I think I remember at least one bonus strip wherein Carol was seen pregnant with Joyce,so unfortunately I think the odds of this being correct are slim… but wouldn’t that be one hell of a revelation.
It’s not exactly clear which interval “it’s been 20 years” means, but it’s a good data point. Probably also when Joyce and Jocelyne were talking about Halloween. https://www.dumbingofage.com/squeezing-2/
Yeah, I’m 10000% thinking that. That comment, while something Carol would fucking say in a heartbeat, is also way too comical given the context of this being a comic.
Jocelyne is not out to Joyce yet, based on her phone contact not changing as of a couple weeks ago. Their last shown conversation was about Joyce trusting their dad, though, so I wonder if that led to Joce telling Hank and word of it coming back to Carol.
Or Carla. I’m pretty sure Joyce knows Carla. And I’m surprised she doesn’t know Carla’s trans, it doesn’t seem like Carla is quiet about that or anything else about herself.
Interesting that Joyce’s shirt seems to be trans pride colors this comic.
She knows Carla. Carla built the shower shoes for her, mostly out of spite. Joyce however is still in the “why does she get a room to herself” phase of that knowledge. She might need some stuff spelled out for her and Carla is too abrasive to tell her and no one else really feels the need to bring it up.
Easy. Carla’s parents are rich and would do anything for her. And Carla is self-centered enough to think sharing a room with someone else would be unbearable as it would require her to concede space in her room for them to sleep and keep their things. These are all things that Carla has made pretty explicit. No need to look any deeper.
I mean there’s no reason to discount the obvious reality that, even if Carla’s parents did pull some (purse) strings to get her a single, the pool of roommates that won’t endanger her is small and IU’s resources for finding said roommates are likely minimal
well, carla only said she was trans explicitly to ruth (who might’ve known from her ‘files’ or whatever anyways) and some other ppl but i imagine even if she wasn’t esp trying to hide it from joyce she’d be more annoyed trying to ‘explain’ it to joyce as opposed to getting preached at her from before she changed like how mary was transphobic towards her
Definitely public, but that doesn’t mean that everyone on the floor knows or that she goes around telling everyone or that Joyce is exceptionally blind not to have figured it out.
I definitely see Carla as not blending. She was a famous legal battle as a trans teen, she’s really tall, and she chooses clothes that don’t make her especially hourglass-shaped. Anyone with any trans knowledge at all can probably tell that Carla’s a transwoman just by looking.
It’s just, you might remember when Joyce found out Ethan was gay, and he first response was “but you look normal”. It has never crossed Joyce’s mind that somebody she knows could possibly be trans.
How many kids follow news stories about the children of random public figures? Especially ones who aren’t celebrities in fields that really appeal to kids.
I do indeed know that there are tall slim mostly-rectangular ciswomen. It was just in combination with the other factors, and with Carla’s openness in general. Carla wears what she likes to wear, she does whatever pleases her, she prefers to rip bandaids off of secrets, she just doesn’t care all that much about blending or not, so, people may be able to tell she’s a transwoman.
Carla mentions being trans when it’s relevant (like when she was making a really good point about it to Ruth, and alluding to it with Sal to make sure Sal knew the “reason” that Carla was tall, bragging about being the textbook in Gender Studies, etc).
She’s really not closeted.
Joyce was just specifically raised with blinders on. Carla’s transness wouldn’t occur to Joyce without a specific conversation about ‘hello, I am trans’.
I did not mean that people can automatically tell anyone’s assigned gender just by looking. I mean that Carla, specifically, often doesn’t blend, because she doesn’t prioritize blending.
(Also I didn’t know that “transwoman” was out and “trans woman” was in. My bad.)
Carla’s transness wouldn’t occur to Joyce without a specific conversation about ‘hello, I am trans’.
Which is totally fine! People being ignorant of one’s transness is way better than people tiptoeing around it.
To Joyce, Carla is “just” a woman, therefore is treated as a woman, which is probably for the best. I mean, worst case scenario, she might say something inconsiderate at some point without realising it.
Some people may need to know, to avoid delicate situations (e.g student housing arrangements), but “random kid from the dorm floor” probably doesn’t check that knid of box.
Found it. As I remembered, it was distinctly *not* braggy. Carla’s expression in this comic is wary, uncomfortable. She’s probably lost friends in the past. She’s a trans teenaged girl in Indiana.
I know Carla’s mostly just comic relief nowadays, but seriously, the idea that Carla “doesn’t care about being outed” is pretty demonstrably not the case. I don’t think she scrambles to hide being trans, but she’s also pretty obviously not interested in bringing it up. When she talked to Carla about being trans, her frustration was that people punish her for being flawed and messy, that they expect her to be a perfect representative of womanhood to “make up” for being trans.
It’s pretty obvious to me that Carla is not the type to stand on a table and announce that she’s trans. At least, the old Carla wasn’t.
Oh, I misread you–you didn’t describe it as “bragging” at all. That said, all my other analysis stands. Carla isn’t closeted, but that’s *not* the same thing as being comfortable announcing herself. She told Sal because Sal was a kind-of friend, and she wanted to test the waters. Trans people have to do that.
It’s worth remembering that Carla’s also being written pretty differently these days. She’s a lot more exaggerated, with little of her old access to serious scenes and sincere moments. It’s kind of hard to predict how she’ll act.
Must be nice to have that sort of ESP. I wondered literally for years what it was that other readers “knew” about Carla that I didn’t. It was nice to eventually have some direct evidence. (The occasion wasn’t nice for her — sorry, Carla.)
To be honest I completly forgot that Carla was trans. Everyone seems to remember that sort of thing but I guess my brain is just overloaded by the simplest of things and ADD doesn’t help
@nicoleandmaggie I’m pretty sure it was actually first revealed to us the audience when she accidentally walked into a conversation where Mary was throwing a temper tantrum and thus immediately got a big handful of transphobic insults hurled at her. It may have been implied before then, though.
Well, that and the fact that her ‘Walkyverse’ counterpart, Ultra Car is also very explicitly trans, but that’s a whole ‘nother deal.
“Transchassis” was just a funny joke about her taking human form. She was objectively also transgender, having identified previously as a boy, then as a girl. It would have been weird to cut that out, so it makes sense people inferred the new Carla would be trans, too.
Strongly advise against the thoughts that being tall or not hourglass-shaped means a woman trans, that “transwoman” is a word, or that you can indeed tell just by looking. All three were made up by people who really, really don’t know their shit and really, really have it against trans women.
I guess the “transwoman as a word” one is a bit more obscure and may be hard to understand, but basically it was invented as a way to indirectly challenge and dehumanise trans people. “trans” or “transgender” are adjectives: you can say “a trans woman” the same way you’d say “a short woman” or “a stylish woman,” conversely making it a single word is a way to present trans women as a different thing – a short woman is a woman, but whatever the hell a “shortwoman” is isn’t necessarily one, that’s the goal behind it.
oh, also, i want do add that the other bad word is “transgenderism“ which deliberately makes it sound like a trend or illness.
it’s an adjective, not a cult. This is important!
Given the implication that her transition was extremely public and high profile, I don’t think she’d ever feel the need to tell someone, she probably assumes everyone already knows.
I think she’s busy being angry about the stuff that some bad people have put her through, just for being what she is. And may have learned to be, not silent, but quiet and selective, to keep bad people in the dark.
i’d hope she didn’t accidentally get outed, tho that ‘link’ that she sent to ethan did have her basically use her real full name so even with brown being not too uncommon might be figured out depending on how much her writing website talks about her personal life
There was the “you’re wearing ladies’ lipstick” comment when they first met. I think Joyce just thinks Booster is weird just like many “liberals” are from her closeted perspective.
She did get the “they/them” thing from Walky and was going to look into it further. Malaya told her that they were similar and had been wearing a binder.
Joyce may not have looked into it enough to grasp that enby counts as trans. Or may just not want to bring up to Carol, though I think she’d be more awkward if that was the case.
Can’t wait until Joyce learns that she does, in fact, know a trans person! … does Booster count? NB people are generally under the trans umbrella IIRC. So that means Joyce knows TWO trans people! Yay!
Malaya hasn’t mentioned a specific label but she has said she’s okay with whatever pronouns and that she doesn’t always feel like a woman, including wearing a binder for all of November. Willis also mentioned Booster was the second non binary major character so I’m assuming Malaya is the other one.
Yeah, nonbinary would count, but I get if Joyce doesn’t really get that yet, she’s pretty much a neophyte to that kind of thing, though maybe the other shoe is dropping with Jocelyne soon.
I have a feeling she has the knowledge of nb is trans from gender studies but hasn’t really absorbed. Not to the point she’d remember while in a heated moment with her terrible mom at least
Ooh, I’m so pleased! I’ve been working on learning to draw for six months since retiring, and sketched him in pencil. Then took a photo with my phone and uploaded it to Gravatar.com
But she’s just finished making something she absolutely is not allowed to have in the dorms, and she’s just DYING for a chance to try it out on someone.
Or be like “Hey, thanks!” with no context so as to say that she likes that she passes with Joyce. Joyce would be like “Um, what” and Joe would be like “I’ll tell you later”
Since this is Joyce we’re talking about, and she only just figured out that you shouldn’t say “transgendereds,” I’m gonna go with “approximately at best.”
there’s also that one trans dude from lucy’s dorm though joyce doesn’t know him. and probably a handful of some within teh university as well that are in teh background lol
Were the Alexes confirmed to be the same person? If going on HRT has that kind of effect on body structure that quickly, I may have to consider it (still cis tho).
While they haven’t interacted on screen, she’s probably at least aware that Sydney is around too since she’s eaten repeatedly at Galasso’s. Their antics are hard to miss.
Just a quick FYI, “NB” is claimed by the non-black people of colour community. I appreciate it’s just an acronym but the prior use claim was made, and when written down rather than said aloud, the proper term for nonbinary is “enby”. Of course some people detest that too, usually if they personally find it cutesy and invalidating rather than cutesy and fitting. Just a heads-up!
yeah, I’m neither black nor white, but I associate NB with nonbinary before …non-black? which too many people would mistakenly first interpret as white? POC/person of colour is better for that
(I guess that’s probably because she said “transgenders” out loud, though. An instinctual response on Joyce’s part; I couldn’t blame her for not thinking to change the language in the heat of the moment. Carol’s the one who used it as a noun in the first place.)
Oh, right, I forgot Joyce doesn’t know Carla’s trans. I also can’t remember if she’d have really been present for Malaya talking about it, either, but she also would maybe just not retain that, they’re not that close outside of Joyce loving Fuckface.
Joe calling Carol Joyce’s Grandma, though, ouch. I guess given Joyce being the baby of the family, she might be young enough to be Carol’s grandkid.
True. My aunt’s a great grandma in her mid-60s, so I am sort of used to some pretty young parents in my family tree, yet also know people who didn’t have kids until their 40s, so it’s all over the place.
Lauren Boebert will be lucky if she isn’t a great grandma before she’s 55. She’s about to become a grandma at 36 because her 17 year old son got a girl pregnant.
Joyce was really oblivious to Malaya wearing a binder, but she’s now been explicitly told. https://www.dumbingofage.com/pronouns/
I thought she’d known about Carla because of Mary causing trouble. But Carla’s device to put her name in lights was when Joyce and Becky were at her house.
Despite Carla’s loud front, she’s never spontaneously talked about being trans. It’s not something she’s going to bring up – probably to anyone, but especially to an obnoxiously fundamentalist Joyce (or even formerly obnoxiously fundamentalist one).
even if she isn’t close to all of them, it’s def more sarah and everyone else’s influences but i suppose being perceived as racist (even if she is but not outright saying it in comparison) she knows would reflect worse on her as an ‘accepting’ christian (i don’t think she rly fully accept dorothy either even tho hank had a civil convo with her parents)
I initially misinterpreted your comment by substituting the actual expletive in the sentence (rather than interpreting it as a command to use the f-bomb) and let me tell you, that threw me for a fucking loop
There’s no way in hell Carol actually knows about any trans people Joyce knows, especially when Joyce doesn’t know herself, unless… she knows about Jocelyne. Which means she’s in danger.
I doubt she knows. Jocelyne’s the “favorite” because Carol knows the least about her, and I doubt she’d have cottoned onto it without it getting back to Joyce. I do feel like that bomb’s going to go off before it’s said and done here, though, also maybe us finding out more about what Jordan’s deal is.
I keep thinking Jordan will either be following a preacher that even the undear departed Toedad would think is too extreme, or converted to some religion Carol doesn’t like. Like Presbyterian.
i imagine whatever jordan did would probably be the opposite of a pastor or so, because even the mom would probably try to logically explain away some extreme views that align enough with hers versus him also being a full blown atheist or ending up being gay
i’d imagine it wouldn’t have been kept a secret from joyce though versus something more ‘scandalous’ like him doing something ‘blasphemous’ so it’s like “We’re christian, but he decided to be mormon”, she was a bit uncomfortable with agatha mentioning being mormon/when she assumed she was invited to her service rather than “oh i’m just gonna walk partway with you”
scratch that on inconsistency on age https://www.dumbingofage.com/undeclared/
Carol hated Halloween, but probably didn’t want to stop a kid trick-or-treating until Joyce because she’s a girl and Focus on the Family told her Satanists were human sacrificing little girls.
Nah, she just knows that they’re out there, at this terrible secular college. Lurking, waiting to corrupt good Christian girls like her daughter with their existence.
If this was set during my youth [shakes walking stick] Carol would be banging on about “homosexual recruitment.” That always puzzled me as a kid – I pictured some bloke in a suit with a clipboard taking names.
Carla was in magazines and I believe Joyce has mentioned her parents protesting or boycotting based off that, suggesting she is VERY PUBLICLY out. Carol may well know she’s on this campus. She probably doesn’t know Carla’s on this floor and knows Joyce, but I can see this being a “college is a hive of liberal thought and queer people -> this college also contains a trans student, horror (let’s not tell her there’s more than one) -> Joyce has changed once she went to college -> the transgenders did it.”
I HOPE that’s the case, anyway, much as I’d like to see Jocelyne post-skip. Not in peril, please!
It is also possible Jocelyne’s taken the divorce and everything that incited it as a trigger point to get the hell AWAY. Moving would be expensive and limit whatever support network she has, but given the circumstances I can see her going “I need to make sure my parents don’t know where I live and can’t get at me” (or at least Carol, depending on how impressed she was with Hank as this shook out.) In which case, Carol might know but be unable to do anything about it because she only found out as Jocelyne blocked her on everything and made sure Carol didn’t have her new address.
Carol surely listens to Faux News and worse. Everyone there knows that the trans agenda is poisoning colleges to be woke, and so the transgenders are grooming college kids to disrespect their parents. Or some grotesque shit like that. It’s a wedge issue and a talking point, and Carol would spout it with or without ever having knowingly met a trans person.
Small comfort: Jocelyne probably isn’t in any significant physical danger even if this is the case. She’s an independent adult not reliant on her parents’ support, so the worst Carol is likely to do is disown her, which would suck but not put her in danger. Assuming she’s run out of gun-toting maniacs to set loose, she seems to set on ‘being a good person’ to actually do anything to Jocelyne herself.
I also agree with the consensus it’s unlikely she knows — the conversation feels like it would go differently if she did.
She only said “the transgenders” bc she’s an ultra conservative Christian who consumes way too much fox news and Facebook bs. She probably thinks trans people are the reason for every ill in society, a vague corrupting concept. Blaming them for thinks you don’t like is conservative shorthand. There’s no way she actually knows about Joss
man, I just realised Joe got those texts completely contextless from someone who had, like, almost everything happen to her last term. good thing he’s in good shape I guess.
Yeah, he knows Joyce enough to know she’s melodramatic, but also knows her enough to know it COULD be some real shit going down. I guess this is somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, I’d say Joyce isn’t in imminent danger right now, but Carol is still an unknown-level threat after last year and I wouldn’t be shocked if, say, Becky would think of Carol as a “do not leave alone or alone with Joyce” sort of person by now. (Sarah evidently doesn’t, or at least trusts Joyce when she says she’s good, but I can see Becky being a lot jumpier.)
And if Joyce isn’t able to explain that to Joe very well right now (honestly I’ve got odds on Joyce have a full on shutdown soon) Becky should be able to.
Ooh, going nonverbal is great! You get to be accused of openly and maliciously ignoring somebody because you didn’t mutter an affirmative every 2.6 seconds, and then you get to be treated as an armed hostile for it.
Literally never, no. It’s fine, I’m usually not listening when people talk
out loud anyway. Maybe everyone should be less exhausting and boring, if they want attention so fucking badly.
This is exactly why I never engage with people who try to steer the conversations towards politics or politicized stuff, because even if you bring up remotely cogent points about whatever they brought up first, they’ll have an infinite number of alternate things to fall back on because it’s all they seem to think about, they’re just using you as an excuse to air their grievances.
Better to just feign ignorance about whatever they’re talking about (“I don’t really watch much news, so I don’t know much about x, sorry.”) and look for exits from the conversation, because there’s no victory scenario possible there, just varying levels of anger for all involved parties.
You’d miss out on some possibly interesting discussion with me, then. Why would I avoid an opportunity to dig into a topic and learn something, just to pretend that I know everything?
I feel like there’s a very specific cadence or tone that overtakes Certain People’s voices when they Start On One, though, and it’s almost never worthwhile to engage when it happens. Not every conversation is worth having.
Immediate deflection. She’s not going to admit that she’s just being as petty as possible, so instead she can complain about Joyce not being the perfect little Christian daughter anymore.
i’m surprised she didn’t just say ‘gays’ as an overall thing because she’d def be aware of becky as a lesbian even if she didn’t understand the nuances of other gender identities
The public has mostly accepted gay people, but many are still uncertain, confused and sometimes scared about trans “people”, so that’s who the fearmongers use now. I hear it’s even worse in the UK.
Gay people are too broadly socially accepted nowadays — all but the most hardened bigots are aware they’ll get slammed for openly displaying that hatred, and won’t say it out loud even if they think it. Transgender people aren’t at that point yet, so they’re still an “acceptable target” for bigots to blame inasmuch as they won’t get any blowback from within their own circles for it.
Specifically, trans people were chosen as targets by the right-wing media apparatus after same-sex marriage happened and the backlash to that flopped. The first wave of bathroom panics in 2016 kind of flopped, but they retooled and got the engine running again a few years ago. Of course, the “groomer” talk is aimed at reversing support for gay people as well.
My approach, when i hit the flag button without meaning to, is to then find something in that post to take issue with, so that I’m retroactively justified in flagging the hell out of that sorry excuse for a comment.
For instance, i flagged you by mistake and i am so mad at you just now
Idk he was constantly annoying his parents by running off to the temple to discuss theology then cheekily saying his dad was not his dad, so you know. Unclear how much carpentry he ended up learning
As much as she likes attention, Carla’s probably happy to know people don’t clock her. Especially formerly fundie people who’d certainly respond awkwardly at best.
I’m pretty sure she’s just a hollow glass human filled with colored sugar water using flesh colored makeup to fit in. She’ll probably escape by running through a wall.
There’s something that Carol needs to realize, the thing that’s turning her daughter against her isn’t some educational system or some marginalized group that she sees as an opposition…the problem is her, her and these foolish decisions that supposedly God despite all his wisdom is telling her to make.
She needs to realize she’s not Jesus Christ dying for anyones sins, she’s not Abraham getting ready to sacrifice a love one an a alter yet still hoping there’s another way, the only thing she’s become is a JUDAST!
Purposefully- filled with purpose or intent; a significantly stronger level of intent than purposely.
‘you purposely dropped my phone!’
‘How have you not realized that I purposefully make your life worse in every petty way I can, every time I see you?!?’
I’m curious if you looked them up? There’s overlapping in some of the definitions of the two, but the top ones give a pretty clear distinction, in my opinion.
i mean coming from someone other than carol “the transgenders made you change out of the mold your super religious family made you into” could be framed as a good thing
I wonder if we won’t see Carol get sidetracked by finding out that not only is Joyce at the beginning of a relationship, but it’s with someone who is Jewish.
“i barely know carla!” Hell, i’d argue that even /walky/ was more of an ‘influence’ to her than anyone trans in her circle of acquaintances.
I think she has a vague idea that booster’s pronouns means they’re “different/similar to becky” as part of being lgbt but other than sarah giving an explanation later idk if anyone explicitly called booster trans/nb
Has this strip ever mentioned Trump, MAGA, or Qanon? It seems strange that they wouldn’t be mentioned in the context of this storyline. Qanon has torn apart families.
There’s still some zeitgeist involved. When it was the Walkyverse, the moral panic crew had a different target, and today’s strip would have made no sense. Also, there’s twitter in the Dumbiverse, etc.
i mean, religious boomer? aged ppl have probably been transphobic even w/o qanon existing, though ppl might not have known the weird transgender versus transsexual even if they’ve heard of sexchanges
I think Pence has been mentioned, but not in the context of being a Christian nationalist. In the context of he went to school in Indiana (when Dorothy was still dead set on her life plan to become president of the US, but without the going to Yale step).
Dorothy mentioned Mike Pence and alluded to the January 6th Insurrection once, to herself. Robin had a hat saying, “Make District 9 Great Again.” I think that’s the closest the strip has come to getting into real-world politics.
I’m pretty sure Joe referring to his Do List as “as presidential as” anything Dorothy does was intentionally a reference to Trump, who was president at the time that comic went up (though admittedly it could as easily refer to Clinton or to (next sexually aggressive male president))
Joe has already accidentally fired the opening salvo of assuming Carol is Joyce’s grandma. Time for Booster to tag in for the (psychologically) lethal finishing combo. Then they can just find Walky and Sal’s mom next and keep going from there!
well, joe might’ve been using his new stepmom as a point of ref, since his dad did say “she’s also like 15 years younger than me and that’s hot” so carol would be a grandma-age in comparison lol
Net-Zero Joeyce Shipper (no engine, slowly following the current)
…Huh. I don’t know why it only took me now to really register that transgender just meant transitioning away from your assigned gender, which includes acknowledgement as non-binary. I guess my brain has always just worked it as ‘male to female or vice-versa’.
That’s because there is the latter specific meaning.
That’s why terms like ‘trans-adjacent’ sometimes get used instead of ‘transgender’ when talking about non-binary, gender fluid, and other non-“traditional” transgender people.
Hm. That honestly seems pretty gross. If people want to talk about only binary transgender people for whatever discussion point or what have you, they can say “binary trans people.” If people want to talk about other sub-groups, they can specify that. But “transgender” includes people of many identities by default.
Yeah, transgender is an umbrella term! Not everyone who could fall under it identifies with it, which is cool. But sometimes people think they *can’t* be transgender unless they’re a binary gender different than they were assigned at birth. I did for a time; felt like it wasn’t mine to claim because I didn’t consider myself to cross from one gender to another as much as stepped back from the whole thing.
But if someone’s not cis, they can be trans. There’s room. And the white stripe on the usual trans flag is meant to include those who have a neutral or undefined gender– it’s not a new thing.
lol well even tho she doesn’t know about carla being trans, you’d think booster would be teh first thought, then again she’d not rly understand nonbinary being part of teh trans umbrella
Booster is a non-central member of the ‘transgender’ cluster *and* only a passing acquaintance so far – Joyce is unused to thinking about the topic at all, so she wouldn’t remember them immediately associatively in the middle of a heated argument.
I missed out that making conservatives sell their house was part of the agenda now. Though I have been missing my T meetings and focusing on catching up on my B and NB credits.
apparently it’s based on a real anecdote/autobiographical from willis’ life
i think there is one bible passage like “give up your worldy possessions” but obviously it wouldn’t make practical sense if everyone did sell tehir house/essentially lived humbly as a homeless person or so, or just completely live at the church but that’d be even more ‘cult-like’ as some commune/isolated community
You’re probably thinking of “the rich young ruler.” “One thing you lack: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, then come and follow me.”
People like to think of this as a General Order, but I see no evidence that it wasn’t advice specifically tailored for RYR. (There’s also no evidence that RYR didn’t ultimately do exactly what he was advised, but people also love to draw unsupported conclusions that assuage their envy.)
Reverse story, once I was on a date with someone at one of those paint-your-own-pottery places, and she painted her piece in the pattern of the trans flag, and then when the owner was making note of what each of our pieces looked like, she said, “And yours is a dish with some stripes on it…”
Carol really knows how to deflect and push Joyce’s buttons. She’ll never accept Joyce’s outrage at anything. Perhaps Joe can help ground Joyce in reality: this the poisonous manipulator who hired criminals to hurt you; she is legally insane and will never listen to you. Or maybe they’ll get sidetracked listening to her scapegoating the Jews too.
parents tend to get on kids nerves more than anyone else can
tho i’m sure it’ll be fine since joyce isn’t isolated from peers/ppl who actually care about her since there are still ppl unfortunately sucked into codependent toxic relationships
Mom, this is my boyfriend, Joe Rosenberg. Yes, he’s Jewish. These are my birth control pills. And this is my Good without God bumper sticker. I don’t have a car yet, but it would look good on yours.
well, she’ll probably see john’s kids/grandparents, but hopefully by the time they’re older to fully understand religion they won’t be super brainwashed, or realized their dad is corrupt or so
Ironically it seems possible Joe might’ve been better situated to help Joyce if he were texting her so she could actually tell him the problem and not have to make up some bullshit, but he’s doing the best he can and it’s a lot. Can’t help but love that he ran out to help her anyway, that’s the thing that matters most…
yeah i guess joyces friends aren’t particularly close with joe as well but if lucy was friends with joe before she probably would’ve also texted him a heads up
i didn’t see the strip but apparently there’s a patreon exclusive where she got a cat. so she’s living on her own at least (or with an accepting roommate) but other than physically charging in/being arm i would hope her mom can’t do any real damage, other than showing up with the whole church as a mob thing
i don’t think carla’s specifically hidden it from anyone before, but other than not being joyce’s friends, she was aware (as everyone from the first week basically) that joyce was religious so she might wanted to avoid being treated the same way mary did even tho she probably can tell by now that joyce isn’t like that
I don’t think we really need any reason other than it never came up in conversation when Joyce was around. Carla has been open about being AMAB before and I don’t think it would be her style at all to hide it from Joyce to avoid hassle or being treated differently.
I remember someone talking about her being tall and her saying “there’s a reason for that” with a vibe of “obviously I’m transgender, are you an idiot”. I could be misremembering. If I’m not, I suppose it can speak to a certain level of discomfort with the subject as she could have said it straight-out instead of low-level sanctioning someone for making her have to mention it, but she also very clearly wasn’t hiding it.
I might be wrong, but I’ve always gotten the impression that Carla is very, very, very out. And in fact, for whatever faults they might have, her parents are extremely supportive.
As I said below, unlike Jocelyne, I get the impression that Carla is very, very out, probably since puberty. Most of the parents in this strip are pretty lousy, but I get the impression Carla’s are enablers at worst. (For her general nonsense, I mean – I should hope they “enable” her transition, which they seem to be doing in spades.)
Thing is, unless you live in a small town / village where any news is immediately gossip everyone knows in a day, to be completely out you’d need to come out pretty much every time a new person joins the social circle. Which is not an activity Carla cares to devote her time and attention to. People who know know, Carla will state it outright if it comes up in conversation, but Joyce is on her own. It’s neither Carla’s job nor hobby to educate her.
I love that Joyce is saying “I don’t know any transgenders” and while she’s technically wrong it’s exactly the kind of logic that her mom is going to just respond to with dismissal, because the fundamentalist brain doesn’t accept logic. This argument is going to get worse before it gets better and Joe saying “Grandma” because she’s so decayed is not helping.
Yeah, its cameo appearance the other day feels like a set-up. We haven’t seen the last of the “round dispenser thingy that hopefully Carol doesn’t recognize”.
There’s a question, though. Does Carol even know what birth control is? I’m assuming she’s one of those “Every sperm is sacred” types, so it’s entirely possible she’s only heard the words “birth control” directly next to “abortion”, which… Well, we don’t need to be told how she feels about that, she’s a very vivid character.
It’s safe to assume she knows what it is. Not just because she’s probably used it. Only four kids isn’t quiverfull. But mostly because it’s not like a closely guarded secret. She hasn’t been living in a walled off compound.
Maybe she’s had sex four times in her life and not more than that. It’s hard to tell with certain people, and we shouldn’t take it as granted that everyone fucks. Specifically, I want Carol to have fucked as little as possible.
I was just wondering earlier if Joyce knew Carla was trans! I don’t think it was ever mentioned to her *at all*. And she was wondering earlier why Carla seemed ‘bigger’ (in the boob area, because of hormones I assumed). That’s gonna be a revelation a-comin’ later, can’t wait to see it!
This is a point where the sliding timescale of the comic really helps the joke. Ten years ago Carol would have said “the gays”, and ten years from now I predict it could have been “the poors.” It’s just the general hate and distrust against the “other” that today takes the posture of transphobia, as directed by Rupert Murdoch.
As a trans woman, I find this pedestrian, fair-weather bigotry almost comforting. Not that I don’t want Carla to rollerskate on her face.
…seriously, though, I have to wonder whether Joyce is lying or an idiot, only because the trans girl a few doors down is not exactly trying to hide it.
She definitely knows that Booster is nonbinary. but the argument she wants to have (in as much as she wants to have one at all) is “Everything you’re saying is ridiculous” not “Let’s pause the ‘selling the house’ thing and discuss trans rights”. Which I’m not saying is right, but is understandable.
Sometimes it’s more helpful to get the freaks off the subject as quickly as possible, rather than engaging with them earnestly. It’s important to support human rights, obviously, but it’s pointless when the other person isn’t going to listen under any circumstances. Joyce could correct her on every possible facet, but then she’ll just be exhausted and Carol will feel more right than ever. That’s how they get ya.
Booster is in the boys’ wing. Raen was referring to Carla. (As other people have mentioned, Carla talks a lot but doesn’t actually do much discussion on her trans identity, certainly not with people who aren’t all that close to her.) And who knows whether Joyce would categorize enby people as transgender?
I mean, Joyce doesn’t have enough of a foundation on the topic to have an opinion, she’d just listen to other people. This seems more related to “not remembering Booster’s existence / personal details in the heat of the moment”.
There’s a decent chance she doesn’t realize Booster qualifies as transgender. I’ve met nonbinary adults IRL who didn’t realize they could call themselves trans. As for Carla… she talks about herself nonstop but has not explicitly mentioned that she’s trans “on-screen” except for maaaybe once that I can think of, and Joyce wasn’t there. She might be crowing about her transness along with everything else offscreen but that feels like an odd assumption to make. She isn’t HIDING it, but the sense I get is that she’s only out because her parents are high-profile; she doesn’t go around actively telling people who don’t already know. Joyce’s parents protested Ruttech when she was a kid, but she may not have known why, and if Joyce had known Carla was trans I suspect we would have had a whole arc about it.
My point is, Joyce honestly might not realize she knows any trans people.
Yup. Even an autistic who actually knows how to pick up on trans subtext is as likely as not to miss it in any individual case, and Joyce has NO IDEA what any of the oblique references would be to.
The ironic thing is, Carol has less direct control over Joyce than ever now that the divorce is final. As long as Hank can pay for her tuition (and any financial aid would’ve been calculated based on his income in the first place), Joyce can stay at IU and there isn’t thing one Carol can do about it.
So she’s probably going to double down on emotional manipulation… She clearly blames Hank for initiating the divorce, too…
I remember being so young as to confuse a mom with a grandma. But not out loud to their face. Maybe she needs to hear it.
My mom went Christo-crazy but itvwas when I was in middle school. I was less prepared for it than Joyce. (No selling the house out from under the family though.)
To be fair to Joe’s guessing, I think there’s a pretty big age gap between Joyce and eldest brother, so Carol might be at youngish grandma age.
Also, bonus, calling Joyce’s grandma her grandma would be inoffensive to both, whereas he probably knows Carol sucks, so he gets to insult her while still being safe if grandma (and not using a real insult that could cause way more conflict). I don’t think he considered these things, but it worked well.
(side note that calling someone old shouldn’t be an insult,but c’mon we all know Carol will take it that way)
Carol is prolly still in her late 50’s- Hank is 60, IIRC, and “traditional” folks like them tend to have the wife a few years younger than the husband.
My grandparents were in their 70s by the time I came around so I always associated grandparents with people who are legitimately senior citizens, but late 50s is definitely “grandma” age, even if it’s not necessarily “grandma of a college student” age.
I donate to donors choose to get books by or about trans kids into hands of kids in red or purple states every time I read someone attacking trans people. It adds up. Trying to decide if too real fictional carol counts this morning. Happy pride month! https://www.donorschoose.org/donors/search.html?keywords=transgender&sortBy=3
Also enjoy Joe assuming Carol is Joyce’s grandma (which, narratively, I assume is to allow the punchline, as obviously he’s going to recognize her mom being there as Not Great). One time when I was 15, I had to go to the ER, and when a doctor came, she correctly assumed my mom was my mom, but thought my dad was my grandpa. I was very amused. My dad, less so. (He’s only 8.5 years older than my mom– decent gap, but not THAT much.)
My mom gets the reverse of this when she’s with me and my kid (because I look super young and my kid is almost as tall as me at only 8). People keep assuming my kid is my little sister and my mom is her mom, not her grandma. XD
No, see, tolerance and empathy are *airborne* on college campuses! Carol knows that the mere proximity to marginalized people risks Joyce contracting a serious case of “let’s treat others with dignity and respect”
(Hmm if only we’d been able to convince the right that tolerance and leftism are airborne at the start of the pandemic…maybe they’d have worn masks!) 🫠
“In addition to the respiritory symptoms, the virus can induce acute libtardism, life-threatening snowflake attacks and even a permanent case of SJW Syndrome.”
Oh, sorry, that’s wrong. “The secret Chinese bioweapon was designed to cause acute libtardism…..”
Why do all of their buzzwords sound like literal baby talk? They don’t even have the basic intelligence required to form a coherent thought, but we’re supposed to take them seriously and treat them like people. They’re not even fucking sentient.
Tonight/tomorrow Joyce opens the boxes, and finds clothes, and is like ‘who the heck’s are these?’ because they’re not hers and they’re clearly not Carol’s
I doubt Jocelyne would have kept any feminine-presenting clothes at her mom’s house. There might be some androgynous/neutral stuff she outgrew and handed down to Joyce, though.
I mean, from experience, even if you know there’s dire consequences to being found out, sometimes it’s not possible to avoid keeping gender affirming stuff. Like, you gather that stuff because the alternative is to go crazy, and then once you have it, it’s impossible to let go.
I’ll be honest, this is the point where I’d be telling Carol “Get the fuck off this campus before I have the school throw you off of it.” I’d genuinely be looking into ways to disown her as a parent. Selling your house because “god told me to do it,” blaming you standing up for yourself and the insanity of the previous on “the transgenders,” being on the side of the person who LITERALLY TRIED TO KILL YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS because they are a part of their church, etc. All justifications to completely sever ties, especially when any or all of them are grouped together.
universities aren’t always great about protecting their students HOWEVER I feel like they’d actually be justified in kicking Carol out of there just for showing up. She has a direct connection to the person who attacked campus and killed a student.
I severely doubt it’ll happen but my fantasy is Ruth using her full RA powers to get Carol booted off campus by reason of “she’s (in)directly responsible for the attack on the students last year.” I can’t recall if it’s common knowledge that she and her church helped free the guy, and I feel for Joyce but part of me is just thinking about Becky and Amber and Ethan possibly seeing this woman and how they’d react. I feel like personally they could even make the argument Carol’s presence endangers them.
Im hoping this doesnt go the angsty trope route where Carol approves of Joe as a boyfriend because “white male” and this gives Joyce doubts because “happy carol = bad”.
I seriously think I need to take a break from this comic and come back when the arc is over. Extended exposure to Carol is not good for my blood pressure.
Wake me when she either leaves or gets some comeuppance.
This would be literally illegal over here IIRC. Joyce would literally have a legal right to the house. Although if she’s over 18 and has legally moved out to the dorm it might not be muc hof an issue… hm. Still, this is weird to me. Hank just let Carol have the house with all of Joyce’s stuff?
I think it’s fairly common in negotiated divorce settlements where one spouse has most of the income to award the house to the other. Hank probably still has to pay alimony. Laws do differ among the U.S. states. Carol certainly does not own Joyce’s stuff, and she is in fact not retaining it.
One of my global comments on humanity is that whenever anyone says “Everyone knows”, or “No one could have missed seeing that…” or “No one is that clueless/unobservant/ignorant” it is one of those categories of statements that is pretty much always wrong.
There are always a lot of people out there who don’t care about X, or never picked up any information about X, or don’t spend time or energy thinking about X.
Besides the other arguments about mistaking Carol for Joyce’s grandma, Joe might be assuming that her mother wouldn’t be here because he knows Joyce is on very bad terms with her mother.
I know that Joyce knows Booster and Malaya are nonbinary but I don’t know if she realizes that counts as trans. We know she’s unaware she has a sister named Jocelyn (Joyce believes she is one of the brothers). I’m pretty sure Joyce doesnt know Carla is trans
I think those are all the trans people Joyce knows
Outside of going through a divorce, just what else has Hank done that has turned Carol so hateful and spiteful that she says, “It’s not OUR house, your FATHER made certain of that”? I thought that he was one of the good ones … or at least not as bad as many of the others.
I mean, we’ve still got Jason’s dad, who was a literal supervillain in the Walkyverse, and has been described as such here. Then Ruth’s grandpa, who’s physically & emotionally abusive, though possibly less so than Amber’s dad.
Don’t get me wrong, Linda & Carol are the next step down that awful ladder, but they’re not quite the top rung here.
Joyce…. there are SO many trans people you haven’t really realized are trans…
(but ofc that’s beside the point. trans people have much more important things to do (e.g. survive…), they just don’t have time to corrupt you against your parents.
Joyce hasn’t even notice the trans people in her life Carol… XD But aparently if you are going to go the maga cliff jumping might as well go all the way I suppose…
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Barry Allen has got nothing on Joe.
Joyce needed help and he came running good on him.
YOUR GRANDMA
OUCH
Joe knows how to make an excellent first impression.
Yeah, but he’s also earning hella boyfriend points right there.
IKR? Fucking excellent.
I mean the way she talks doesn’t exactly do her any favors.
Joe dropping the sick burns without even meaning to.
Perfect. Lol. How old is her oldest sibling anyway.
OH SHIT. IS JOYCE HER OLDEST BROTHER’S ILLEGITIMATE DAUGHTER??
:0 head canon acquired
oh DANG
OH DANG
oh dang it doesn’t quite work but dang that would be amazing
(MGSAlert.mp3)
I think I remember at least one bonus strip wherein Carol was seen pregnant with Joyce,so unfortunately I think the odds of this being correct are slim… but wouldn’t that be one hell of a revelation.
yeah, they asked Jocelyne for name ideas
He was out of the house almost as long as she can remember. So over a decade and probably a decade and a half older.
It’s not exactly clear which interval “it’s been 20 years” means, but it’s a good data point. Probably also when Joyce and Jocelyne were talking about Halloween.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/squeezing-2/
You didn’t need to murder Carol yet Joe.
Yeah. Just wait 10 minutes.
Fifteen max. I’m sure she’ll do something to deserve it by then.
Ngl this made my love for joe spike tenfold
Actually, DID Jocelyne do this to her? After Hallowe’en? 🤔
Joyce: *points at Carol*
Joe: No, that’s 1-800-GOT-JUNK
Yeah, I’m 10000% thinking that. That comment, while something Carol would fucking say in a heartbeat, is also way too comical given the context of this being a comic.
Jocelyne is not out to Joyce yet, based on her phone contact not changing as of a couple weeks ago. Their last shown conversation was about Joyce trusting their dad, though, so I wonder if that led to Joce telling Hank and word of it coming back to Carol.
She could just be watching Newsmax. One of my parental units says shit like this for no other reason
Or Carla. I’m pretty sure Joyce knows Carla. And I’m surprised she doesn’t know Carla’s trans, it doesn’t seem like Carla is quiet about that or anything else about herself.
Interesting that Joyce’s shirt seems to be trans pride colors this comic.
She knows Carla. Carla built the shower shoes for her, mostly out of spite. Joyce however is still in the “why does she get a room to herself” phase of that knowledge. She might need some stuff spelled out for her and Carla is too abrasive to tell her and no one else really feels the need to bring it up.
Easy. Carla’s parents are rich and would do anything for her. And Carla is self-centered enough to think sharing a room with someone else would be unbearable as it would require her to concede space in her room for them to sleep and keep their things. These are all things that Carla has made pretty explicit. No need to look any deeper.
I mean there’s no reason to discount the obvious reality that, even if Carla’s parents did pull some (purse) strings to get her a single, the pool of roommates that won’t endanger her is small and IU’s resources for finding said roommates are likely minimal
I’m pretty sure the context is “what would Joyce assume about this”
I don’t think Carla not telling someone she’s trans is abrasiveness. It just hasn’t been relevant to any of their interactions.
well, carla only said she was trans explicitly to ruth (who might’ve known from her ‘files’ or whatever anyways) and some other ppl but i imagine even if she wasn’t esp trying to hide it from joyce she’d be more annoyed trying to ‘explain’ it to joyce as opposed to getting preached at her from before she changed like how mary was transphobic towards her
Carla was in some famous court case, so public.
Definitely public, but that doesn’t mean that everyone on the floor knows or that she goes around telling everyone or that Joyce is exceptionally blind not to have figured it out.
Carla has actually been very reserved about being trans. She doesn’t seem to see it as anyone else’s business.
Carla has layers, y’all.
I definitely see Carla as not blending. She was a famous legal battle as a trans teen, she’s really tall, and she chooses clothes that don’t make her especially hourglass-shaped. Anyone with any trans knowledge at all can probably tell that Carla’s a transwoman just by looking.
It’s just, you might remember when Joyce found out Ethan was gay, and he first response was “but you look normal”. It has never crossed Joyce’s mind that somebody she knows could possibly be trans.
You know tall cis women who don’t have hour glass figures exist as well, right?
Yeah but how many are also the relative of public figures / have been in the news for a legal dispute about not being cis?
How many kids follow news stories about the children of random public figures? Especially ones who aren’t celebrities in fields that really appeal to kids.
Plus Joyce would still have been deep in the Evangelical Bubble when it happened, avoiding “secular news.”
I do indeed know that there are tall slim mostly-rectangular ciswomen. It was just in combination with the other factors, and with Carla’s openness in general. Carla wears what she likes to wear, she does whatever pleases her, she prefers to rip bandaids off of secrets, she just doesn’t care all that much about blending or not, so, people may be able to tell she’s a transwoman.
Carla mentions being trans when it’s relevant (like when she was making a really good point about it to Ruth, and alluding to it with Sal to make sure Sal knew the “reason” that Carla was tall, bragging about being the textbook in Gender Studies, etc).
She’s really not closeted.
Joyce was just specifically raised with blinders on. Carla’s transness wouldn’t occur to Joyce without a specific conversation about ‘hello, I am trans’.
I did not mean that people can automatically tell anyone’s assigned gender just by looking. I mean that Carla, specifically, often doesn’t blend, because she doesn’t prioritize blending.
(Also I didn’t know that “transwoman” was out and “trans woman” was in. My bad.)
Which is totally fine! People being ignorant of one’s transness is way better than people tiptoeing around it.
To Joyce, Carla is “just” a woman, therefore is treated as a woman, which is probably for the best. I mean, worst case scenario, she might say something inconsiderate at some point without realising it.
Some people may need to know, to avoid delicate situations (e.g student housing arrangements), but “random kid from the dorm floor” probably doesn’t check that knid of box.
I remember that “why I’m tall” moment, but I don’t remember it being portrayed as “bragging” at all. I can’t find it, though.
Found it. As I remembered, it was distinctly *not* braggy. Carla’s expression in this comic is wary, uncomfortable. She’s probably lost friends in the past. She’s a trans teenaged girl in Indiana.
I know Carla’s mostly just comic relief nowadays, but seriously, the idea that Carla “doesn’t care about being outed” is pretty demonstrably not the case. I don’t think she scrambles to hide being trans, but she’s also pretty obviously not interested in bringing it up. When she talked to Carla about being trans, her frustration was that people punish her for being flawed and messy, that they expect her to be a perfect representative of womanhood to “make up” for being trans.
It’s pretty obvious to me that Carla is not the type to stand on a table and announce that she’s trans. At least, the old Carla wasn’t.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/purpleandskates/
Oh, I misread you–you didn’t describe it as “bragging” at all. That said, all my other analysis stands. Carla isn’t closeted, but that’s *not* the same thing as being comfortable announcing herself. She told Sal because Sal was a kind-of friend, and she wanted to test the waters. Trans people have to do that.
It’s worth remembering that Carla’s also being written pretty differently these days. She’s a lot more exaggerated, with little of her old access to serious scenes and sincere moments. It’s kind of hard to predict how she’ll act.
Did you really just use the phrase “can tell just by looking”?
Must be nice to have that sort of ESP. I wondered literally for years what it was that other readers “knew” about Carla that I didn’t. It was nice to eventually have some direct evidence. (The occasion wasn’t nice for her — sorry, Carla.)
To be honest I completly forgot that Carla was trans. Everyone seems to remember that sort of thing but I guess my brain is just overloaded by the simplest of things and ADD doesn’t help
I’ve been trying to remember how I knew. I think it was a discussion about why she has a single?
@nicoleandmaggie I’m pretty sure it was actually first revealed to us the audience when she accidentally walked into a conversation where Mary was throwing a temper tantrum and thus immediately got a big handful of transphobic insults hurled at her. It may have been implied before then, though.
Well, that and the fact that her ‘Walkyverse’ counterpart, Ultra Car is also very explicitly trans, but that’s a whole ‘nother deal.
In their defence I’m pretty sure Willis had said it when he put her first character model out, long before it was explicitly stated in comic.
Carla being trans is from Shortpacked, as are many other character facts.
Well, Ultra Car was trans chassis, but Carla isn’t ultra car.
But yes, to translate that over she’s a trans woman.
“Transchassis” was just a funny joke about her taking human form. She was objectively also transgender, having identified previously as a boy, then as a girl. It would have been weird to cut that out, so it makes sense people inferred the new Carla would be trans, too.
Strongly advise against the thoughts that being tall or not hourglass-shaped means a woman trans, that “transwoman” is a word, or that you can indeed tell just by looking. All three were made up by people who really, really don’t know their shit and really, really have it against trans women.
I guess the “transwoman as a word” one is a bit more obscure and may be hard to understand, but basically it was invented as a way to indirectly challenge and dehumanise trans people. “trans” or “transgender” are adjectives: you can say “a trans woman” the same way you’d say “a short woman” or “a stylish woman,” conversely making it a single word is a way to present trans women as a different thing – a short woman is a woman, but whatever the hell a “shortwoman” is isn’t necessarily one, that’s the goal behind it.
Oh, thanks! Wish I could update.
well said! <3
trans is a descriptive adjective that tells a part of my story, but not all of it! 🙂
oh, also, i want do add that the other bad word is “transgenderism“ which deliberately makes it sound like a trend or illness.
it’s an adjective, not a cult. This is important!
Is Carla actually really tall, or is it just the fact that she uses rollerskates for shoes?
Both IIRC
Canonically 6′ i believe
Cool, thanks.
Given the implication that her transition was extremely public and high profile, I don’t think she’d ever feel the need to tell someone, she probably assumes everyone already knows.
It would never occur to Carla that anyone wouldn’t find her fascinating.
I think she’s busy being angry about the stuff that some bad people have put her through, just for being what she is. And may have learned to be, not silent, but quiet and selective, to keep bad people in the dark.
So it’s agreed? It’s all Carla’s fault.
Carla is pleased.
They’ve been those colors in her wardrobe since the beginning of the comic
Multiple pink white blue plaids what what
This! Joyce SHOULD know Carla, but apparently it’s Everybody Ignores Carla Week in-universe even when she isn’t on screen…
I think we vastly overestimate who knows about Carla.
Heh, I would probably pay little attention to Carla because she is so insistent. Not that I wouldn’t notice; I just wouldn’t let it show.
Is it really at all surprising that Joyce would be completly oblivious to Carla being trans? It feels like one of those mental blocks she would have.
Carla has been out since that cover of Newsweek.
Jocelyne isn’t out to Joyce yet, but she did give them a call a few chapters ago…
Very worried Carol found out that one of her kids is trans.
i’d hope she didn’t accidentally get outed, tho that ‘link’ that she sent to ethan did have her basically use her real full name so even with brown being not too uncommon might be figured out depending on how much her writing website talks about her personal life
I think Carol’s being way too generically bogeyman about this as a “threat” to have any specific influences in mind.
Given how she just popped in on Joyce with no warning, she might have paid an unexpected visit to Jocelyn.
Does Joyce know Booster? Doesn’t NB fall under the trans umbrella?
See, that’s what I was thinking, too! Plus, Malaya. All us gender-nonconforming folks.
…Or does that dilute the word too much? I’m not up on all my lingo.
I feel like the “not straight and/or cis” umbrella is fairly inclusive by definition, but that may be me
Joyce probably doesn’t make that connection about Booster because they are masculine presenting.
There was the “you’re wearing ladies’ lipstick” comment when they first met. I think Joyce just thinks Booster is weird just like many “liberals” are from her closeted perspective.
She did get the “they/them” thing from Walky and was going to look into it further. Malaya told her that they were similar and had been wearing a binder.
Joyce may not have looked into it enough to grasp that enby counts as trans. Or may just not want to bring up to Carol, though I think she’d be more awkward if that was the case.
Can’t wait until Joyce learns that she does, in fact, know a trans person! … does Booster count? NB people are generally under the trans umbrella IIRC. So that means Joyce knows TWO trans people! Yay!
Four. Her sister, Booster, Carla and Malaya.
Wait. Malaya? I clearly missed a memo.
Malaya may be nonbinary.
Malaya hasn’t mentioned a specific label but she has said she’s okay with whatever pronouns and that she doesn’t always feel like a woman, including wearing a binder for all of November. Willis also mentioned Booster was the second non binary major character so I’m assuming Malaya is the other one.
IIRC Malaya’s pronouns are she/they/whatever/I transcend gender.
For some reason I always forget about Carla and Malaya if they’re not actively part of a storyline…
Uh oh. Better not let Carla read that.
Why would Carla read anything in the comment section of a strip that’s not about her?
Not about her? Inconceivable!
YOU ALL MISSED ONE.
She also had a couple of brief interactions with Zaph.
And by a couple, I mean one interaction 5 years ago.
Ooh, intriguing. Time to search the tags again!
Five years ago real time could be *last week* in this strip lol
I forgot she interacted with him! Good addition.
I don’t think it really counts as “knowing” a transgender dude if Joyce probably couldn’t even remember his name or appearance if pressed.
Three if you count Malaya, and four if you count Jocelyne, even though they’re not out to Joyce yet!
Booster would make three, I think.
Booster, Carla, and the sister she doesn’t yet know she has.
Yeah, nonbinary would count, but I get if Joyce doesn’t really get that yet, she’s pretty much a neophyte to that kind of thing, though maybe the other shoe is dropping with Jocelyne soon.
I have a feeling she has the knowledge of nb is trans from gender studies but hasn’t really absorbed. Not to the point she’d remember while in a heated moment with her terrible mom at least
I half expect Carla to poke her head in the door in the next page to Um Actually her.
That would be delicious. She could give Carol some much needed corrections and would be immune to Christian insults.
And give her a box with a pie in it? (rooting for this)
Vulcanodon, where did you get your Darkwing avi?
Ooh, I’m so pleased! I’ve been working on learning to draw for six months since retiring, and sketched him in pencil. Then took a photo with my phone and uploaded it to Gravatar.com
Carla senses this, but she also senses she wants NOTHING to do with this shit, this lady’s from the kidnapping church.
But she’s just finished making something she absolutely is not allowed to have in the dorms, and she’s just DYING for a chance to try it out on someone.
Or be like “Hey, thanks!” with no context so as to say that she likes that she passes with Joyce. Joyce would be like “Um, what” and Joe would be like “I’ll tell you later”
PLEASE put Carla in a room with this woman 🫣🥺🥺🙏
Wait, Malaya’s genderfluid iirc, does that fall under the trans umbrella? just how is trans umbrella defined here?
I figure anyone who is not straight-up cisgender can stand under the umbrella ella ella ey ey ey if they want to, but that’s just me
Yeah essentially this.
Rihanna reference included
Since this is Joyce we’re talking about, and she only just figured out that you shouldn’t say “transgendereds,” I’m gonna go with “approximately at best.”
welcome to the wonders of the gender spectrum my friend ^_^ <3
Heh, I guess I am under the trans umbrella too, yippee 😊🏳️⚧️
It’s at least trans-adjacent
there’s also that one trans dude from lucy’s dorm though joyce doesn’t know him. and probably a handful of some within teh university as well that are in teh background lol
How dare you vaguely remember Zaph and disprove my comment.
That’s true! Joyce doesn’t know Alex from Amber and Danny’s CompSci classes, but she’s around too.
Were the Alexes confirmed to be the same person? If going on HRT has that kind of effect on body structure that quickly, I may have to consider it (still cis tho).
Not confirmed to be the same, but New Alex was confirmed as a trans woman regardless.
While they haven’t interacted on screen, she’s probably at least aware that Sydney is around too since she’s eaten repeatedly at Galasso’s. Their antics are hard to miss.
Just a quick FYI, “NB” is claimed by the non-black people of colour community. I appreciate it’s just an acronym but the prior use claim was made, and when written down rather than said aloud, the proper term for nonbinary is “enby”. Of course some people detest that too, usually if they personally find it cutesy and invalidating rather than cutesy and fitting. Just a heads-up!
I’m sorry to tell you that more than one group can use the same acronym. You just need to use context clues.
yeah, I’m neither black nor white, but I associate NB with nonbinary before …non-black? which too many people would mistakenly first interpret as white? POC/person of colour is better for that
Enby is literally a phonetic rendering of NB. That’s not how words work.
Ooh, I learned something new today! Thanks!
Shhh Joe, don’t mention the grandma thing, she’s still pissy about it. Save it for when she leaves so she can’t complain to Joyce.
And yes, Joyce, that is correct.
Joyce… Come on.
Joyce is trying.
Sometimes very trying. But she is trying.
? she didn’t even do anything wrong on this page…?
Nothing majorly wrong, although she should probably lead with the reason she sent a help text in the first place. 😛
(I guess that’s probably because she said “transgenders” out loud, though. An instinctual response on Joyce’s part; I couldn’t blame her for not thinking to change the language in the heat of the moment. Carol’s the one who used it as a noun in the first place.)
I’m gonna punch her mom, can I punch her mom? I’m gonna punch her mom anyway
Oh, right, I forgot Joyce doesn’t know Carla’s trans. I also can’t remember if she’d have really been present for Malaya talking about it, either, but she also would maybe just not retain that, they’re not that close outside of Joyce loving Fuckface.
Joe calling Carol Joyce’s Grandma, though, ouch. I guess given Joyce being the baby of the family, she might be young enough to be Carol’s grandkid.
Carol is 60, so Joyce was born when she was 42. Young enough to be her grandkid but only if she comes from a line of young parents.
True. My aunt’s a great grandma in her mid-60s, so I am sort of used to some pretty young parents in my family tree, yet also know people who didn’t have kids until their 40s, so it’s all over the place.
Lauren Boebert will be lucky if she isn’t a great grandma before she’s 55. She’s about to become a grandma at 36 because her 17 year old son got a girl pregnant.
Figures. Just like Alaska Sarah.
Joyce was really oblivious to Malaya wearing a binder, but she’s now been explicitly told. https://www.dumbingofage.com/pronouns/
I thought she’d known about Carla because of Mary causing trouble. But Carla’s device to put her name in lights was when Joyce and Becky were at her house.
Or because of Carla giving zero fucks and talking about herself nonstop.
Despite Carla’s loud front, she’s never spontaneously talked about being trans. It’s not something she’s going to bring up – probably to anyone, but especially to an obnoxiously fundamentalist Joyce (or even formerly obnoxiously fundamentalist one).
I’m inclined to think she doesn’t just because I think that’s the sort of moment you’d want to show, and she and Carla aren’t exactly close.
Yeah. I imagine it’ll come up when Joyce learns about her big sis, or something like that.
even if she isn’t close to all of them, it’s def more sarah and everyone else’s influences but i suppose being perceived as racist (even if she is but not outright saying it in comparison) she knows would reflect worse on her as an ‘accepting’ christian (i don’t think she rly fully accept dorothy either even tho hank had a civil convo with her parents)
“THE TRANSGENDERS?!?!?!”
Do it Joyce. Just F-bomb your bigoted mother already!!! 🔥👿🔥
*plays “Decisive Battle” from JoJo’s Bizarre Soundtrack*
I initially misinterpreted your comment by substituting the actual expletive in the sentence (rather than interpreting it as a command to use the f-bomb) and let me tell you, that threw me for a fucking loop
It would CERTAINLY make it so that Carol wouldn’t want to visit again.
Or potentially be unable to.
well, she said ‘hell’ without batting and eye, and ‘shit’ earlier when becky stayed over/came back to townl ol
“F–FFF–FUDGE YOU, Mom! I may not have any transgender friends, but I WISH I did!”
…oh. ooooooh no.
There’s no way in hell Carol actually knows about any trans people Joyce knows, especially when Joyce doesn’t know herself, unless… she knows about Jocelyne. Which means she’s in danger.
Someone please tell me I’m wrong about this.
Oh, hell. I hope you’re wrong. But that’s the only person Carol would for sure know about … assuming Jocelyne has been outed.
Yikes. 🙁 I hope you’re wrong, too.
I doubt she knows. Jocelyne’s the “favorite” because Carol knows the least about her, and I doubt she’d have cottoned onto it without it getting back to Joyce. I do feel like that bomb’s going to go off before it’s said and done here, though, also maybe us finding out more about what Jordan’s deal is.
I keep thinking Jordan will either be following a preacher that even the undear departed Toedad would think is too extreme, or converted to some religion Carol doesn’t like. Like Presbyterian.
i imagine whatever jordan did would probably be the opposite of a pastor or so, because even the mom would probably try to logically explain away some extreme views that align enough with hers versus him also being a full blown atheist or ending up being gay
I find it very easy to imagine a certain sort of evangelical being utterly horrified at the idea that their son became a Catholic, or something.
i’d imagine it wouldn’t have been kept a secret from joyce though versus something more ‘scandalous’ like him doing something ‘blasphemous’ so it’s like “We’re christian, but he decided to be mormon”, she was a bit uncomfortable with agatha mentioning being mormon/when she assumed she was invited to her service rather than “oh i’m just gonna walk partway with you”
I like to think Joyce is following in Jordan’s footsteps without even realizing it.
Whatever it is can’t be too bad, because Hank said he was still a good kid. Mind you, that was early “Hitler was maybe partly Jewish” Hank so.
I don’t think more extreme, Hank has a higher opinion of Jordan than Carol does, and Hank was who moved them from church to church when a church got to be too extreme.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/takeafter/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/squeezing-2/
mainline or catholic could be it, or some noodle incident.
More Jordan references.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/laws
https://www.dumbingofage.com/trickortreating/ (+ next)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-strip-for-27036535
Some inconsistency on if Jocelyne or Jordan is older.
scratch that on inconsistency on age https://www.dumbingofage.com/undeclared/
Carol hated Halloween, but probably didn’t want to stop a kid trick-or-treating until Joyce because she’s a girl and Focus on the Family told her Satanists were human sacrificing little girls.
this was literally my life before I came out as trans, like literally word for word
Extremely relatable for me as well. There’s definitely a layer of scrutiny now that didn’t exist before I came out.
Nah, she just knows that they’re out there, at this terrible secular college. Lurking, waiting to corrupt good Christian girls like her daughter with their existence.
Yeah, that’s the vibe I got as well. (plus what thakoru said)
How is she going to protect her precious baby girl from their evil pronouns?
/s
I’m fairly confident Carol is not referring to anyone in particular; “The Transgenders” is just conservatives’ current favorite scapegoat.
It’s fun to see how the sliding time scale affects characters’ political references, as well as their pop culture ones!
If this was set during my youth [shakes walking stick] Carol would be banging on about “homosexual recruitment.” That always puzzled me as a kid – I pictured some bloke in a suit with a clipboard taking names.
Carla was in magazines and I believe Joyce has mentioned her parents protesting or boycotting based off that, suggesting she is VERY PUBLICLY out. Carol may well know she’s on this campus. She probably doesn’t know Carla’s on this floor and knows Joyce, but I can see this being a “college is a hive of liberal thought and queer people -> this college also contains a trans student, horror (let’s not tell her there’s more than one) -> Joyce has changed once she went to college -> the transgenders did it.”
I HOPE that’s the case, anyway, much as I’d like to see Jocelyne post-skip. Not in peril, please!
It is also possible Jocelyne’s taken the divorce and everything that incited it as a trigger point to get the hell AWAY. Moving would be expensive and limit whatever support network she has, but given the circumstances I can see her going “I need to make sure my parents don’t know where I live and can’t get at me” (or at least Carol, depending on how impressed she was with Hank as this shook out.) In which case, Carol might know but be unable to do anything about it because she only found out as Jocelyne blocked her on everything and made sure Carol didn’t have her new address.
Carol surely listens to Faux News and worse. Everyone there knows that the trans agenda is poisoning colleges to be woke, and so the transgenders are grooming college kids to disrespect their parents. Or some grotesque shit like that. It’s a wedge issue and a talking point, and Carol would spout it with or without ever having knowingly met a trans person.
Small comfort: Jocelyne probably isn’t in any significant physical danger even if this is the case. She’s an independent adult not reliant on her parents’ support, so the worst Carol is likely to do is disown her, which would suck but not put her in danger. Assuming she’s run out of gun-toting maniacs to set loose, she seems to set on ‘being a good person’ to actually do anything to Jocelyne herself.
I also agree with the consensus it’s unlikely she knows — the conversation feels like it would go differently if she did.
She only said “the transgenders” bc she’s an ultra conservative Christian who consumes way too much fox news and Facebook bs. She probably thinks trans people are the reason for every ill in society, a vague corrupting concept. Blaming them for thinks you don’t like is conservative shorthand. There’s no way she actually knows about Joss
man, I just realised Joe got those texts completely contextless from someone who had, like, almost everything happen to her last term. good thing he’s in good shape I guess.
Yeah, he knows Joyce enough to know she’s melodramatic, but also knows her enough to know it COULD be some real shit going down. I guess this is somewhere in the middle.
Yeah, I’d say Joyce isn’t in imminent danger right now, but Carol is still an unknown-level threat after last year and I wouldn’t be shocked if, say, Becky would think of Carol as a “do not leave alone or alone with Joyce” sort of person by now. (Sarah evidently doesn’t, or at least trusts Joyce when she says she’s good, but I can see Becky being a lot jumpier.)
And if Joyce isn’t able to explain that to Joe very well right now (honestly I’ve got odds on Joyce have a full on shutdown soon) Becky should be able to.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Joyce slowly migrates to hide-behind-torso stance here, myself. Now that her favorite hidin’ torso is present.
That is not incompatible with her going into a shutdown. Among other things she might stop being able to talk soon.
Ooh, going nonverbal is great! You get to be accused of openly and maliciously ignoring somebody because you didn’t mutter an affirmative every 2.6 seconds, and then you get to be treated as an armed hostile for it.
Sadness…
It never gets any easier, does it? 😭 🫂
Literally never, no. It’s fine, I’m usually not listening when people talk
out loud anyway. Maybe everyone should be less exhausting and boring, if they want attention so fucking badly.
Yeah! Isn’t that GREAT?!
😀
D:
I noted that last time, yeah. D:
Yeah, good on Joe for deciding to take those texts completely seriously.
Joyce yes you do
Never gonna comment without reading the alt text again
I find it interesting that Joyce’s mom doesn’t argue whether or not God actually told her to sell the house; she just changes tracks immediately.
Deflection has pretty much always been her way of refusing to actually talk about a situation.
That still fits. Her focus isn’t on what Joyce is saying, but that Joyce had the nerve to talk back.
She literally paid a criminal to try to kill her.
No, she paid the court to let a criminal out of jail until he had his trial. And then the criminal tried to kill her.
Carol’s words were “no matter what happens”.
She might just be bullshitting Joyce, or she might just be incensed Joyce is talking back to her and cares more about being a shithead about that.
Wait, I thought Carol was based on Willis’ mother, not mine.
don’t ever have to defend your words if you turn every disagreement with them into an argument about something utterly irrelevant
This is exactly why I never engage with people who try to steer the conversations towards politics or politicized stuff, because even if you bring up remotely cogent points about whatever they brought up first, they’ll have an infinite number of alternate things to fall back on because it’s all they seem to think about, they’re just using you as an excuse to air their grievances.
Better to just feign ignorance about whatever they’re talking about (“I don’t really watch much news, so I don’t know much about x, sorry.”) and look for exits from the conversation, because there’s no victory scenario possible there, just varying levels of anger for all involved parties.
You’d miss out on some possibly interesting discussion with me, then. Why would I avoid an opportunity to dig into a topic and learn something, just to pretend that I know everything?
I feel like there’s a very specific cadence or tone that overtakes Certain People’s voices when they Start On One, though, and it’s almost never worthwhile to engage when it happens. Not every conversation is worth having.
Immediate deflection. She’s not going to admit that she’s just being as petty as possible, so instead she can complain about Joyce not being the perfect little Christian daughter anymore.
Yes, you do, Joyce. Yes, you do.
i’m surprised she didn’t just say ‘gays’ as an overall thing because she’d def be aware of becky as a lesbian even if she didn’t understand the nuances of other gender identities
Well Trans people seem to be the religious rights scapegoat of choice these days so maybe it’s just more on her mind
The public has mostly accepted gay people, but many are still uncertain, confused and sometimes scared about trans “people”, so that’s who the fearmongers use now. I hear it’s even worse in the UK.
Yes, if this were written five years ago, it absolutely would have been “the gays”. But sliding time scale and all of that.
Gay people are too broadly socially accepted nowadays — all but the most hardened bigots are aware they’ll get slammed for openly displaying that hatred, and won’t say it out loud even if they think it. Transgender people aren’t at that point yet, so they’re still an “acceptable target” for bigots to blame inasmuch as they won’t get any blowback from within their own circles for it.
Specifically, trans people were chosen as targets by the right-wing media apparatus after same-sex marriage happened and the backlash to that flopped. The first wave of bathroom panics in 2016 kind of flopped, but they retooled and got the engine running again a few years ago. Of course, the “groomer” talk is aimed at reversing support for gay people as well.
Someone’s asking for a face-first pie delivery, heavy on the whipped cream.
I’m thinking heavy on the rocks. And I flagged you by mistake. Sorry,
It’s alright, I’ve flagged others by mistake too.
My approach, when i hit the flag button without meaning to, is to then find something in that post to take issue with, so that I’m retroactively justified in flagging the hell out of that sorry excuse for a comment.
For instance, i flagged you by mistake and i am so mad at you just now
I flagged the lot of you (and myself) for acknowledging the flag system.
Few people realize that God after the whole New Testament thing got real into Real Estate.
People praying for health, world peace and the second coming and big-G is like “dude I’m so over that shit, you should sell your house tho”
Yeshua was (nominally) a carpenter, so maybe he buys houses, renovates them, and then flips them.
This Old House of God
You can’t see it, but I am grinning now.
He can flip a house in just three days.
Idk he was constantly annoying his parents by running off to the temple to discuss theology then cheekily saying his dad was not his dad, so you know. Unclear how much carpentry he ended up learning
Well, there’s a reason Bob Vila always had Norm around 🙂
I have found some interesting research suggesting that the word is mistranslated, and he was actually a labourer.
The flood was just a scheme to acquire more beachfront property.
Ruth is just down the hall talking to Becky, isn’t she?
When is she going to hear Joyce shouting and will Carol get suplexed again?
Did Ruth actually do that to Carol? I only recall her doing so to Billie and Amber’s Dad – and I am not actually sure if she did the later.
I don’t remember when Toedad was suplexed either. Got a link?
She never suplexed Toedad, but she did suplex Blaine back during Freshman Family Weekend and threatened to suplex Carol after the mass kidnapping.
Also I just noticed Ruth calls Carol a granny too. Being a bigot dosen’t make you age well apparently…… >_>
She is 60. I’m not surprised their first thought was “grandma” rather than “mom”.
Did Ruth know she was 60 though? Plus she knew Carol was Joyce’s Mom she could have easily just said old lady.
When was Carol suplexed? I must have missed it, or my memory loss is getting worse.
Implied offscreen here and here. Ruth joked that she was going to suplex Carol, but apparently it was more of a tackle.
“I don’t know any transgenders!”
[Carla summoning in 3…. 2….]
As much as she likes attention, Carla’s probably happy to know people don’t clock her. Especially formerly fundie people who’d certainly respond awkwardly at best.
forget “drank the kool-aid” she chugged the whole punch bowl.
I’m pretty sure she’s just a hollow glass human filled with colored sugar water using flesh colored makeup to fit in. She’ll probably escape by running through a wall.
Cool monster 😗
Across campus, Booster sneezed, and Carla’s ever-present worry that she was not the center of attention intensified.
There’s something that Carol needs to realize, the thing that’s turning her daughter against her isn’t some educational system or some marginalized group that she sees as an opposition…the problem is her, her and these foolish decisions that supposedly God despite all his wisdom is telling her to make.
She needs to realize she’s not Jesus Christ dying for anyones sins, she’s not Abraham getting ready to sacrifice a love one an a alter yet still hoping there’s another way, the only thing she’s become is a JUDAST!
do parents ever rly realize, even when it’s like “why does my kid never visit me?” or like purposefully sticking them in a shitty nursing home
Man, I can’t keep up. When did “purposely” get replaced by “purposefully?”
It didn’t get replaced. They’re two different words with similar, but distinct meanings.
I don’t see the difference.
Purposely- done with intent.
Purposefully- filled with purpose or intent; a significantly stronger level of intent than purposely.
‘you purposely dropped my phone!’
‘How have you not realized that I purposefully make your life worse in every petty way I can, every time I see you?!?’
“On purpose” vs. “With purpose “, basically
I’m curious if you looked them up? There’s overlapping in some of the definitions of the two, but the top ones give a pretty clear distinction, in my opinion.
In the past, before “purposefully” was corrupted. Which is why I tend to stick to “intentionally”.
We got transphobia in the horrible things that Carol has said I assume that she will follow up with some anti semtism, homophobia and racism soon.
I really don’t care for Carol dare I say I detest this foul sexagenarian.
i mean coming from someone other than carol “the transgenders made you change out of the mold your super religious family made you into” could be framed as a good thing
I wonder if we won’t see Carol get sidetracked by finding out that not only is Joyce at the beginning of a relationship, but it’s with someone who is Jewish.
I mean, she didn’t seem to mind Ethan being Jewish back in Freshman Family Weekend.
though two in a row might make her seem like a ‘chaser’ to her mom/i’m sure she’ll comment on it
I’m half expecting her to fully confuse Joe for Ethan.
As a transgender, this strip is great and I want it framed or on a shirt or something lmao
i wonder if ‘be gay do crimes’ on a shirt rly could implicate someone XD
Tho some pro ‘trans agenda’ shirt would be badass if you felt safe enough to where it around areas outside of a pride parade
Carol is prone to suggestion. Not every suggestion must be heeded!!
Our house… was a very fine house… in the middle of our street…
So, is it a good thing Joyce can’t tell?
“i barely know carla!” Hell, i’d argue that even /walky/ was more of an ‘influence’ to her than anyone trans in her circle of acquaintances.
I think she has a vague idea that booster’s pronouns means they’re “different/similar to becky” as part of being lgbt but other than sarah giving an explanation later idk if anyone explicitly called booster trans/nb
Has this strip ever mentioned Trump, MAGA, or Qanon? It seems strange that they wouldn’t be mentioned in the context of this storyline. Qanon has torn apart families.
But to do that, you’d have to nail it down to a time period. Comic time is a wibbly wobbly ball of timey wimey.
I had considered Willis might not want to be so specific for exactly those reasons.
There’s still some zeitgeist involved. When it was the Walkyverse, the moral panic crew had a different target, and today’s strip would have made no sense. Also, there’s twitter in the Dumbiverse, etc.
i mean, religious boomer? aged ppl have probably been transphobic even w/o qanon existing, though ppl might not have known the weird transgender versus transsexual even if they’ve heard of sexchanges
I think Pence has been mentioned, but not in the context of being a Christian nationalist. In the context of he went to school in Indiana (when Dorothy was still dead set on her life plan to become president of the US, but without the going to Yale step).
Dorothy mentioned Mike Pence and alluded to the January 6th Insurrection once, to herself. Robin had a hat saying, “Make District 9 Great Again.” I think that’s the closest the strip has come to getting into real-world politics.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/tinyhands/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/02-turning-saints-into-the-sea/murderous/
Robin mentions knowing Ted Cruz in this strip, and one of the Patreon strips has AOC just off-panel in the House of Representatives with Robin.
She also calls out AOC in her resignation speech strip
The strip itself hasn’t but Willis did draw art at one point of Carol in full MAGA gear.
WELP.
Yeah, in I think a three panel where her brother calls Obama the anti-christ
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/blog/antichrist/
Found
raidah also called joyce “that MAGA-ass choir girl” once https://www.dumbingofage.com/bubblebrained/
I’m pretty sure Joe referring to his Do List as “as presidential as” anything Dorothy does was intentionally a reference to Trump, who was president at the time that comic went up (though admittedly it could as easily refer to Clinton or to (next sexually aggressive male president))
Forgot the link for citation: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/presidential/
There was a bonus strip: mama reading to little-girl Joyce about the Antichrist, then present-day mama with the red hat and all.
Hank was in on it too – originally warning little Joyce about Obama a possible Antichrist.
It’s true, don’t we all remember the strip where Carla skated into frame and said “Joyce, your mom really shouldn’t sell y’alls house”?
Transgenders. More than meets the eye.
Trans person here!- LITERALLY HAD THIS EXACT THOUGHT, lmao
“not called cisformers is it c*nt”
Ah, I see you are a person with Fine Taste in Podcasts.
Somewhere offscreen, Booster’s nose itches.
if anyone needed a psychological “owning” it’d def be half the cast’s parnets lol
Joe has already accidentally fired the opening salvo of assuming Carol is Joyce’s grandma. Time for Booster to tag in for the (psychologically) lethal finishing combo. Then they can just find Walky and Sal’s mom next and keep going from there!
well, joe might’ve been using his new stepmom as a point of ref, since his dad did say “she’s also like 15 years younger than me and that’s hot” so carol would be a grandma-age in comparison lol
for all his underlying worries about being sex-obsessed, at least he doesn’t wanna bang Joyce’s mom! Silver lining!
…Huh. I don’t know why it only took me now to really register that transgender just meant transitioning away from your assigned gender, which includes acknowledgement as non-binary. I guess my brain has always just worked it as ‘male to female or vice-versa’.
That’s because there is the latter specific meaning.
That’s why terms like ‘trans-adjacent’ sometimes get used instead of ‘transgender’ when talking about non-binary, gender fluid, and other non-“traditional” transgender people.
Hm. That honestly seems pretty gross. If people want to talk about only binary transgender people for whatever discussion point or what have you, they can say “binary trans people.” If people want to talk about other sub-groups, they can specify that. But “transgender” includes people of many identities by default.
Yeah, transgender is an umbrella term! Not everyone who could fall under it identifies with it, which is cool. But sometimes people think they *can’t* be transgender unless they’re a binary gender different than they were assigned at birth. I did for a time; felt like it wasn’t mine to claim because I didn’t consider myself to cross from one gender to another as much as stepped back from the whole thing.
But if someone’s not cis, they can be trans. There’s room. And the white stripe on the usual trans flag is meant to include those who have a neutral or undefined gender– it’s not a new thing.
lol well even tho she doesn’t know about carla being trans, you’d think booster would be teh first thought, then again she’d not rly understand nonbinary being part of teh trans umbrella
Booster is a non-central member of the ‘transgender’ cluster *and* only a passing acquaintance so far – Joyce is unused to thinking about the topic at all, so she wouldn’t remember them immediately associatively in the middle of a heated argument.
I missed out that making conservatives sell their house was part of the agenda now. Though I have been missing my T meetings and focusing on catching up on my B and NB credits.
apparently it’s based on a real anecdote/autobiographical from willis’ life
i think there is one bible passage like “give up your worldy possessions” but obviously it wouldn’t make practical sense if everyone did sell tehir house/essentially lived humbly as a homeless person or so, or just completely live at the church but that’d be even more ‘cult-like’ as some commune/isolated community
You’re probably thinking of “the rich young ruler.” “One thing you lack: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, then come and follow me.”
People like to think of this as a General Order, but I see no evidence that it wasn’t advice specifically tailored for RYR. (There’s also no evidence that RYR didn’t ultimately do exactly what he was advised, but people also love to draw unsupported conclusions that assuage their envy.)
Nice shirt though Joyce, repping pride
I will never get tired of people seeing pride flags in any and every horizontal stripe pattern.
lol well tbf other than it being a darker shade of blue it just happens to be the trans flag
The trans flag also doesn’t have purple in it.
just needs a bit of magenta for it to be a bi+trans combo then lol
Hey, that cloud looks like a duckie!
Reverse story, once I was on a date with someone at one of those paint-your-own-pottery places, and she painted her piece in the pattern of the trans flag, and then when the owner was making note of what each of our pieces looked like, she said, “And yours is a dish with some stripes on it…”
Carol really knows how to deflect and push Joyce’s buttons. She’ll never accept Joyce’s outrage at anything. Perhaps Joe can help ground Joyce in reality: this the poisonous manipulator who hired criminals to hurt you; she is legally insane and will never listen to you. Or maybe they’ll get sidetracked listening to her scapegoating the Jews too.
I definitely have a feeling John learned such tactics from dear old mum here https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/settledown/
parents tend to get on kids nerves more than anyone else can
tho i’m sure it’ll be fine since joyce isn’t isolated from peers/ppl who actually care about her since there are still ppl unfortunately sucked into codependent toxic relationships
Can we not do the “legally insane” thing on here
Oh just wait until mom finds out that the person who essentially just called her old isn’t a christian and is currently dating her daughter.
There be drama ‘pon the horizon, mateys!
i like joe/joyce fine but man it would’ve been a huge epic reaction if she had been dating dorothy lol
Mom, this is my boyfriend, Joe Rosenberg. Yes, he’s Jewish. These are my birth control pills. And this is my Good without God bumper sticker. I don’t have a car yet, but it would look good on yours.
Rosenthal.
Mountain, valley, whatever.
I thought it might be thal, but figured someone would correct me if it was wrong.
ok the last panel made me laugh a lot tbh
its knowing ms. brown will never know her grandchildren if there are any <3
well, she’ll probably see john’s kids/grandparents, but hopefully by the time they’re older to fully understand religion they won’t be super brainwashed, or realized their dad is corrupt or so
I forgot his wife wasn’t made up lol
Ironically it seems possible Joe might’ve been better situated to help Joyce if he were texting her so she could actually tell him the problem and not have to make up some bullshit, but he’s doing the best he can and it’s a lot. Can’t help but love that he ran out to help her anyway, that’s the thing that matters most…
yeah i guess joyces friends aren’t particularly close with joe as well but if lucy was friends with joe before she probably would’ve also texted him a heads up
Oh no. Oh nooooo. Poor Jocylene. Can we check in on her?!
i didn’t see the strip but apparently there’s a patreon exclusive where she got a cat. so she’s living on her own at least (or with an accepting roommate) but other than physically charging in/being arm i would hope her mom can’t do any real damage, other than showing up with the whole church as a mob thing
The cat is named Miss Sakaki, and can be seen here: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/cablenews/
Her real-world counterpart is currently at the vet getting treated for pancreatitis. 🙁
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1664335187432407041
(Hoping for the best, Willis!)
“I DON’T KNOW ANY TRANSGENDERS!”
Well….
Unrelated: I want Joe’s hoodie.
i’m pretty sure willis references from online images/clothing stores so you probably could find it
not sure about dina’s hat but that might be good as merch or like a kickstarter bonus for buying the comic too lol
the good news is that meijer sells that hoodie
the bad news is that they sold that hoodie three years ago
https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1664502215296286721
oh that’s too bad
tho i’m sure ‘vest hoodie’ would still get you decent results if not the exact same color
as a trans woman,
[external screaming]
“I don’t know any transgenders?” I can hear the rollerskates from here…
“Here” being the Wistah hills.
i don’t think carla’s specifically hidden it from anyone before, but other than not being joyce’s friends, she was aware (as everyone from the first week basically) that joyce was religious so she might wanted to avoid being treated the same way mary did even tho she probably can tell by now that joyce isn’t like that
I think Carla just doesn’t want that particular attribute to define her in the eyes of others.
I don’t think we really need any reason other than it never came up in conversation when Joyce was around. Carla has been open about being AMAB before and I don’t think it would be her style at all to hide it from Joyce to avoid hassle or being treated differently.
Is she though? Has she ever brought it up to anyone who didn’t know already?
She’s out in a sense, since there was publicity around the Rutten daughter’s court case, but I don’t think it’s common knowledge around the dorms.
I remember someone talking about her being tall and her saying “there’s a reason for that” with a vibe of “obviously I’m transgender, are you an idiot”. I could be misremembering. If I’m not, I suppose it can speak to a certain level of discomfort with the subject as she could have said it straight-out instead of low-level sanctioning someone for making her have to mention it, but she also very clearly wasn’t hiding it.
I might be wrong, but I’ve always gotten the impression that Carla is very, very, very out. And in fact, for whatever faults they might have, her parents are extremely supportive.
It’s not a big secret, but it’s not a Carla Fun Fact she drills into everyones’ heads either.
As I said below, unlike Jocelyne, I get the impression that Carla is very, very out, probably since puberty. Most of the parents in this strip are pretty lousy, but I get the impression Carla’s are enablers at worst. (For her general nonsense, I mean – I should hope they “enable” her transition, which they seem to be doing in spades.)
Thing is, unless you live in a small town / village where any news is immediately gossip everyone knows in a day, to be completely out you’d need to come out pretty much every time a new person joins the social circle. Which is not an activity Carla cares to devote her time and attention to. People who know know, Carla will state it outright if it comes up in conversation, but Joyce is on her own. It’s neither Carla’s job nor hobby to educate her.
Screw you, Carol.
That’s all.
I love that Joyce is saying “I don’t know any transgenders” and while she’s technically wrong it’s exactly the kind of logic that her mom is going to just respond to with dismissal, because the fundamentalist brain doesn’t accept logic. This argument is going to get worse before it gets better and Joe saying “Grandma” because she’s so decayed is not helping.
JOE YOU’RE KILLING IT BB
How is Joe not correcting her that it’s Trans-“formers”? Where’s Ethan when you need him?
sick unintentional burn
That hoody is precariously on that desk, barely covering what Joyce does not want her mom to see. It must be a Chekhov brand.
Yeah, its cameo appearance the other day feels like a set-up. We haven’t seen the last of the “round dispenser thingy that hopefully Carol doesn’t recognize”.
There’s a question, though. Does Carol even know what birth control is? I’m assuming she’s one of those “Every sperm is sacred” types, so it’s entirely possible she’s only heard the words “birth control” directly next to “abortion”, which… Well, we don’t need to be told how she feels about that, she’s a very vivid character.
It’s safe to assume she knows what it is. Not just because she’s probably used it. Only four kids isn’t quiverfull. But mostly because it’s not like a closely guarded secret. She hasn’t been living in a walled off compound.
Maybe she’s had sex four times in her life and not more than that. It’s hard to tell with certain people, and we shouldn’t take it as granted that everyone fucks. Specifically, I want Carol to have fucked as little as possible.
Joyce doesn’t even register correcting Joe about Carol lol
Also, it just hit me that Joe looks a bit like a younger Captain Haddock
Blistering barnacles!
And now I can’t unsee it.
Oh noooo.
God Joyce’s mother is so stupid.
I was just wondering earlier if Joyce knew Carla was trans! I don’t think it was ever mentioned to her *at all*. And she was wondering earlier why Carla seemed ‘bigger’ (in the boob area, because of hormones I assumed). That’s gonna be a revelation a-comin’ later, can’t wait to see it!
I’m going for the full-on, hypocritical, crazy prediction:
Joyce doesn’t tell Carol that Joe and her are dating. Later, Carol, freshly divorced, tries to seduce the tall, Jewish hunk.
Everyone barfs.
Considering how many times Joyce has been kidnapped, I feel like Joe’s initial panic is very reasonable.
And Joyce’s call for help also reasonable. This hasn’t escalated to a kidnapping, but it might have.
I imagine Joe’s panic may rise again when he realizes this is Carol, who essentially facilitated the kidnapping in the first place
Hell, I wouldn’t be shocked if Carol tries to kidnap Joyce right in front of Joe
She knows so many transgenders !
And ouch Joe not gonna win points with grandma on that one
But would you WANNA win points with Carol?
This is a point where the sliding timescale of the comic really helps the joke. Ten years ago Carol would have said “the gays”, and ten years from now I predict it could have been “the poors.” It’s just the general hate and distrust against the “other” that today takes the posture of transphobia, as directed by Rupert Murdoch.
As a trans woman, I find this pedestrian, fair-weather bigotry almost comforting. Not that I don’t want Carla to rollerskate on her face.
Oh god Carol of course that’s what you’d bring up
…seriously, though, I have to wonder whether Joyce is lying or an idiot, only because the trans girl a few doors down is not exactly trying to hide it.
She definitely knows that Booster is nonbinary. but the argument she wants to have (in as much as she wants to have one at all) is “Everything you’re saying is ridiculous” not “Let’s pause the ‘selling the house’ thing and discuss trans rights”. Which I’m not saying is right, but is understandable.
Sometimes it’s more helpful to get the freaks off the subject as quickly as possible, rather than engaging with them earnestly. It’s important to support human rights, obviously, but it’s pointless when the other person isn’t going to listen under any circumstances. Joyce could correct her on every possible facet, but then she’ll just be exhausted and Carol will feel more right than ever. That’s how they get ya.
Booster is in the boys’ wing. Raen was referring to Carla. (As other people have mentioned, Carla talks a lot but doesn’t actually do much discussion on her trans identity, certainly not with people who aren’t all that close to her.) And who knows whether Joyce would categorize enby people as transgender?
I mean, Joyce doesn’t have enough of a foundation on the topic to have an opinion, she’d just listen to other people. This seems more related to “not remembering Booster’s existence / personal details in the heat of the moment”.
There’s a decent chance she doesn’t realize Booster qualifies as transgender. I’ve met nonbinary adults IRL who didn’t realize they could call themselves trans. As for Carla… she talks about herself nonstop but has not explicitly mentioned that she’s trans “on-screen” except for maaaybe once that I can think of, and Joyce wasn’t there. She might be crowing about her transness along with everything else offscreen but that feels like an odd assumption to make. She isn’t HIDING it, but the sense I get is that she’s only out because her parents are high-profile; she doesn’t go around actively telling people who don’t already know. Joyce’s parents protested Ruttech when she was a kid, but she may not have known why, and if Joyce had known Carla was trans I suspect we would have had a whole arc about it.
My point is, Joyce honestly might not realize she knows any trans people.
Given Joyce is likely autistic in story and with autism comes impairment at reading subtext I think this is very likely.
Even if others picked up on it Joyce might not.
Yup. Even an autistic who actually knows how to pick up on trans subtext is as likely as not to miss it in any individual case, and Joyce has NO IDEA what any of the oblique references would be to.
She could be startled…
She’s oblivious, it’s not something Carla introduces herself as, only when it comes up.
Joyce knows Carla’s bigger secret though, that she’s a decent person who helps other people out when they need it.
The ironic thing is, Carol has less direct control over Joyce than ever now that the divorce is final. As long as Hank can pay for her tuition (and any financial aid would’ve been calculated based on his income in the first place), Joyce can stay at IU and there isn’t thing one Carol can do about it.
So she’s probably going to double down on emotional manipulation… She clearly blames Hank for initiating the divorce, too…
Joe even didn’t kissed her and already have to deal with this huge drama.
(yes, he already know her, but just imagine if Joe didn’t)
He’s going to have her do something to balance this out. (Eat food that’s been touching).
…so Linda is racist, Carol is a fundie… why are we using a title based on surprisingly cool parents, again?
Peharps its about some douse of hipocrisy.
My bets: Linda has betrayed her husband, and Carol has fornicated, or was bullshiting about God’s dream.
Carla: The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.
Joyce: Ssshhhh! Mom doesn’t know I’m an atheist now!
Gonna be honest, I can’t picture Carla waiting on much of anything.
I remember being so young as to confuse a mom with a grandma. But not out loud to their face. Maybe she needs to hear it.
My mom went Christo-crazy but itvwas when I was in middle school. I was less prepared for it than Joyce. (No selling the house out from under the family though.)
To be fair to Joe’s guessing, I think there’s a pretty big age gap between Joyce and eldest brother, so Carol might be at youngish grandma age.
Also, bonus, calling Joyce’s grandma her grandma would be inoffensive to both, whereas he probably knows Carol sucks, so he gets to insult her while still being safe if grandma (and not using a real insult that could cause way more conflict). I don’t think he considered these things, but it worked well.
(side note that calling someone old shouldn’t be an insult,but c’mon we all know Carol will take it that way)
I did not remember the Brown children age spread and appreciate the tidbit.
Carol is prolly still in her late 50’s- Hank is 60, IIRC, and “traditional” folks like them tend to have the wife a few years younger than the husband.
My grandparents were in their 70s by the time I came around so I always associated grandparents with people who are legitimately senior citizens, but late 50s is definitely “grandma” age, even if it’s not necessarily “grandma of a college student” age.
Carol and Hank met in college, though; I feel like they were the same year, so pretty close in age.
Joyce, you know at least two transgenders
The two transgenders.
I donate to donors choose to get books by or about trans kids into hands of kids in red or purple states every time I read someone attacking trans people. It adds up. Trying to decide if too real fictional carol counts this morning. Happy pride month!
https://www.donorschoose.org/donors/search.html?keywords=transgender&sortBy=3
Ooo, I’m going to look into using this website. So far I just buy most of my classroom’s books myself, but for other things, this could be cool.
As a trans person who works in a library in a very red state… I love everything about this. Thank you for what you’re doing!
I salute you for your service! Thank YOU!
Thank you!
One of them just got fully funded this morning! (Not by me. 🙂 ) Thank you to everyone who donates!
Another one completed!
I really enjoy the punchline here.
Also enjoy Joe assuming Carol is Joyce’s grandma (which, narratively, I assume is to allow the punchline, as obviously he’s going to recognize her mom being there as Not Great). One time when I was 15, I had to go to the ER, and when a doctor came, she correctly assumed my mom was my mom, but thought my dad was my grandpa. I was very amused. My dad, less so. (He’s only 8.5 years older than my mom– decent gap, but not THAT much.)
My mom gets the reverse of this when she’s with me and my kid (because I look super young and my kid is almost as tall as me at only 8). People keep assuming my kid is my little sister and my mom is her mom, not her grandma. XD
Oh right they never told her, huh
Well she wouldn’t care anyway
I hope Carol doesn’t have the key to Ross’ gun locker.
Her poor eldest daughter.
As a “transgendereded” or whatever the tradcaths call us nowadays, I did nothing to Joyce, she just became a good person without our intervention.
No, see, tolerance and empathy are *airborne* on college campuses! Carol knows that the mere proximity to marginalized people risks Joyce contracting a serious case of “let’s treat others with dignity and respect”
(Hmm if only we’d been able to convince the right that tolerance and leftism are airborne at the start of the pandemic…maybe they’d have worn masks!) 🫠
“In addition to the respiritory symptoms, the virus can induce acute libtardism, life-threatening snowflake attacks and even a permanent case of SJW Syndrome.”
Oh, sorry, that’s wrong. “The secret Chinese bioweapon was designed to cause acute libtardism…..”
Why do all of their buzzwords sound like literal baby talk? They don’t even have the basic intelligence required to form a coherent thought, but we’re supposed to take them seriously and treat them like people. They’re not even fucking sentient.
idea with no basis (yet)
Tonight/tomorrow Joyce opens the boxes, and finds clothes, and is like ‘who the heck’s are these?’ because they’re not hers and they’re clearly not Carol’s
I doubt Jocelyne would have kept any feminine-presenting clothes at her mom’s house. There might be some androgynous/neutral stuff she outgrew and handed down to Joyce, though.
I mean, from experience, even if you know there’s dire consequences to being found out, sometimes it’s not possible to avoid keeping gender affirming stuff. Like, you gather that stuff because the alternative is to go crazy, and then once you have it, it’s impossible to let go.
also a reason for it to be hidden, and Carol to just be like ‘how did Joyce’s stuff get here?’
I mean she’d keep anything not covered by plausible deniability at her own place.
Stick around, Joe. It’ll be clear in a minute or two.
I’m with Joyce on this
It’s moral cowardice to say “god told me to do it”
Righty-o
I’ll be honest, this is the point where I’d be telling Carol “Get the fuck off this campus before I have the school throw you off of it.” I’d genuinely be looking into ways to disown her as a parent. Selling your house because “god told me to do it,” blaming you standing up for yourself and the insanity of the previous on “the transgenders,” being on the side of the person who LITERALLY TRIED TO KILL YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS because they are a part of their church, etc. All justifications to completely sever ties, especially when any or all of them are grouped together.
universities aren’t always great about protecting their students HOWEVER I feel like they’d actually be justified in kicking Carol out of there just for showing up. She has a direct connection to the person who attacked campus and killed a student.
I severely doubt it’ll happen but my fantasy is Ruth using her full RA powers to get Carol booted off campus by reason of “she’s (in)directly responsible for the attack on the students last year.” I can’t recall if it’s common knowledge that she and her church helped free the guy, and I feel for Joyce but part of me is just thinking about Becky and Amber and Ethan possibly seeing this woman and how they’d react. I feel like personally they could even make the argument Carol’s presence endangers them.
Im hoping this doesnt go the angsty trope route where Carol approves of Joe as a boyfriend because “white male” and this gives Joyce doubts because “happy carol = bad”.
Wheylp….Carol continues to be fucking horrible.
I seriously think I need to take a break from this comic and come back when the arc is over. Extended exposure to Carol is not good for my blood pressure.
Wake me when she either leaves or gets some comeuppance.
This would be literally illegal over here IIRC. Joyce would literally have a legal right to the house. Although if she’s over 18 and has legally moved out to the dorm it might not be muc hof an issue… hm. Still, this is weird to me. Hank just let Carol have the house with all of Joyce’s stuff?
I think it’s fairly common in negotiated divorce settlements where one spouse has most of the income to award the house to the other. Hank probably still has to pay alimony. Laws do differ among the U.S. states. Carol certainly does not own Joyce’s stuff, and she is in fact not retaining it.
One of my global comments on humanity is that whenever anyone says “Everyone knows”, or “No one could have missed seeing that…” or “No one is that clueless/unobservant/ignorant” it is one of those categories of statements that is pretty much always wrong.
There are always a lot of people out there who don’t care about X, or never picked up any information about X, or don’t spend time or energy thinking about X.
Hear, hear!
Besides the other arguments about mistaking Carol for Joyce’s grandma, Joe might be assuming that her mother wouldn’t be here because he knows Joyce is on very bad terms with her mother.
I know that Joyce knows Booster and Malaya are nonbinary but I don’t know if she realizes that counts as trans. We know she’s unaware she has a sister named Jocelyn (Joyce believes she is one of the brothers). I’m pretty sure Joyce doesnt know Carla is trans
I think those are all the trans people Joyce knows
Peharps I’m used to see this, but Carol’s face on first panel is beyong distressful and disgusting to me.
Like: “Why are you so nervous with me? Didn’t you liked it? You used to liked it”, yadda yadda,
Wow, Willis has made me hate this panel so much. And Carol.
Outside of going through a divorce, just what else has Hank done that has turned Carol so hateful and spiteful that she says, “It’s not OUR house, your FATHER made certain of that”? I thought that he was one of the good ones … or at least not as bad as many of the others.
He was one of the good ones until he did something she didn’t like.
I hope Carla overhears Carol’s hate and concentrates all her petty at her
I will help pay for that series. I see a special bonus comic, Slipshine-style, but not pr0n like Slipshine. “Carol Gets What’s A-Comin'” or such.
Unrelated to today’s strip, but I was skimming the archives and realized that Dorothy scheduled getting drunk in her calendar three years from then and then in our real time, she did get drunk
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/02-to-remind-you-of-my-love/counsel/
Like any omnipotent, omniscient deity, Willis exists outside of the dimension of time and can see everything happening at once.
I think we can all Agree that with the two worst dads being blitzø’d, Carol is the worst parent of this timeline
I mean, we’ve still got Jason’s dad, who was a literal supervillain in the Walkyverse, and has been described as such here. Then Ruth’s grandpa, who’s physically & emotionally abusive, though possibly less so than Amber’s dad.
Don’t get me wrong, Linda & Carol are the next step down that awful ladder, but they’re not quite the top rung here.
Ah shoot I forgot about Ruth’s Grandpa… okay yeah Carol is just barely not the worst parent
Just means she has to try harder.
Across campus, Carla began seething over someone not knowing her again, though this time she’s not sure where from
they HAVE to get married now this is too funny of a story for joyce’s mom to tell at their wedding
Joyce…. there are SO many trans people you haven’t really realized are trans…
(but ofc that’s beside the point. trans people have much more important things to do (e.g. survive…), they just don’t have time to corrupt you against your parents.
Joyce hasn’t even notice the trans people in her life Carol… XD But aparently if you are going to go the maga cliff jumping might as well go all the way I suppose…