew I was just trying to rile them up, but looking back I think I may have been fishing to see if they’d be okay with me liking guys.
Unlike many of the characters in this strip, who are very set in their ways, and have to be dragged kicking and screaming into changing, Dina shows a great DESIRE to change, to grow and become a better person. She feels no strong connection to her past self, and is intensely curious about what her future self may be like. This is why she can be so blase about her asexuality – for her, it is merely a starting point.
I don’t think she’s ready for that yet. Remember, she feels terribly about not liking Becky back. I don’t think she could accept falling for a girl that isn’t her best friend who needs her at this time. Maybe once Becky has or seems to have moved on? :3
She and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to sexuality. I’ve dated girls, I’ve dated guys. At first I was–I went through calling myself bi, pan, lesbian…and now I’ve settled on ‘If it tastes good, I’ll eat it.’
Too engaged with the diverging social dynamics of late teens of college years to even care about something as small as sexuality. And this is to pass the time before she gets to study more on the dinosaurs.
I’m really happy with that chapter vote a while back, she’s just….. deadly!
Which makes me think: Is Ethan confused because he thinks that Joyce shouldn’t be comfortable saying she’s gay, or if Joyce shouldn’t be comfortable saying she’s gay.
You know, before this stretch of strips focusing on Dina, I didn’t think I could love her more. Even after re-reading all of Roomies and Walky and Joyce last month, I loved her so much.
Dammit Willis! Why must you make Dina so lovable?!?!
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Dina, you’re no fun =(
well ok SOME fun but not at the moment
[I mean come on, who isn’t curious about dinosaur sexuality??]
Fun fact: the relative regularity of homosexual behavior in birds means it’s plausible that dinosaurs also frequently had homosexual relations.
We need more gay palaeoart.
Come on, deviant art. We are counting on you
Pretty sure I’ve seen that already on some R34 site.
IDK about deviantArt, but as far as gems of Christian fundie propaganda (or parodies of it) go… https://whatqueerreading.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/gay-dino.jpg?w=450&h=363
I- Please tell me that that was some parody?
I…I hope it is.
Because otherwise I’d have to ask the person who made that how a species with no chances of survival lasted for so many millions of years
What’s hilarious about it (and why I suspect it really has to be a parody) is that if the person who wrote this was serious, I’m assuming they have to be a fundamentalist, but then wouldn’t that also make them creationists?, young-earthers?, and yet they’re admitting dinosaurs went extinct, which implies God didn’t just put the fossils in the Earth for fun or something, and they did exist more than a few thousand years ago.
As a former creationist, I’d like to clarify what they believe. The tl;dr version is that they believe Dinosaurs were just really giant-sized lizards that lived before the Great Flood, the great flood created all the geologic layers at the same time therefore creating fossils, and the few dinosaurs after the flood didn’t survive in great numbers due to the changed climate (something about huge forests making more oxygen and therefore allowing said giant lizards to be giant, and then the flood wiped out the forests so the oxygen levels went down).
Yeah, lots and lots of bullshit. I’m so glad I managed to heal from that self-delusion.
Thank you for that. ^^ I was shaky on what they believed exactly, especially since I only recently realised there are non-young-earth creationists.
My personal theory (Which is totally made up as I’ve never been relgious at all) is that God was playing a spore like game but then decided the dinosaurs weren’t working and then wiped them out with a metor 😛
@ Saki, Onihikage – remember that “creationists” is a pretty broad demographic, as are most of their subcategories. They’re not all going to believe the same things.
@ Time Sage – To quote a Bo Burnham song, You’re not my children, you’re a bad game of Sims…
Or maybe God just has a saved game for when he wants to play with dinosaurs and we’re just the file in slot 2?
Yeah, “creationist” is basically a very broad term. EVERY christian is a creationist, as are most religious people. Basically, it just means “belief that the world/universe was created by a higher power instead of just randomly occuring”. THEN you have the various groups/fundamentalists chiming in and adding stuff like (“yeah, but if the universe was created, that means EVERYTHING was hand-crafted” or “When something is created, it STAYS that way, never mind all other stuff humans created that change over time, GODs creations are permanent”. Basically just stuff they already want to believe, which they can shoo-horn into the word “creation”.
There is nothing stopping a “creationist” from being an astrophysicst, the only difference would be that a god started the whole shebang, instead of nothing. All the the other stuff has basically nothing to do with “creation” itself.
Not every christian is a creationist – even using the broadest definition. There are plenty of atheist and agnostic christians, and even among theists there are definitions of god that place in inside the universe (I can’t remember details, but process theology has a lot of stuff like that).
I’m Christian and I am in no way, shape or form a Creationist.
I am a Scientists and I have no conflict with that and religion.
In fact, I have an opinion about Creationists that I won’t mention
here because it might make Willis upset if it causes controversy.
I have a theory about creationists that I will mention here, because I am unconcerned with things like “consequences”:
Creationists are lizard people. They disguise themselves as humans using similar techniques as the aliens in Zak McCracken.
wwwhhatt, I have to ask, as I cannot get my head around it, but what, exactly, is an atheist Christian? Seems to me that those would be mutually exclusive terms.
@Roborat – Wikipedia breaks Christian atheism into two types (and then seems to get confused while describing them), but essentially Christian atheists don’t believe in God as an omni-everything, overseeing being, and they look to Jesus as a guide for their morals and behavior. (Aside from the God thing, this is technically what *all* Christians are supposed to be doing. Being a “Christ-ian” means to be “pertaining to Christ” or “living in Christ,” ie, following Christ as a spiritual and ethical leader.) Some schools of thought maintain that Jesus himself flat out rejected the God being worshipped by his contemporaries and felt they were being misled, that the true God remained hidden from the world. Others refer to Jesus’s referencing himself as the “Son of Man” rather than “Son of God” as downplaying the role of divinity in his life. Even for Christians who might drift away from either of those belief bases, a concept of God to respect Jesus is no more necessary than it would be to respect Buddha.
I appreciate everyone trying to clear things about creationists and everything, but I’m not sure why several of you felt the need to say not all Christians are creationists? No one here even remotely implied that. ^^”
@Timemonkey & Time Sage I like your theories! XD
@begbert2 IDK Zac McCrackenm but basically… Creatinists are reptile equivalents of the Raxacoricophalapatorians in Doctor Who? 😀
@The others So, I just learned atheist Christians are a thing, and what they are, yay new knowledge! 🙂 As for the Christians can be into science thing, yes, I remember from the Ham v Nye debate how Ken Ham tried to explain that they’re not mutually exclusive, he was so desperate in trying to prove things that were kinda off-topic that he forgot what a debate is supposed to be (and maybe the format didn’t really help with that either).
Anyways. Where was I going with this? Oh right. Even creationists can be scientists. Yay? XD
@Roborat – basically what Betty Anne said. The only defining aspect of Christianity is the attempt to follow Christ*, however that gets interpreted. It’s easy enough to see belief in God as an optional extra here (even if it’s traditionally been a major part). The same goes for the Bible, incidentally.
*And there’s probably exceptions here to, somehow. Christianity’s been around too long and has spread too far to reliably fit into a single definition.
@Saki – *points finger at Mindlink like an angry 2 year old* They sed we wuz! They star’ed i’!
Why does the comment system here loose the “reply” button after a certain number of replies, is it to stop the threads becoming too long and unwieldy ?
In that case, let me add to the “unwieldy” part 😉
Lot’s of good answers here, but I’ll stick to my opinion that “creationism” has become a misused term, but that you can basically call yourself a creationist if you believe that the big-bang happened on purpose instead of an accident (and that there actually was a form of “existence” before that time (or even time)) Then people add all sorts of things to that, according to their own believes.
Then, on the subject of christian atheism, which also got some good answers, so I’ll be disrespectful and try to condence all of those well thought of sentences into a single sentence:
Christianity does not have to be a religion, like Buddhism, but just a philosophy based on the teachings of Christ, which, if you read the New Testament, is basically what Jesus told us to do. (Don’t worship me, follow my words, to paraphrase Jesus)
And a Christian agnostic ? Angosticism started as a “mystery cult” based in Christianity, which is way more complicated than I used to think, so I’m not even going to try condensing THAT.
I really don’t know. I found it on google and wasn’t able to trace it back to its source. When putting it into google.images, you can see a lot of sites picked it up, but I can’t tell which are parody&satire sites and which aren’t.
It looks like it may have originated at Landover Baptist, which is a parody site.
Surely the “life of satanism” thing marks it as parody, if nothing else does?
That’s an old favorite of mine. I laugh every time.
I didn’t know birds in particular displayed rather high numbers of homosexuality, so I looked it up. What I found out in my quick, way-not-in-depth research, is that:
1) 1 in 4 black swan pairings are of two males
2) Some guy in 1911 documented homosexual behaviours in penguin, labeled it depraved, and “The report was considered too shocking for public release at the time, and was suppressed. The only copies that were made available privately to researchers were translated into Greek, to prevent this knowledge becoming more widely known”.
3) In 1998, the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo gave two male vultures who had built a nest together a vulture chick which they raised with care. More here
And this is just what I got from Wikipedia. I am so going to look into this more later. <3
A lot of birds are not outwardly dimorphic. It may be that they’re not gay but rather just can’t tell the difference among themselves.
I always assumed animals who aren’t outwardly dimorphic differentiated each other through hormone emissions and smell and stuff? (I don’t understand or remember all that much about the chemical side of biology so maybe this sounds completey aberrant?)
Oh and anyways, even if they do go for the same sex only because they can’t differenciate, 2) is still hilarious, and 3) is still sweet. :3
AFAIK, most birds don’t have much in the way of a sense of smell.
… Yeah I suck at biology. XD
I read somewhere that at least some birds can see in the ultraviolet range, so they looked at some birds that weren’t outwardly dimorphic with uv cameras and found that the plumage is different in uv.
Oh hey yay! Man now I kinda wanna see what those UV images lookes like :3
“The Penguins of Madagascar” TV show addressed this, lol. I mean, er, about not being outwardly dimorphic. Not gay. Kids show and all, although Private has his moments…
I do hope I’ll live to see outwardly LGBTQ+ characters in mainstream kids movies.
If you’re looking for kids TV shows, Steven Universe has this covered.
I must chime in here and say that the Gems are genderless, yet they choose to use feminine pronouns when referring to each other. So what we see isn’t really what it _is_, as little sense as that makes.
It still totally looks like it though.
Steven Universe is wonderful. It’s also only one show though, so it can’t have this “covered”. ALL kids’ shows should be as awesome as it is or even more so, with LGBTQIA and body diversity and racial diversity and also gender diversity, because no one needs these things more than kids.
As much as I love it when they do this in cartoons (Korrasami <3), I want to see it in films. I feel like it might be harder to pull off in a film, or seen as harder to pull off by producers, because a film only airs once and relies a lot on what people say about it, while cartoons, having lots of episodes, can survive one episode some parents won't want their kids to see. Therefore I feel it'll be a greater achievement when it happens in a film, especially a Disney for example, because it'll mean the producers trust that the queerness won't scare away enough people to have any significant impact on their ticket and later BR/DVD sales. :3
Part of me feels like we’re unlikely to see a Trans character handled respectfully in a Disney movie. But I never thought I’d see the White House light up with rainbows, either. It would be a good day.
I hope so too since I am actually working on trying to get the one I wrote out there in theaters and stuff…:)
I am actually working woth someone from Disney to get it out there…:)
So, they’re not gay, they’re just confused?
The black swans, at least, seem to go counter to that, as one of the observed behaviors in male-male relationships is to steal eggs/nests from females, or even bring a female into the mix to lay eggs for them, so they seem to be perfectly aware of their inability to breed.
That “explanation” is so tiresomely common.
Like, really? In what fucking way is it more “logical” or “obvious” to believe animals are having sex with each other and indeed sometimes forming lifelong bonds by mistake instead of just admitting that the heteronormativity we’ve been projecting into other species is bullshit?
What reason do we even have for saying birds are “unusually” not-straight? None. We can’t even accurately measure our own species’ sexuality breakdown (it’s by survey, so you’ll need to reconfigure society into one where people aren’t raised with virulent heterosexism to the point of believing themselves straight when they aren’t?), and we sure as hell haven’t studied animals of any OTHER species frequently enough. We also tend to sex animals based on their visual behavior, when it isn’t practical to tag them, so a lot of past animal studies have just been assuming male/female couplings. This is even true with animals that have “obvious” dimorphism, as female lions with manes and male lions without both exist.
(Only rarely, you say? But again, WE DO NOT KNOW THAT. Our methods for studying animals are shit. The only result from an animal study that shouldn’t immediately be treated with interested skepticism is one that shocked the person studying, because at least then you know their expectations didn’t get projected onto what they found, or something with decent methodology where the animals were tagged.)
Absolutely!
Today’s reading material: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211246.Biological_Exuberance
I need to read that book. c:
BEST TITLE =D
One thing I feel I need to comment on what you said: “believing oneself to be straight when they really aren’t.” I’ve heard that line before, and it’s always struck me as very hypocritical. Aren’t we supposed to be accepting of what others believe is their sexuality as the truth? If we assume that other people are wrong about their own sexuality and just haven’t come to terms with it, isn’t that the same thing as saying to someone who is gay that it’s just a phase?
The way I see it, if someone believes themselves to be a certain orientation, then by definition, that’s what they are. It doesn’t matter what a person’s genetic predisposition is, what matters is their self-identity.
It was poorly worded, but they were essentially correct. I’m way the hell up there on the Kinsey scale, but still able to feel attraction to women. until I was 18, I genuinely believed myself to be straight, but have since come to recognize my behaviors and perceptions from my adolescence as homosexual. I lacked the context, the willingness, and, importantly, the belief to have declared myself anything but straight. As far as I was concerned, being gay was something that happened to other people, not me. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t gay (which, due to how rarely I feel attraction to women, is more often how I identify than bisexual, which I have used in the past as an identifier as well), it just means I lacked the capacity to acknowledge or even really recognize it.
Um, no? I was talking only about people who are actively unaware of or in denial of their sexuality when surveyed, not straight people who I’m just randomly assuming aren’t straight.
Heteronormativity is a very powerful force, friend, and where it and stigma against LGBA sexualities exist these two powers combine to do serious damage to people’s ability to self-report their sexuality.
Your comparison is ridiculously flawed because there is no systemic, external pressure on people to be sexually queer. So no, it’s pretty much nothing like you assuming a non-straight person is “just confused”.
Ok, so from now on I’m referring to the penguin thing as the Secret Gay Penguin Conspiracy of 1911.
OMG YES. XD
I’ve also read that birds not only have x&y chromosomes, but also z, meaning they can have a lot more gender configurations than us humans.
Pretty close, but no cigar! Birds actually have Z and W chromosomes instead of X and Y chromosomes. It’s essentially the mammalian system in reverse – males are homogametic (ZZ) while females are heterogametic (ZW), so it is the egg that determines sex, not the sperm. I don’t think we have any idea what sex determination systems dinosaurs used, but I really, really hope was wacky. Or even lots of wacky systems! Dinosauria was a large enough group that different species probably had completely different sex determining mechanisms. Platypus, anyone?
Also, I hate to bring this up again, but gender ≠ sex
“But gender != sex”
Don’t use this to say a trans woman is female in gender but male in sex. Okay? Don’t do it. Sex is as much a social construct as gender — especially with the existence of intersex people, and almost NO ONE has actually been genotyped so it’s just inaccurate to claim we are assigning gender based on chromosomes.
Practically speaking, a trans woman does not have male sex organs. She has female sex organs, because she’s female and they belong to her.
Period.
(This gender/sex divide was popular among the trans community for a while as a stepping stone to being legitimized, but it’s falling out of favor because it’s fundamentally misgendering and transphobic. It’s also intersex-exclusionary, and not very nonbinary friendly.)
Hi Li,
The comment wasn’t actually made in relation to trans people, but to the fact that when discussing sex determining mechanisms, it is sex, not gender, that is being discussed. Since most animals lack culture (with some possible exception, such as ourselves), they cannot meaningfully have a gender, since it is a social construct. Since the original comment was about birds (not people), it seemed a reasonable distinction.
Please understand I wasn’t trying to insinuate anything about trans people, or the labels we use for human gender. As a biologist, I do understand that neither sex nor gender are binary, and that both are, to a greater or lesser extent, social constructs. I would argue that sex is so to a lesser extent (since, biologically speaking, you can describe sex at multiple levels – chromosomal, hormonal, primary sexual characteristics, etc., though these may not match), but that is for another conversation. I’m aware that we don’t assign sex based on chromosomes, and I would argue against it if it were proposed.
I would go to the barricades to defend the right of people to be identified with their own gender – a trans woman is a woman, and so her body is a woman’s body, and is frankly, none of my business. But if you’ll excuse the glibness, people are people, and platypi are platypi (or possibly platypusses)
It was intended as more of a PSA than a direct response to YOU, sorry that got lost. :\
I think rather than saying that animals cannot possibly have a concept of gender, it’s more accurate to say that we don’t and right now can’t know what they think about gender, or indeed sex. Just because we can’t communicate with them doesn’t mean they don’t communicate with each other, you know? And it’s rather self-aggrandizing to assume that humans are the only animal with any kind of social constructs.
Biology is biology, social constructs are social constructs, and transgendered actually HAVE different chromosomes than their assigned to birth sex, so it isn’t transphobic in any way.
And sex, like gender, is nowhere near binary. Biologicaly speaking, even humans have up to 20 different sexes. No, we don’t go around chromosome-testing every human that is born, that is usually only done in the cases where their sex is not apparent at the time of birth, or as a part of research/studies in gender and sex.
Of course, all of this is kind of new to me, as in my language, even in the scientific community, we only have ONE word for both “sex” and “gender”, they are both called “kjønn” (which is ALSO the same word for “genitals”, but usually only the female genitals (which makes it even stranger to hold serious gender-debates in Norwegian (lately, in those debates, we tend to simply use the English terms instead, which in turn confuses people without Extensive English comprehension)
I am confused. What makes one “female” and the other “male” if not the same vs different chromosomes? The females have the babies? But what about the male seahorses? :S #KnowsNothingAboutScience
No, AIUI they have W & Z chromosomes, which are like XY but reverse, e.g. the female is WZ.
Homosexuality has been observed in virtually every species of mammals, and in many bird species as well. Not too sure about reptiles.
Certain whiptail lizards (Cnemidophorus uniparens, frex) are known to engage in f/f mating behaviours. There are no males in these species and they reproduce parthenogenetically, which (can be) triggered by the mating behaviour.
I only realized after making this comment that I should have said “gayleoart” and now i’m ashamed at missing such a perfect pun.
The Owl of Minerva flies only at night.
And owls are descended from dinosaurs!
Yet many grey lords go sadly to the masterless men?
actually dina already knows thus unless you are interested in dinosaurs she will not reveal the sexuality of dinosaurs 🙂
Please, Dina can’t know. Sexuality doesn’t fossilize. Even if we found two fossils in passionate lovemaking, we know so little of how to sex dinosaurs the heteronormative tendencies of science would assume one to be male and the other female.
Now, she could speculate, as some scientists do, that some dinosaurs probably showed a degree of homosexual behavior, due to its prevalence in their closest living relatives, but she probably would not be so bold as to say she KNOWS their sexuality.
Perhaps she is so stealthy that she has crept back through time itself to observe.
If she had, she would have stayed.
They didn’t have coco puffs back there. She has to return from time to time and refuel.
Yep. 🙂
No, because she enjoys not dieing horribly. Just because she likes dinosaurs doesn’t make her stupid.
Depending on how she traveled back in time, she could use that means to escape dangerous situations. And we’ve established she’s very stealthy. As far as food goes, she could 1) find the edible things of that era (although, considering evolution and all, would humans be able to digest plants from that far before they existed?) or 2) travel back and forth to get food from our time. She’s smart. She could manage. :3
Dina likes dinosaurs because they’re extinct, they’re fixed in time so she can learn about them and they’ll never change. Interacting with them would be just as difficult for her as interacting with humans.
She likes dinosaurs because, unlike people, they don’t constantly change since they are extinct. IRRC, the main problem was that social rules and that stuff constantly change, which she has trouble with. If she were to live in the times of dinosaurs, the only change she’d be witnessing was baby dinos growing up and probably mabye also weather conditions altering the landscapes (such as a forest burning down). I think she could handle that okay. The way I see it, the thrill of being able to observe real-life dinosaurs, and possibly interact with the herbivorous species, and form non-conversation-forcing, non-throwing-unreadable-social-cues-at-her, etc, bonds would widely overweigh anything else. :3
She was standing behind the door the whole time, but didn’t want to make a fuss.
You mean like the dinosaurs who died while boning each other? 😀 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/06/romeo-juliet-dinosaurs-fossils-mating_n_7011946.html (Sorry, I got lost on your first sentence intially, because I remembered reading about just such a fossil. XD)
I was just gonna mention that.
It’s not that she’s not curious, she just isn’t questioning that curiosity. She’s fine with her sexual orientation whether it be gay, straight, or towards dinosaurs.
“Unconcerned” reads more like “I’m not questioning my sexuality” than “I’m not interested in sex” in this context. I can see how one could read it other ways, though.
She’s something, let’s just say that.
Many will guess “Asexual”, as is often done.
I figure that “unconcerned” is less to do with orientation and more with near total lack of libido.
Preoccupied? she is only there to trail Jacob and Raidah.
Yeah that’s what I think she means by “unconcerned” too.
Or she just doesn’t get why people think sexuality is such a big deal.
Dina-ceratops don’t care.
Dina is immune to hetero-normativity.
Or total lack of, pardon the pun, giving a fuck.
I don’t think you have to worry about that pun being pardoned. It’s an old one, and aces have gone as far as to put it on t-shirts.
I think if you’ve managed.to shoot down five or more enemy airplanes, there are some things about which you don’t give a fuck.
Lack of libido can be categorized as asexual, though, altho it depends on how the individual feels about it.
“Unconcerned” doesn’t mean that you have less of a libido, or are asexual.
I have a very strong libido, very definitively not asexual, yet I’ve always had a very “unconcerned” attitude towards sex in general.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, I find to be one of the most pleasurable experiences two persons can have, and until I lost my virginity I was kind of fixated on it (but only in the sense that this was “something new I had not been able to experience, which is supposed to be great, and statistically there is a great chance I might go to my grave without having experienced this”), but after having that experience, I no longer think about it that often.
I still get “urges”, of course, and if I’m with a partner, that is one of the things I enjoy doing with her, but I still see it at just one of many, many, many, wonderful experiences a person can have either alone or with someone. Which makes me feel that “unconcerned” is a pretty good way to describe my attitude as well, without it actually having anything to do with my sexuality per se.
It *could* be my 150 autism score though, but that sounds like there is something I’m “missing” from my sexual encounters. “You just haven’t met the right person, you need to try different techinques, etc.” I DO have amazing experiences, similar to a potent psychedelic, I just get those extacys from many other experiences too, like sharing a 15 minute laugh with someone I’m very close too, like sleeping with someone that matches your sleeping style and you trust fully, like winning a small prize when you gathered up your last change and both of you have had a rough week, eating the best meal of your life, seing the sun rise over a landscape in a country you’ve never been before, etc.
This makes sense to me. I watched Vi Hart’s “On Gender” video a few months ago, and it clicked for me that although I am a woman and I have no interest in identifying as anything else, I don’t feel really attached to any sexual orientation labels. And your description here comes the closest I’ve ever seen to explaining why!
Oh, of course, definitely! I meant more that the statement I was replying to made it sound like (possibly unintentionally) that a lack of libido =/= asexual. I tried to phrase my statement as that being one thing that CAN be associated with identifying as asexual, but it’s definitely more complex than just that, you’re totally correct. (And of course you’d probably be more correct about what being asexual is like, since I’m heterosexual.)
Altho I’m curious, what in the world is a 150 autism score???? I’m autistic and I’ve NEVER heard of a scoring system for it???
I think unconcerned is more that Dina is a naturalists who believes that anything that happens in nature is normal and not something to agonize over. It doesn’t matter to her who her first sexual encounter will be with, and she doesn’t care what society thinks of it.
You THINK?!!
Dina speaks to me in a very fundamental way
We are witness to Dina. WITNESS!
And free pizza. Did people forget the pizza?
and subs
FOOLS! You will ALL question your society-assigned sexualities and discover your true identities! (Ask me how!)
Fool. The notion of gender is irrelevant. FOOOOOOOL
Only Someone can pull off “FOOLS!”
Well, Galasso too, but he doesn’t comment here (unless he’s actually Someone… dun dun DUN)
But Someone can be anyone. Even… YOU
Dun dun dun!
This thread is starting to sound like Odysseus jokes.
I’m an anyone. Can I be him?
Eh. Sure. Knock yourself out. I’m not the boss of you.
YOU’RE NOT MY SUPERVISOR!
As Daniel the Human says…
“I’m Nobody. Nobody’s perfect…”
Well, yeah, that was supposed to be in Galasso-style. 🙂
curses, that was supposed to link to a certain… face.
FAAAAAACE
Stop the Faces!
Meme – countermeme.
This is a great day 🙂
I just figured you were speechless.
Ooh, Galasso is catering?
Fools, You will all accept your sexuality for the glory of Galasso’s Pizza…and subs!
Galasso questions if he is subs
Galasso suspects he is actually doms
We are pizza (and sub) sexuals?
Of course! Galasso is questioning. In fact Galasso is questioning quite a lot. Galasso is questioning how to tell apart male and the other one! Galasso is questioning how to produce an heir! Galasso is questioning how he managed to produce a daughter if he did not even know the preceding! Galasso is questioning why autocorrect believes his name is actually Galas!
But Joyce is the fundamentalist here. 😛
Damn you, Dina! Damn you and your saurian logic!
Dina’s logic is not very rigorous here. She has no way to know how large the pool of Amber’s ex-boyfriends is, or if she does she does not present it to support her conclusion.
well that all got cleared up in a uncharacteristically incircuitous manner
Sweet of Joyce to try and cover for Ethan. Good of Ethan to finally sorta say it to someone new, get the ball rolling again. Though they seem to have forgotten Amber and him had an argument about him crawling back in the closet right ion front of her.
Well they do tend to forget about her when she’s in the room so yeah.
I always wondered about the whispering.
Dina asks the questions we’re all thinking about.
Some people vastly underestimate how far a whisper carries, but at that range there’s really no excuse.
Me too. Especially in films / TV shows. I can never tell if the third party can hear them or not, it’s very frustrating and confusing.
Yea, and even if you don’t UNDERSTAND you can hear it. Or SEE it.
Well, except for my dear granny, who was totally deaf and couldn’t hear a thing if you didn’t scream like a football coach. Fun times.
*plays Diana Ross’ “I’m Coming Out” on the jukebox down the hall from this scene*
Hadn’t realized I’d used this song before. Well, it’s summer re-run season.
Following with a spin from Duran Duran…
I would have chosen Cam Clarke’s version of “Son of a Preacher Man”.
Naaa, that would set Joyce off most likely…
*Checks out Daashi’s Gravatar…*
I love that face on dina in the second panel, way too cutw
You mean this one? Did up a roughly Gravatar sized one too, if anyone wants it. I have fun in paint… :p
So is she not concerned enough to go to the meeting? Please no. I reaaaally want to see how Ethan does in there.
That would be a very short Dina-centric storyline.
It wouldn’t. If Dina doesn’t go to the meeting, we’d keep following her, because I’m pretty sure Willis said or implied that this storyline lasts the entire day, which would mean we’ll hear about the meeting tomorrow from people talking about it. But thanks to MeganTheWorldEater finding / remembering the preview of Dina eating pizza, we don’t have to worry about it anyways. \ (•◡•) /
Fear not for I have seen a vision of Dina, and pizza.
http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/117548081666/itswalky-august-1
Coming in 10 days or so?
Well they hafta cook the pizza first duh.
Triceratops is a herbivore, and needs to eat very frequently. Triceratops will attend any meeting for free pizza, maybe even a Ken Ham speech if she is hungry enough (last time that happened, Triceratops had to be escorted off the premises by security).
I… I really wanna draw this now. *adds it to the numerously itemed list of DoA scenes people have imagined that I want to draw*
WELL actually it’s been proposed that ceratopsians may have also been opportunistic scavengers, not unlike modern deer eating birds for the occasional protein. So fear not, Dina; pepperoni is good for Triceratops.
(Maybe.)
D… Deers… Deers eat BIRDS? D: Butbutbut they’re so adorable… I just, I just pictured a deer with a bleeding bird in his mouth, feathers falling from it, and… it’s note like I was obsessive about deers but they were registered as cute in my brain and now… Now they’re suddenly under the psychopathic label. T_T
(not that I associate meat eating with psychopathic. I associate seeminlgy adorable but then being drenched in the blood of something you’ve killed with psycopathy.)
Well then boy do I have a lot to tell you about birds themselves….
Nono. Please don’t. I’ve head enough tiny heart-break for one day. ;_;
Nature can be pretty fucked up. For instance, I remember there are types of moths that like to drink the blood of animals.
That I’m not surprised about. I didn’t know, but I’m not surprised. As far as insects and other tiny crawly animals go, I expect the worst of them anyways. Except butterflies. Butterflies are cool. And if there are blood-sucking butterflies out there somewhere, I don’t wanna to know.
Ah, let’s turn to classics.
Note: There is actually no blood-sucking butterflies in that link, only Edgar Alan Poe being overdramatic 🙂
@Bagge That was a fun read until I pictured the creature being at the proximity of 1/16 of an inch from someone’s eye. Still glad I could add this bit of literature to my culture. 🙂
Glad you liked it 🙂
It’s in no way one of his better texts, but I enjoy it for its sheer weirdness.
Big difference between predation and opportunistic scavenging; scavenged meat won’t necessarily be as bloody, and pretty much by definition wasn’t killed by its consumer.
Oh, I guess I never really knew what scavenging meant exactly. ^^” Thanks for clearing that up. 🙂 Doesn’t make it any less… off-putting though, haha.
Deer have killed people over little mint candies. Well, they’ve killed at least one child. NEVER ASSUME THAT WILDLIFE IS HARMLESS.
Oh internet. Why do you keep saddling me with all that unwanted knowledge. And curiosity. Why do you make me want to look up how exactly that murder-by-deer went down.
I don’t know that story, but deer can kick HARD. I grew up in a hunting family and it was standard procedure that the only person who was allowed to approach the deer after it was shot to be tagged was my 6’3″ uncle because he would probably only break a leg if he was kicked.
Oh YAY! So glad to have this confirmed :3 I might wanna consider saving all the previews so I can remind myself of them without crashing my computer in attempts to scroll all the way down on the Dumblr of Age page to where specific previews were posted. XD
Dinasaurs LOVE pizza!
I would have said “scientific reasons” but unconcerned fits quite well too.
I’m not sure anyone is going to say it, so I’ll just go ahead
demi dina
I think Dina is a tiny bit proud that she remembers things like people’s sexuality. See, she does TOO socialize p
Yeah, it’s super adorable.
I love Ethan’s “Oh” in panel 5. Perhaps he’ll relax from here and start to accept who he is and come out. What are the chances that Becky will offer him advice on how to come out?
She already did . He didn’t like it.
To be fair, that wasn’t really advice so much as recounting how she did it. I don’t believe she even knows he’s gay yet.
True, but he was clearly putting himself in her place and responding from his situation. Extra clear in the following strip.
And it’s not like he would like “eh, just nuke the closet and butts to anyone who doesn’t accept it” anymore if she addressed him directly.
True. I’m just saying that SHE didn’t know he was looking for advice. She probably would still advocate that approach if she had known, but maybe not.
That’s a good question, what other advice she would have to offer him. I hope will will. Come to think of it, we never got to hear what advice she would have to offer Danny
I hope we will LEARN THAT IN TIME
Problem with that is, like Danny, she does not have a grasp on bisexuality.
If Becky were to respond to Danny the same way she did with Billie (who is much more comfortable in her sexual identity), there might be problems.
The whole 3-panel sequence of nervousness-panic-relief is great, but I like the panel before better. The sheer panic in his expression, you can basically hear his thoughts racing. “Omg Dina knew is it that obvious everyone must think I’m gay already what have I been doing with my life?!” And then the realisation that there’s a perfectly simple and logical explanation for her knowing.
I love Dina because of her ability to cut through the red tape of wacky misunderstandings in one strip.
Same. We always come up with crazy hypothetical scenarios in the comments and then Dina just goes ‘this is how it is, xyz’. I love her.
No, it’s “This is how it is. QED” She has deduced it.
We’ve been conditionned by sitocms and other TV shows to see things going a certain way. But Dina is immune to sitcom tropes! :3
Dina is The. Best. Ever.
I want Ethan and Dina to become friends. Idk why, but I see a lot of potential for awkward cuteness.
I can totally see their friendship turning into brother-sister type interactions. Though probably without the fighting. XD
Unconcerned.
As in. I know what I’m into, and I’m into everything.
Joyce IS Questioning in this strip: “Even if I weren’t [Gay], I … I … I should be [‘comfortable saying [I’m] gay], right?” Except that she knows the answer, I think. BUT attending the meeting could be good for her as much as Ethan. as she works out her understanding of sexuality (and gender).
But while an argument can be made that she should be okay with it if she was gay, the truth is, she isn’t gay. Which would make saying she was, lying. And we know how she feels about lying.
So it’s perfectly natural for her to be uncomfortable with claiming she actually is gay when she isn’t, just because of the truth/lie aspect of it.
I think what Joyce is trying to do is prove that her views have changed. So she’s fine saying she’s gay (to cover up for Ethan who is still inching out of the closet) because being gay isn’t something to be ashamed of.
I read her as saying “even if I weren’t [comfortable] I ought to be [comfortable]”.
I was not aware that dinosaurs had such a keen sense of hearing … even when wearing another one on their head. I still contend Dina is either a Ninja in training or the most stealthy Triceratops of the entire Jurassic Age.
Wikipedia:”Triceratops is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur that first appeared during the late Maastrichtian stage of the late Cretaceous period“
So, ninja in training.
Triceratops were so stealthy in the Jurassic Age, it was virtually impossible to find one!
Triceratops were so stealthy that they managed to hide from [whichever event/s caused dinosaurs’ extinction] and are still alive to this day, hiding from humans, being stealthy and triceratops-y.
Thou shalt not bare false witness. Its one of the 10 commandments. What the heck kind of Christianity does she subscribe to that Frozen is forbidden but lying to people is fine?
Selective?
See The Sound of Music, towards the end, two nuns confess to their Mother Superior that they lied to the Nazis to aid the Van Trap family’s escape.
Or maybe it was that they sabotaged the Nazi’s car? Or both?
Oh, it was definitely sabotage. My favorite scene from that whole movie will always be when the nun says “bless me father, for I have sinned,” and holds up an engine part and the other one says, “so have I” (or something similar) and holds up a second engine part.
She doesn’t think lying is fine. That she does it anyway is a big source of stress for her
‘Bearing false witness’ and ‘lying’ are not exact similes, afaik.
Though shalt not bear false witness *against thy neighbour*. We’re all neighbours in the Kingdom of God, but lying to get someone off on a victimless crime isn’t witness against anyone. Furthermore, statements made to lynch-mobs and censorious busybodies probably aren’t really “witness”.
If you want something against lying in general, try Leviticus 19:11, Proverbs 12:22, Proverbs 13:5, Proverbs 24:28, Ephesians 4:25, Colossians 3:9, James 3:14, or Revelation 21:8 or 21:27.
“Thou” dammit. I have to proof-read more carefully.
Don’t you remember the strip where someone (Dorothy?) asked her how she felt about homosexuality and she replied she feels about it the same way she feels about hating, and when asked how she feels about lying, she puts on her angry-face and says she “HATES it”? 🙂 (I would’ve linked but I’m too lazy to dive into archives right now)
archive diving ain’t too bad if you remember it was actually mike who asked that ;P
Oh right. Thanks. ^^
The kind that says helping to keep someone’s secret until they’re comfortable not letting it be a secret is a good thing.
I don’t expect her parents to agree with this, but she may be taking the notion that the “love thy neighbor is the highest commandment” to mean that it can override the one about lying in the right circumstances.
Nononon It’s MAKE IT MAKE IT DON’T FAKE IT MAKE IT MAKE IT DON’T FAKE IT.
Fake it till you make it can work pretty well for certain things. I always pretend like I’m comfortable discussing intercourse, even though I’m not, but I am moreso than say 1 year ago. Saying and doing things you feel uncomfortable with can help becoming more comfortable, sorta by force of habit. Although of course you shouldn’t push yourself too hard either.
Don’t dream it, be it?
Unconcerned is an excellent word for it, I think.
I can also see a possible, highly-accepting future wherein everyone is “unconcerned” because whatever they are is whatever they are, and there are no pressures of society to make them distrust or feel bad about whatever it is they are. So whenever they feel whatever they feel, they’ll know, and it’ll be just fine.
Clarity was definitely my focus here. Yup, this is not at all difficult to read.
Oops.
Use nonwords then, like [noun]
It actually isn’t, at least not to me.
I didn’t have any problems, but I used to read engineering reports and translate them into user manuals so I’m probably not the guy you want to come to for judging readability.
I wish I saw that same future. It would be nice. And maybe people would even stop trying to live their neighbors lives, and mind their own business.
But, we have 16 Republican canidates already. They may win by sheer numbers at this rate. If so, Utopia will be set back a ways, while they repeal the gay weddings act, along with other non-repressive conditions.
Way to go Ethan, your may make it out of that closet yet. I think he is surprised by Dina’s total lack of concern: and happy about it I hope.
Oh, I’m certain I’ll be dead and decayed before this future actually comes about, but it’s a natural endpoint, I think. It’s our trajectory, even if that trajectory is slow, and we should get there someday.
We have 22 GOP candidta.. oh @#^%$ 23, ^&%$* 24… No would you believe 37? If more don’t join in before midnight Pacific time.
On a western world level, I can see this being the case by the year 2100, 2200. Young people are more and more liberal, and as the generations go, I (want to) believe the world overall will become more liberal. Of course there’ll still be assholes, but… Well more and more countries are already legalising same-sex marriage, which, although ofc it doesn’t solve everything, is as many steps in the right direction.
But maybe I’m just being overly optimistic / naive.
Not quite how society works. Yes, the trend is towards liberalism -at the moment-, but it’s pretty much at the tail-end of that cycle. You see, these things tend to work in cycles, and it’s often that a very liberal society gives rise to a very conformist/rigid one. Think of how the excesses of the 20’s/30’s gave way to the rigid late 40’s and 50’s (ofc, WWII had a big say in this), or how the more decadent era’s in Europe’s history all led to austerity eventually (usually via a peasant revolt).
Basically what I’m saying is that economic/political stability fosters social liberalism because people tend to be less uptight when most of their needs are met. On the other hand, historically, peace and stability doesn’t last very long – a few decades at most; then it’s back to war and that tends to put people in a more dower, disciplined and conformist mindset rather quickly. Now if you think war won’t come a’ nockin’ anytime soon, just look at recent political happenings in Russia and especially the newly-created ISIS. Not to mention hundreds of hotspots of a similar volatile nature around the world. Even if war itself doesn’t engulf a major part of the world, ethnic tensions are building up to a breaking point in the near future – attitudes towards such issues have been going towards the more nationalistic and isolationist for a good few years now with signs of much more to come (this is in Europe – could be that the US won’t be affected much, but there is a domino effect in today’s world).
Or maybe we’ll be super lucky and things won’t take the usual turn for another few decades. Maybe something something science. We’ll see.
Hm, yes, I see what you’re saying, those are good points. But in my optimism I tell myself that the current world is so very different from before, what with the internet and all the new technologies, and the interdependencies between countries in matters of trade, etc. Then again I really am no expert in history or international relations and all that, this is just a gut feeling, lead by my belief that history always eventually goes towards progress and justice. I mean… 350 years ago, slavery was a widely accepted practice. 200 hundred years ago, it wouldn’t even occur to most people (well, men) to let women vote. 100 years ago, homosexuality and all other non-hetero-normative behaviours were considered deviancies and perversions. Ever since 2001, a dozen countries have accepted same-sex marriage. Slavery is considered in most places to be a terrible practice, and the countries where women can’t vote can be counted on one hand. Slowly but surely, we make progress. I want to believe in that. 🙂
“Just look to Russia”
lol. I always love that fearmongering. Yeah Russia totally is in a position to execute the wars they want. Like yeah, what they WANT to do is rather more severe, but uh. No. They’re getting screwed too hard by the economic sanctions in place for their saber rattling. Their best targets, ultimately, have the backing of a continent that has (mostly) organized their militaries for the sole purpose of defeating Russia. And Russia is pretty small, all told (Population, which is what actually matters, not geographical size, obv).
What’s most likely to be seen is a continuation of proxy wars and national bullying, not the kind of war that would actually cause this sort of change. It’s also very much worth noting that while societies become more conformist, they tend to internalize a lot of new norms in the interim.
I’ve been around many people who whisper way too loudly myself.
Even quiet whispers carry farther than a simple murmur if someone’s listening.
The secret to actually whispering quietly is to lisp. It’s the sibilants that carry the most; lose them and most people won’t be able to hear you nearly as well as they otherwise would.
Mind you, if you’re just not quiet, there’s nothing I can do for you. 😛
i’m that person, one time i was whispering to a friend in a study hall and a dude wearing earphones two tables away yelled at me to shut up 🙁
Wow, that IS really bad whispering.
Rest assured, I’m a bad screamer.
I was once at a piano recital with a friend when I was 7 and we chatted whispering through the whole thing, and at the end our parents who were sitting 6 rows behind us scolded us disrespecting the musicians by chatting.
That’s when I realised, if you’re not careful to actually bring keep your voice down, whispering can be almost just as loud as speaking normally.
And of course “stage whispers” are a thing.
Also called “shouting whispers”.
Hmm. Dina struck me as the kind of person who would want a label for everything, but I guess I can see how sexuality wouldn’t be important enough to her.
I wonder if she means unconcerned as in she’s asexual or unconcerned as in she knows exactly what she is.
Yeah, I’m taking it as more evidence for my Ace Spectrum (I’m hoping grey-ace or demi) Dina theory.
I think she means unconcerned as in whatever her sexuality is, she’s not gonna waste time & energy trying to figure it out (when she could be spending that time on thinking about dinosaurs!). I think it’s, like, “I’ll know when I know, till then, eh.”. 🙂
Third option: She is unconcerned, because she is currently on a mission.
I took it to me that she wasn’t concerned about it right now because she’s on a mission for Sarah to tail Jacob and Raidah.
*to mean
🙁
Joyce is still eaten up about not actually being gay and still feels like it was her duty to be able to fully accept what she views as the greatest gift to be given. It’s so sweetly tragic and misguided to watch her ram into her inability to change her sexuality or her attractions to make her loved ones happy.
I just want to give her all the hugs here.
i read her line as that too at first! like, “even if i weren’t (gay), i should be (unsure)”! but reading the comments she might have meant it as “even i i weren’t (gay), i should be (comfortable saying i am)”, just a heads up 😉
I don’t know, given her past comments surrounding love and Becky, I’m just not seeing her having a healthy enough view of LGBT issues yet to be coming from that angle of seeking comfortability on the subject.
It seems, at least to me, much more likely that she’s still in the mode that she wishes she could return Becky’s feelings and is haunted that she can’t. I mean, that’s what she was relating to Walky and Sal, here:http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/foranybody/
I’m pretty sure she’s taking it as a personal failing that she can’t be what Becky wants and that it is causing her long-time friend some measure of distress.
Wow, there are a lot of comments mocking Dina’s concerns with dinosaur references and puns. Am I the only one who thinks she’s not a joke character?
eh, people making jokes relating to a character doesn’t necessarily mean people thinking that character is a joke. let’s just sit back, chill, and enjoy the horrible jurassic puns while the mood is still light.
I agree. 🙂
She’s not a joke character. She is the straight woman. As for her sexual straightness, let her figure out the bases
Also, this is a webcomic. Puns in the comments are a given.
re : Alt-text
Dont knock it, It worked for Robin .
Everyone seems to be worried about Ethan. But Dina is on the hunt still. Does no one feel for Sarah when she finds out the object of her affection may be gay?
Dr. Phil
Wait, what? Jacob isn’t gay, he’s walking Raidah back to her room. Did I miss something?
If Jacob is anything like his Shortpacked! counterpart, both Raidah and Sarah are going to have some issues keeping him exclusive.
And it would solve all of Sarah & Raider’s problems
(not)
Not necessarily. He was a sex addict, that doesn’t mean unfaithful, it just means “wants to have sex more often than is healthy”
Oh man, do you know, this is the first time that I’ve realized that those wibbly word balloon tails mean they’re whispering? I always thought it just meant they were kinda uncertain, probably because I’m used to the standard of comic whispers being indicated by a dotted line around the balloon instead of a straight one. Or are we not doing that one anymore?
Man, now I gotta go reread everything…
I’m pretty sure it can be either depending on context.
“My sexuality is ‘meh'”
hehehehe
It sort of makes sense that Dina wouldn’t feel any angst about her orientation. She strikes me as the ‘I am what I am’ sort who will go where her feelings lead, no matter where that is.
Joyce should never attempt to lie. Those tells are just too overt!
I don’t know if this was mentioned before but I really like Dina’s thought bubbles being green. Like the typical cartoon-y representations of dinosaurs.
I think she likes green, either because of that association or otherwise. Her hat and hoody have both been green, even the same shade of green, and I’m sure she could have gotten them in other colors. (Purple and yellow are also common “dinosaur” colors, especially in kid cartoons.)
I do recall her t-shirts have also been green. Favorite color perhaps?
You know, it’s actually pretty sweet of Joyce to try to (poorly) cover for him like this, to try to help him keep it to himself if he so chooses.
Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), Joyce is not a convincing liar. If you were a criminal she is not who you’d want as your alibi.
Hahahaha, I’m the same way, actually. I’m autistic and it seems that that’s part of why I’m an atrociously bad liar, apparently. I generally don’t bother with lying, I never saw much of a point (besides white lies, like “I’m late because I overslept” when I’m late because I was goofing off instead of getting ready, etc). But yeah, I would be the WORST alibi.
Remember, Dina has been stated canonically that “mammals are weird”.
Well, we kinda are. That’s just stating the obvious. 😛
I don’t care what anyone says, this comic now has two transpeople and an ace. *love*
It already had two transpeople and an ace Carla is both.
I heard a million comments about Dina’s sexuality cry out, then were suddenly silenced.
Well, technically comments are silent.
I like Dina. She’s so cool and chill. I’m glad we’re going through things in her perspective. We get to know so much more about her. 🙂
I saw Dina as an asexual and was kinda disappointed with the kissy scene few days ago.
But (and its a big but, size of a butt-taco grande) this actually works better.
A lot of writers handle non straight-sexual characters as if their sexuality is one and only characteristic in their lives. Entirety of their personality and self identity is their sexuality.
Finding a character who is non-straight and having it actually not affect their self identity at all… I have to say, bravo Willis, that is masterfully handled.
What about to Billie? She played the “Whatever” card in response to her “Sexuality” card before the comic even started.
Yes, I agree.
But in a very different way. To Billie its an expression of control. I am who I am, its none of your business, take me or leave me as you find me.
To Dina its more like “What I am doesn’t matter to me, really.”
Her self identity is so tied up in the dinosaurs that everything else just becomes unimportant.
Very geeky trait. I’ve known quite a few geek groups where their obsession is only thing that matters to them, and things that rest of us put importance on, positive or negative, like race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, social status just doesn’t compute.
I wish more people would be like that.
So on the one hand, yeah, sometimes writers make the mistake of having sexuality (or being black, or being a girl — whatever’s marginalized about the character) be the character’s only trait.
On the other hand? These traits ARE a big part of identity, in large part because we’re marginalized for them. So to say the “best” character, the most realistic one, is a character for whom it doesn’t matter at all… isn’t accurate, I don’t think.
We need more of the spectrum. Dina not caring is a great addition to Ethan’s anxiety and Becky’s overcompensation.
And who exactly said its the “best” or most realistic one?
Please don’t apply your biases to my posts.
What I said, and what I stand with is that in a world where many writers like to reduce non straight characters to their sexuality alone, having a character who is non straight, but also completely unconcerned about sexuality in general, is a stroke of great writing.
For the exact reasons you added, and I didn’t think needed saying. Because it adds to diversity not takes away from it.
It’s been said a LOT, mostly by people fed up with Becky, right here in the comment sections.
I hear it a lot in other ransoms, too.
So yeah, I thought that might’ve been where you were coming from, but was I super rude to you? Did my comment come off as some kind of attack? :\ So awful and unproductive you wish I hadn’t said anything at all?
If I’m misinterpreting you again, I apologize. It’s just that “bias” is such a loaded word, combined with the rest of the language it makes me think you’re kind of angry. 🙁
I’m starting ot think Dina has, in fact, a better sense of hearing than a lot of people.
She… can hear other characters when they whisper among themselves?
Guys, we were wrong about Dina all along. She’s a real life person who somehow got sucked into the Willisverse!
ethan…my son…unsure about ones sexuality does not necessarily mean gay.
“I am the wellspring from which you flow… my son.“
Seeing as he’s referred to dude smut binges, I’m willing to take Ethan at his word that he’s gay. I mean I know sexuality is not a rigid thing, but Ethan seems pretty sure he’s gay. He’s stated it multiple times, and has shown to have an attraction to other guys. (While his onscreen relationship with another girl has been pretty obviously fake).
It is a well-established fact that Ethan is gay. We know it. He knows it. He “just” has trouble accepting it.
i wasnt??????? talking ab ethan???????? joyce said shes unsure ab her sexuality and ethan asked her if she was comfortable saying she was gay.
Panel one reminds me a lot of something I used to do. I used to joke that I was gay to my parents and always asked “if I were would it change your perception of me” whenever they tried to go deeper on it.
Back then I knew I was just trying to rile them up, but looking back I think I may have been fishing to see if they’d be okay with me liking guys.
Unlike many of the characters in this strip, who are very set in their ways, and have to be dragged kicking and screaming into changing, Dina shows a great DESIRE to change, to grow and become a better person. She feels no strong connection to her past self, and is intensely curious about what her future self may be like. This is why she can be so blase about her asexuality – for her, it is merely a starting point.
This is why she is the best character.
Well, that and the dinosaurs.
Dinosexual.
Wow. That’s possibly the most genuinely endearing thing Joyce has ever done.
Dina can deduce all of your secrets. Don’t even try hiding them from the Dina.
maybe it’ll help joyce come to terms with being bi
I don’t think she’s ready for that yet. Remember, she feels terribly about not liking Becky back. I don’t think she could accept falling for a girl that isn’t her best friend who needs her at this time. Maybe once Becky has or seems to have moved on? :3
mm ur probably right. too bad
Awww Dina I love you!
She and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to sexuality. I’ve dated girls, I’ve dated guys. At first I was–I went through calling myself bi, pan, lesbian…and now I’ve settled on ‘If it tastes good, I’ll eat it.’
…Not Dina’s words…but…whatever. xD
I think you’d have to have some serious hardware to get to Dina’s primed levels of analytical indifference. It’s something to strive for.
Dina.
Too engaged with the diverging social dynamics of late teens of college years to even care about something as small as sexuality. And this is to pass the time before she gets to study more on the dinosaurs.
I’m really happy with that chapter vote a while back, she’s just….. deadly!
So Danny’s totally going to be at this thing, isn’t he?
Probably not. I don’t think Danny and Ethan are going to figure that out about each other for a while, let alone in a Dina focused storyline.
You shouldn’t be comfortable saying that if you’re interested in attracting heterosexual male mates. Otherwise, yes.
Which makes me think: Is Ethan confused because he thinks that Joyce shouldn’t be comfortable saying she’s gay, or if Joyce shouldn’t be comfortable saying she’s gay.
Yes.
Bless you for trying, Joyce. 🙂
You know, before this stretch of strips focusing on Dina, I didn’t think I could love her more. Even after re-reading all of Roomies and Walky and Joyce last month, I loved her so much.
Dammit Willis! Why must you make Dina so lovable?!?!
Joyce needs to stop overcompensating for her sheltered upbringing. She’s trying too hard, and it’s going to cause problems in future.
Yaaas Dina you are me.
Unconcerned about sex…about right. About right. As should we all.