It will be some arc when she finally confronts the fact she’s probably autistic herself. A task that’s difficult but well worth it (believe me, I know)
I definitely agree that she is at least some flavor of neurodivergent herself if not outright autistic. If she thinks having PTSD would keep her from becoming President than she would definitely combust over a diagnosis like that.
She’s keenly aware of the possibility and its implications, which could make her actively avoid a diagnosis so she doesn’t catch the label. (She’s already sabotaging her own therapy sessions to save her future self’s image.)
I know that it’s not good healthwise. But a diagnosis isn’t just a label that might hurt a presidential candidate’s image.
In Missouri, the AG made an emergency rule that trans people couldn’t get gender affirming care until “providers ensured that any existing mental health comorbidities of the patient have been treated and resolved”. Dorothy’s not trans, but it’s plausible the GOP will strip someone’s rights if they have a depression or PTSD or autism diagnosis, because they are already doing it.
Okay, as an autistic person I gotta say that calling this specific moment “ableist” is a huge exaggeration. At worst it is just a bit cringe but we’ll intentioned.
Yeah, what’s going on with Dorothy is that she’s modeling herself on expectations for the majority of politicians in the white establishment who are a lot more likely to work on *behalf* of minorities instead of with us.
If she truly desires to help people, she needs to see the race for presidency for what it really IS as opposed to what it’s *supposed* to be. She must renounce magical thinking and embrace empirical evidence.
Since when have politicians embraced anything resembling empirical evidence? Not just the US it’s in every nation and it extends across the political spectrum.
Insofar as the successful ones are the ones who get good at “playing the game”, I’d argue they embrace empirical evidence in at least one case, at that is “what works”. The way you succeed in politics is pretty well documented, and Dorothy is missing it, while the successful politicians are not.
Depends on the empirical evidence if such empirical evidence runs contrary to their political views or what their constituents and or parties opinion, they are more then willing to ignore it.
No, you’re generalizing, I’m talking about a very specific thing. They do whatever is needed to get ahead in the polls, most relevantly lies and deceit. Plenty of historical evidence backs up that having a flexible relationship with the truth and compromising morality to get ahead is what works, and successful politicians do that, as they have been doing for centuries. Studies have been done on this, history shows it works consistently, and so it’s what successful politicians learn to get very good at, because it demonstrably works. That literally means they follow empirical evidence, at least in this one specific area. You are welcome to have a low opinion of politicians, they’ve certainly done enough to deserve it, but you are letting your bias cloud your comprehension of the facts.
Genuinely honest politicians rarely get very far, and the only time a dishonest politician deals in the truth is when it specifically benefits them, or when they’ve been caught in their deceptions and have no other choice if they want to try to salvage things. Dishonest politicians are competent, at least in this specific area if nowhere else, and to try to downplay how deliberate and studied they are in their deception is to underestimate them.
Don’t confuse your bias with reality, that’s how you get taken advantage of.
The reason I didn’t say specifically regarding politics is because, with Dorothy starting to realize her dreams of Presidency are a bit… unrealistic, she’s probably gonna have to change her career path. I think Dorothy would enjoy any sort of job that’s in service of people and helping to use her diplomatic skills, but man she’s really gotta get out of her head when it comes to interacting with people she’s not used to if this is how she treats someone who is autistic.
Meh, there’s a learning curve, she figured out her friend probably has autism, so she did a LOT of reading, and now she’s having trouble separating what she read about autism cases with what she knows about her friend. It’s the same nonsense that has first year psych students diagnosing themselves and their acquaintances with half the DSM after they’ve read it the first time. I’ve found that a lot of people who value having a high empathy as part of their personality tend to fall into that trap. Thankfully it isn’t that hard to get them out of it with a solid dose of reality, at least so long as they aren’t the arrogant or narcissistic type of helpers (and I’m fairly certain Dorothy isn’t).
Besides, this particular instance isn’t as unwarranted as some people are making it out to be, Joyce started acting weird right after Dorothy touched her, Dorothy just spent a bunch of time reading about autism after learning Joyce might have it, so it isn’t much of a leap for her brain to think those are dots to connect when they aren’t.
Given how quickly she backed off the Joe thing despite having a lot of background knowledge about what he used to be like when she finally actually saw how they were together, yeah I think she’ll be able to handle getting out of that trap.
She’s clearly capable of recognising when she’s wrong sooner or later and correcting.
A couple of things to notice: (1) Dorothy had no evidence that those dots don’t connect until after she touched Joyce, advanced a hypothesis and heard it denied; (2) Joyce hasn’t offered any evidence supporting any other hypothesis. An unsupported denial is a fairly weak argument, and takes longer to sink in.
1) Dorothy has also known Joyce for 5 months and that is enough time to discern whether your friend usually likes to be touched or not.
2) Most people might not appreciate being touched on the small of their back and pushed further to the ground, albeit in a gentle manner, without a proper warning or knowledge that such a thing is happening.
if anything given the way walky basically joked about joyce having a girlcrush on dorothy she’d prolly love touching/being touch starved more than the opposite
(well i woudln’t want a strnager touching me but i def am physically clingy to my friends)
zoomed in, it looks like a 6 to me. But I like the idea of her skipping from 5 to 7 because she’s a little startled and distracted by having to say she’s not startled so Dorothy doesn’t make a bigger deal out of it.
feels like it’s shrunk, or it’s the same font but a smaller size/not bolded or so (idk if willis has a set font for his comics or made a font out of his own handwriting)
I don’t think you understand her character very well at all.
Is it possible you’re projecting people who are like that onto a character whose not, based on some similar seeming behaviours that have completely different motivations and come from a different intent?
Yes some people talk about the things they read to try and flex and show off.
Here we have someone rambling and putting their foot in their mouth.
The thing is she thought she had it was a miscommunication on that front. She thought Joyce understood what she meant and then was thrown off by what she assumed was a change in Joyce’s boundaries.
The fault is still entirely hers of course and she could be handling this a lot better.
She could be handling this better, but she’s not handling it that badly. She thought she’d communicated correctly about touching Joyce, pulled back when she realized otherwise.
She’s over explaining and digging herself deeper, but that’s understandable.
Dorothy saw something she could help with, but realized she she needed Joyce’s consent before doing so, so asked for it (that’s good!). There was a miscommunication what exactly she was asking (that’s bad, but an honest mistake). Dorothy realized she made a mistake, stopped, and tried to figure out what the mistake was (that’s good!). She further mistakenly connected the dots between this and something she read (that’s bad), then verbalized to confirm (that’s good!). When Joyce denied it, Dorothy discarded the notion (that’s good!).
So yeah, a lot of missteps, and ones she should really offer an apology for, but mistakes are how we learn and grow.
Studying is how Dorothy handles things. Of course she read up on autism, that’s who she is.
But despite how much stuff she studies how often does she actually go on about her knowledge? Pretty rarely. She doesn’t study to show off, she studies to learn.
She probably wouldn’t even have mentioned reading up at all if she hadn’t gotten thrown off by a perceived shift in Joyce’s boundaries and defaulted to what she read.
Like all fault is on her right now yes, and she’s absolutely putting her foot in it. But this is not Dorothy trying to be “I read a book, I’m the autism expert praise me.”
“Oh hey Joyce, now that I know you’re autistic I’m gonna completely ignore my actual knowledge of you and leap to assumptions based on generalizations!”
Hoping maybe Joe calls Dorothy out on this in private later. You know Joyce, Dorothy a generic autism book isn’t going to teach you more then you already know about your friend s likes and dislikes.
She didn’t assume Joyce hated touching. She literally touched Joyce after asking if she wanted help and then was surprised when it seemed like maybe Joyce’s boundaries had changed.
That’s when she jumped to the book, which while not the best response isn’t the same as assuming everything you know about a person is wrong because you read it.
Right, she’s just misinterpreting Joyce’s reaction to being touched by someone she has a very confusing set of feelings for, while she is in a mild state of arousal due to her proximity to Joe’s barely clad rear.
Not really that she didn’t expect her to be there, since Dorothy did ask about showing her how to do the stretch correctly, but about being touched to adjust her position rather than having Dorothy demonstrate.
The reaction came after she already know Dorothy was there.
TBF as a guy who married an autistic woman, it can be hard to know where to start when you’re trying to make them more comfortable, so you tend to just err towards “I learned this about another autistic” and go from there. Dotty just has the additional problem of being a book nerd who thinks she’s good with people.
I believe so. I am not sure if it is an improvement or not yet. It looks pretty, but till I get used to it, I will likely continue to read the new font as if the characters are whispering the whole time.
I get that Dorothy is clearly trying to do the homework, and I appreciate that, but it’s really clear how little experience she has in this area, and she’s (obviously unintentionally) othering her best friend in the process, which isn’t cool. Granted, their dynamic needs to evolve, they need to be on equal footing instead of Dorothy being the Problem Solver and Joyce being the one who needs help all the time in her eyes, but this isn’t helping that.
I do wonder if this is part of Joe’s side-eye here, given his mother and his own experience with the topic of autism, something he seems more comfortable around than Dorothy currently is, though it could also just be that he’s trying to spend time with his girlfriend, and Dorothy’s being a distraction.
At least Dorothy’s aware of her kind of accidentally plopping right into two different situations, she isn’t oblivious to that.
Yeah, what’s going on here is clearly a micro-aggression on Dotty’s behalf, she’ll be so much happier and at peace once she confronts her internalized ableism and eventually accepts that she’s (probably) autistic herself.
Women and minorities are very disproportionately undiagnosed because of systematic bigotries that have plagued the medical system for decades. Lack of diagnosis is really no means by which to invalidate the possibility, to say the least.
Plus, I know from experience that once you’re no longer a minor, many doctors seem to decide that it doesn’t matter if you might have some form of neurodivergence (or, assume that you’ve grown out of it??) and don’t really attempt to diagnose adults. So, hard agree to your points raised here.
I had a teacher who thought she could “just snap [me] out of it”.
This was the same teacher who once grabbed the textbook out of my lap and slammed it down on my desk (and consequentially my glasses) because I was “reading wrong”.
Its also just very expensive to get these kinds of things diagnosed as an adult. There’s a lot of programs to make it more affordable for kids, not so much for adults.
Probably because millions of parents have been lobbying for their kids for many years, but how much effort has gone into even pointing out that neurodivergent children eventually become neurodivergent adults?
With Joyce though.. she was homeschooled. So an environment that was probably more accommodating of her in that regard. She’s not running into bullies and the like. And many social issues also overlap with being sheltered and home schooled.
And she hasn’t been diagnosed yet, she’s had a doctor say, basically ‘you should be evaluated’ but she hasn’t been yet because plot and also certain level of avoidance on Joyce’s behalf. Understandable avoidance, for sure.
Also because “US medical system”. That recommendation was less than a week ago. Without a time skip it would be completely unrealistic to have even a first visit with a specialist by now, even if she’d had no hesitation and made an appointment on the spot.
She has not been, but she’s had it suggested to be something she gets checked out.
Honestly, though, it is probable that she does have it, though she hasn’t really had time and opportunity yet to get it further explored. Normally, I’d think it was maybe Joyce dragging it out, much like she did with her glasses and the birth control, but this is pretty recent and I just genuinely think she hasn’t really had a good time to do it yet.
I am not overly keen on describing autism as a disability, but I get what you’re saying. It’s also the sort of thing that is more difficult to get material help with given her eyes and her reproductive system are both physical things where there are more immediate remedies, so yeah, it’s a bit more complex for Joyce to tackle. In any case, I do think Joyce is taking it seriously, given her interactions with Dina about it, her talking to Becky about it, etc, it’s not her neglecting it to avoid change.
She definitely struggles in terms of understanding social cues regardless of what she might or might not be diagnosed with, looks like on some level shes trying to fix Joyce constantly becaisd in her mind she can’t have a problem if she’s the one fixing all the problems.
I’m not saying Dotty isn’t autistic, but I don’t read her as autistic.
She actually reminds me of myself a LOT.
Academically gifted, high strung, lot of drive*, need for organization, find socializing awkward.
*this went away as far as I can tell
I’m not autistic. I literally got tested for it. Well, I got tested for ADHD and based on the results they were like ‘we could test you for autism, but based on your responses today it would be a waste of your time to be evaluated.”
In my case, my autistic coded traits are a mixture of symptomatic of other conditions, or coping mechanisms for the same. I’m bipolar, I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and agoraphobia. I also could be said to have a brain like a spreadsheet, I make lots of them for my job. I could happily write training manuals all day and be happy.
I don’t think Dotty has autism, nor bipolar.
I think she has a variety of personality flaws, high anxiety, depression, and high organizational skills.
It’s also entirely possible that she is autistic and my reading of her as not being autistic is because I identify with her so much. Except I never wanted to be President, and I’m a man.
We know that Dorothy has no bad intentions, but after the last interaction they had, it is clear that the blonde will put Joyce as a real priority, and that is really scary, because for a moment if things reach chaos, she or Joyce They will be able to say something they may regret.
I think you have the best reply out of everyone. You acknowledge that she’s trying, but at the same time has some internalized ideas that she needs to work through.
I dunno, I think Joyce has a vague sense that there is something unusual specifically about Dorothy touching her. And I suspect that she has thought about it just enough to decide that she does not want to think about it more.
Dorothy caught her off-guard, which surprised her, then projected that reaction onto her mental image of an Autistic person despite everything she knows about Joyce.
Joe’s reaction doesn’t seem to be jealousy here. Joyce was bent over, Dorothy came out of nowhere and put her hands on her from behind without asking for real, and Joe’s reaction is a generic, “do you realize you’re being a third wheel?”
And Joyce’s reaction doesn’t read to me like what “juuuust fine with touching” implies. “I’m not … I’m not startled” sounds like it’s closer to a mild surprise than aroused.
Ha ha Dorothy tried reading up on what autism is like in hopes of better helping her friend, but is doing a bad job of it, like it’s new to her or something. What an awful human being. You never saw Joyce being this awkward around her.
Performative? I can see how a lot of that about her exists in negative space. She’s fixated her entire life on being president, and as with any position in which being the everyman confer power upon you, it’s just as much, if not more, about what you AREN’T.
In other words, the allure of grandure of being president is a means by which The System silences her true self.
She’s conscious of her image due to political ambitions.
But the idea everything she does is about putting on a performance and not because she wants to do the right thing is pretty strange. That’s even why she’s struggling right now, she’s realising how naive the idea of doing the right thing and getting elected president is.
I think she knows she isn’t, but thinks she has to be. Which is why she studies so hard. That doesn’t make her immediately good at things, but it probably does give her a leg up on people who who don’t in most situations.
This isn’t just a “let’s split the difference” thing.
I think she recognizes when she’s not, but still thinks she will be immediately good at things. Her downward spiral seems to be powered by cognitive dissonance. Maybe I’m just seeing what I’m familiar with.
I’m annoyed with her ignoring what she DOES know about Joyce to follow what she found in a book, not with the fact that she tried to read up and be helpful
Something that, as an autistic, we often do? We lose certainty in what we think we know about loved ones based on what we read in books. If something is ableist here it’s the reaction from some in the community seeing Dorothy try to help Joyce from a place of good intentions and anxiety over unfamiliarity, and deciding to attack her for it.
I understand your point and neither of us know what Dorothy’s head so I can’t actually refute you, but this reads to me more like she would rather go by that book knowledge than trust Joyce on knowing (and having known) herself. And that would probably be because Dorothy’s feeling too destabilized right now to have hard conversations when reading is an option, so it’s understandable, but it’s still not good.
I mean its not like she just started a conversation going in about all the reading she’s done on it. She misinterpreted something based on what she read and referenced it.
Because studying is how she handles things new to her.
I’m a software developer, which means my work is basically learning new stuff that isn’t my strong suit all the time, which means I spend a lot of my time being right in general but wrong in particular. I have nothing but sympathy for Dorothy today. She’s floundering because her study isn’t complete. I live that every day. Being wrong is how we learn to be right.
Yeah a large part of why Dorothy is here is she’s gotten so used to taking care of Joyce and Joyce always wanting to spend time with her that’s she’s trying to keep that going and hasn’t emotionally accepted that Joyce has other people she wants to be around sometimes. Never occured to her that she could be the third wheel friend to Joyce.
It’s a long road ahead for Dorothy, besides, in that talk it was clear that Dorothy was babbling with obvious fear and the fact that Joyce wants to repay everything Dorothy has done for her…let’s be honest, it worries too much.
it is a bit odd considering they also held hands during ‘laundry’ time, you’d think if she was fine with it then (even if she did ask her to leave at the ‘peak’), her back being straigthened wouldn’t be a s big a deal
People shake hands all the time; people take others’ hands to comfort them all the time. People do not casually touch each others’ bellies all the time; that’s a higher level of intimacy. Dorothy jumped in to help without following the protocol, that’s all.
Where is she treating her like a toddler? Like this isn’t great, but is clearly not her seeing Joyce as a child.
People are acting like she walked in and said “You hate touching now, book said so.” and not she was a little thrown off because based on past experience she assumed what she was doing to help with her posture would be okay and it seemed like it wasn’t, so she kneejerked and over corrected.
The toddler treatment seems to be how instead of demonstrating proper posture with herself like one might with a peer she immediately touched Joyce after injecting herself in a situation were her help wasn’t being requested. You can argue that each individual act isn’t inherently infantizing but the overall action does resemble the way a parent might handle a young child without first asking if they are fine being touched.
It’s a think that’s pretty common in stretching and yoga I think. It’s actually a lot easier to get postures right if someone helps adjust your posture, rather than just showing you. You can’t really see yourself to compare what you look like to what they look like.
And if you’re used to that, you might easily not realize someone new wouldn’t get what “may I show you how” means.
I don’t see anything “toddler” related here.
I don’t think that’s an autism thing by the way. I think that’s just an average people thing. Some people have an aversion to touch for any countless reasons. Maybe you just feel gross that day, or itchy, or tired, or whatever. Maybe getting suddenly groped from behind would make anyone slightly nervous or jumpy cause that’s a natural reaction to that happening. Just saiyan.
It’s both. No one really likes being startled with touch and many people dislike it, but it is also common and more extreme as an autism symptom, and we shouldn’t reduce it to ‘everyone feels like that,’ because it can stop people from getting support they might need (or realizing that they need it in the first place).
(this is less at you for reasoning about it here, and more at people at large dismissing symptoms as “how everyone feels,” especially when their kids try to tell them they’re having a problem)
Yeah, it’s a sensory thing, and sensory things in general tend to crop up more with autism. I am not really that pressed about people touching me for the most part, but stuff like rain drops hitting the top of my head if I do not have a hat or hat on is something I really dislike, along with too many people talking at the same time.
As an autistic person who is touch sensitive, I don’t personally mind touch, but it has to follow one of these conditions.
1. It has to be asked for.
2. It has to be someone I know and am comfortable with.
3. It can’t be in the league of unexpected.
1 is because I have a history of having had my space treated in inappropriate ways by people I’m not comfortable with because I’m often quiet. Like some girl just coming up to me and stroking my hair without asking, some guy groping my chest for whatever reason.
2 for the same reason. I tend to gauge over a period of time if people are respectful of my boundaries now.
3 is because I would like some control over touch. I don’t personally mind sexual touch as long as I know we’re on the same page. It’s just not expected in my mind most of the time. (Also, it would have to be something cleared with partner ahead of time)
I am a huge cuddler, and will happily engage in full body cuddles with complete strangers and/or friends, I just have to know that I can say no at any time.
Ditto. I am a cuddly, touchy person (when I like someone I have the tendency to stroke their hair or want to hug them/lie one them) but my desire for contact has the same conditions, especially if someone else is initiating.
“I know we’ve known each other since September and we’ve shared a lot about how you think and feel, but I think you’re probably more like what I read in a book”
I’m actually very surprised so many college students have prepared “working out” outfits. They look specifically dressed for exercising instead of throwing on whatever loose shirt and bottoms they don’t mind sweating in.
I get why Joe, Dorothy, and Jacob do, given all three work out consistently. Sarah having such an outfit is either “rule of funny” or indication she may have gotten some of this stuff before she had set aside her idea of maybe macking on Jacob, and had intended to go this route before aborting it and just held onto the clothes.
Joyce, I forget if she had anything for when she fucked up her toe or not, but she is the type who’d have gotten some clothes for working out with her boyfriend.
We know Dorothy jogs and Jacob and Joe regularly work out, so that’s not too surprising to me, but Joyce’s might be a planned outfit (or one of the ones Billie bought her), but could also be clothes she had available for pajamas, under layers, etc, put together for gym time
i’m sure some ppl just reuse old gym uniforms but other than something specific like bike shorts and sports bras all you need is something easy to move around in and not too ‘flowy’ like along sleeve or frilly skirt in a way that’d get caught on a machine or so
maybe she got some ‘normal’ clothes when shopping with billie or more stuff off screen
Yeah, like, to be frank, she probably has it. It’s not like there’s a blood test they give you, so while it’s possible she’d be turned away, much like Dina’s faced frustration with, it wouldn’t mean she doesn’t have it.
When I first got tested, they said they did not believe I had autism because I had “a sense of humor”, and other extremely flimsy arguments, and focused in on my anxiety as being a false indicator when, no, that was just a separate issue that kind of fed into the autism issues. This was years ago, so frankly, a lot of the people giving these tests had some dubious qualifications.
Yeah, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be taking it to be fact now or as a more “open wondering” (in comic) or something.
I could get skipping a formal diagnosis testing. I’m actually getting a similar (maybe?) evaluation done this week; I’ve been on the waiting list since April. So, on a timescale level (while it could be sped up through the power of Narrative), it might just feel like it doesn’t fit. Or Willis might not to write it, for various reasons.
Either way, this does feel like an awkward convo. Not one that we need the guillotine for, though.
I think Willis has said, for all practical purposes it’s fact.
She got the suggestion less than a week ago. If your timeline is average, in comic time she’s never going to get the formal diagnosis. Without another time skip at least.
Rather than some “I’d never be like this” hot take about this fake person behaving in a suboptimal manner, I would like to share a small anecdote.
This one time, I was hanging out at the school playground (I was like 10-12, somewhere in there) and this kid was getting on my nerves. Like really pissing me off, being a right prick for no apparent reason, right? Well, I flipped the fuck out and started punching him (I was a very violent kid, it was an actual problem), and he was punching me back, and at some point he stepped away or something(?) and that made me even madder, so I went over to his bike and started stomping and jumping on it, trying to bend the spokes or whatever, but I just wound up getting my foot stuck or tripping or something like that, and so within a couple minutes of the guy showing up, I was face-down in gravel, mad as hell and now bleeding a little. So he’s just laughing at me now, and he comes over and gets his bike and leaves, and all I can do at this point is accept what just happened and get back on the swings and resume whatever conversation I’d been having with the friend who’d seen all of this happen in real time.
The moral of the story is, if you’re gonna piss off an autistic person, make sure you have a sturdy bicycle.
Yeah, I think some people forget studying is how Dorothy responds to things. She’s not trying to flex or be the best at autism allyship. She’s doing what she knows.
And she messed up. Sometimes you need that practical experience.
The drama it generates for us to read is she may know other people need practical experience, but she expects herself not to need it. She thinks she’s extraordinary, and she’s ordinary. And that’s ok, but it’s what she’s trying not to realize. She she recognizes that she has messed up, her instinct is to study more.
Ya know what this autistic person hates when people treat them differently after they found out they had autism.(in terms of infantalizing me) It really hasn’t happen so much among my friend group or immediate family, but some extended family members act like Dotty, but worse.
Going into further detail In my family, there is a distinct hierarchy, with my sisters and me positioned at the lower end. This stems from my paternal grandmother, the matriarch of our predominantly Catholic family, who disapproved of us being Jewish. Her sentiments influenced the family’s dynamics. Additionally, my father, not being the first-born male, lacked the respect he deserved within our family structure . Consequently, certain cousins, aunts, and uncles, who previously paid little attention to me, began offering support and expressing concern for my wellbeing following my diagnosis. However, I’ve been independent since a young age. I graduated from both college and graduate school, held full-time jobs, and have been living on my own since I was 19. Currently, I’m still employed full-time with a decent salary and continue to live independently. Despite these achievements, my family’s recent attempt to engage deeply in my life and wellbeing feels insincere. It doesn’t compensate for the years of ostracization faced by my sisters, my mother, and myself, especially when I am self-sufficient and don’t require their assistance.
The thing is she didn’t actually treat Joyce differently, she asked if she could help her with her posture and then assumed based on past experience how she did it would be okay and was surprised when it didn’t seem to be okay and jumped to the only reference she had.
She didn’t just assume “Oh Joyce hates touching now because she’s autistic.” there was literally a situation that threw off her understanding of Joyce’s boundaries.
Assuming that her autism is the reason why she didn’t like being touched is treating Joyce different then usual, and not I don’t known observe she is with her boyfriend in a gym.
Dorothy shows off her flexibility by putting her foot in her mouth!
Dorothy has the problem of trying really hard to be a good person but being a bit too textbook about it sometimes. And as her life gets less structured and more complicated she isn’t able to tick all the boxes she wants. So her fear of failure starts to consume her. Not a fun time for Dorothy.
Dorothy is probably neruodivergent herself but borad systematic issues and her desire to go into has made her beleive that neurodivergency is a possible vulnerability she can’t afford to have.
Also has anyone else’s phone just embraced their dyslexia and just automatically corrects a word to the wrong spelling beacuse you just misspelled a word so many times your phone just assumes that’s how it’s spelled?
she doesn’t awnat anything ‘officially listed’ even tho she might also have some kinda anxiety disorder bc it’d affect her ‘political career’ (which yeah politicians suck buti ‘d rather trust a politician who’s willing to admit they need therapy and go to one versus someone who celarly has issues and refuses to get any kinda help)
this is what it looks like when someone touches Joyce and she’s aroused by it. https://www.dumbingofage.com/followyourlead/
today is what it looks like when someone touches Joyce and she’s thinking “what?”
What’s surprising given that Joe knows about the laundry is that he’s not immediately jumping to “threesome”. I mean, it’s a terrible idea, but it’s Joe’s kind of terrible idea.
And even if the brain impulse is still there since these things can take time to unlearn completely, he understand its completely inappropriate. Which is still progress.
I think Willis is just flexing their drawing skills at this point.
Also, I think most people don’t like it when someone with whom they have an awkward sexual history surprises them by touching their body while they’re in a vulnerable position. I don’t think that’s an autistic thing at all.
As an autistic person with an aversion to being touched, boy am I glad I didn’t do Thanksgiving with extended family this year. Forget political arguments, where are the articles with tips on how to survive the Hug Gauntlet?
You can move to a country where they don’t do thanksgiving, or hugs. I do neither and american people I know going all huggy is always weird – even weirder are non-american people who take social clues from american fictions and now hug random people. So even in another country you won’t be perfectly safe I guess.
I come from a rather large family that love hugging. Thankfully they all obey my wishes and understand I don’t like being hugged so with me I get fist bumps.
They are once again focused on kids– and I like the increased attention that is going toward kids being able to set their own boundaries, but I wish there was more, “Hey, you know how you didn’t learn about setting and accepting boundaries 30 years ago? It’s time to catch up.”
(One of my aunts is like this, she gets so offended if I don’t want to hug her. One year, she insisted in leading a blessing before dinner and made everyone stand and hold hands, and when people seemed annoyed before and had a lukewarm reception afterward, she was like, “Oh, it’s such a difficulty, what a hardship to have to hold hands for a minute.” She thinks she’s a very self-aware and empathetic person.)
Serious question for David Willis, if you read this: the ink lines in this strip look fantastic. Did you do something differently with your technique to make them so smooth?
I’m away for Thanksgiving weekend, saw a typo, didn’t have Photoshop with me, downloaded GIMP, fixed the typo by copy-pasting it away, resized and saved. GIMP must downscale differently, as it’s also why the typeface looks thinner.
Speaking as one autistic person, if you touch me unexpectedly and I tense up, it’s fine to apologise for it! I won’t think your ablelist for assuming that just because I tensed up when you touched me I don’t like being touched. Other autistic people may prefer that you make no concessions to their autism at all, so you should probably ask them, except you can’t, because that itself would be treating them differently because they’re autistic, so good luck with that!
Oh wait, so overexplaining your motivation out of an anxious need to make fully clear your intentions is no longer a common autistic trait in this scenario, for the purposes that this time it made us realise another person was trying to understand issues with us that might arise as associated with the label we keep intentionally demanding to singularly encompass a broad spectrum of lived experiences… before they came up?
“autistic people have an aversion to being touched” as opposed to neurotypicals who love being grabbed without warning at all times?? listen to words that come out of your mouth, Dorothy
Clearly Dorothy is a fifth COLUMN. Big Lesbian has convinced her, in the spirit of equal representation, to interrupt these entirely m/f proceedings and represent the will of the homoerotic people.
Funny enough, I think Dorothy assuming there’s A Touch Thing™ in play is kinda similar to the commenters assuming the same thing. Joyce only seems confused it even came up, not bothered at all. She hasn’t signaled in any way that touching her was unwelcome, just that she didn’t know what Dorothy meant right away. Dorothy’s the one who brought it up for seemingly no reason and without provocation.
Dorothy is a cringe-inducing dork sometimes, but I’m surprised at the amount of people here seeming to imply she’s some kind of hellish monster. She knows she fucked up and she’s trying to do better, even if very awkwardly for now. She’ll get there.
She’s probably not gonna get that much better in regards to her internalized ableism until she’s forced to confront it somehow and makes a giant melancholic mess as a result.
Ideally that wouldn’t be the case, but this isn’t *smarting* of age
I don’t know that her ableism is “internalized” per se because I’m not so sure she actually is disabled. She probably has anxiety, sure, but she doesn’t really strike me as being on the spectrum. Not saying she’s not, but I don’t think it’s certain enough to confidently assume she is.
That said, I’d kind of appreciate it if you didn’t engage with my posts anymore. I have you blocked on Twitter for a reason.
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*looks at the equipment* “make that a seventh wheel”
Floor and ceiling, eight, ninth wheel.
1, 2 walls, 10, 11th wheel.
3rd, fourth wall… oh fuck!
Another (rightful and expected) blow to the “more doors than wheels” faction. Gosh that was a weird week in internet history.
Do you count hinges as wheels? (as they allow the door to roll/rotate)
Dorothy if you’re gonna go into a job relating to people you really gotta learn how to stop being so ableist.
YUP.
FUCKING YUP.
YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP.
It will be some arc when she finally confronts the fact she’s probably autistic herself. A task that’s difficult but well worth it (believe me, I know)
I definitely agree that she is at least some flavor of neurodivergent herself if not outright autistic. If she thinks having PTSD would keep her from becoming President than she would definitely combust over a diagnosis like that.
She’s keenly aware of the possibility and its implications, which could make her actively avoid a diagnosis so she doesn’t catch the label. (She’s already sabotaging her own therapy sessions to save her future self’s image.)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/inwithyou/
I know that it’s not good healthwise. But a diagnosis isn’t just a label that might hurt a presidential candidate’s image.
In Missouri, the AG made an emergency rule that trans people couldn’t get gender affirming care until “providers ensured that any existing mental health comorbidities of the patient have been treated and resolved”. Dorothy’s not trans, but it’s plausible the GOP will strip someone’s rights if they have a depression or PTSD or autism diagnosis, because they are already doing it.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the angry dome.
I feel much the same, can I join you?
Okay, as an autistic person I gotta say that calling this specific moment “ableist” is a huge exaggeration. At worst it is just a bit cringe but we’ll intentioned.
Eh, that’s not really a dealbreaker in US politics.
Yeah, what’s going on with Dorothy is that she’s modeling herself on expectations for the majority of politicians in the white establishment who are a lot more likely to work on *behalf* of minorities instead of with us.
If she truly desires to help people, she needs to see the race for presidency for what it really IS as opposed to what it’s *supposed* to be. She must renounce magical thinking and embrace empirical evidence.
Since when have politicians embraced anything resembling empirical evidence? Not just the US it’s in every nation and it extends across the political spectrum.
Insofar as the successful ones are the ones who get good at “playing the game”, I’d argue they embrace empirical evidence in at least one case, at that is “what works”. The way you succeed in politics is pretty well documented, and Dorothy is missing it, while the successful politicians are not.
Depends on the empirical evidence if such empirical evidence runs contrary to their political views or what their constituents and or parties opinion, they are more then willing to ignore it.
No, you’re generalizing, I’m talking about a very specific thing. They do whatever is needed to get ahead in the polls, most relevantly lies and deceit. Plenty of historical evidence backs up that having a flexible relationship with the truth and compromising morality to get ahead is what works, and successful politicians do that, as they have been doing for centuries. Studies have been done on this, history shows it works consistently, and so it’s what successful politicians learn to get very good at, because it demonstrably works. That literally means they follow empirical evidence, at least in this one specific area. You are welcome to have a low opinion of politicians, they’ve certainly done enough to deserve it, but you are letting your bias cloud your comprehension of the facts.
Genuinely honest politicians rarely get very far, and the only time a dishonest politician deals in the truth is when it specifically benefits them, or when they’ve been caught in their deceptions and have no other choice if they want to try to salvage things. Dishonest politicians are competent, at least in this specific area if nowhere else, and to try to downplay how deliberate and studied they are in their deception is to underestimate them.
Don’t confuse your bias with reality, that’s how you get taken advantage of.
The reason I didn’t say specifically regarding politics is because, with Dorothy starting to realize her dreams of Presidency are a bit… unrealistic, she’s probably gonna have to change her career path. I think Dorothy would enjoy any sort of job that’s in service of people and helping to use her diplomatic skills, but man she’s really gotta get out of her head when it comes to interacting with people she’s not used to if this is how she treats someone who is autistic.
Meh, there’s a learning curve, she figured out her friend probably has autism, so she did a LOT of reading, and now she’s having trouble separating what she read about autism cases with what she knows about her friend. It’s the same nonsense that has first year psych students diagnosing themselves and their acquaintances with half the DSM after they’ve read it the first time. I’ve found that a lot of people who value having a high empathy as part of their personality tend to fall into that trap. Thankfully it isn’t that hard to get them out of it with a solid dose of reality, at least so long as they aren’t the arrogant or narcissistic type of helpers (and I’m fairly certain Dorothy isn’t).
Besides, this particular instance isn’t as unwarranted as some people are making it out to be, Joyce started acting weird right after Dorothy touched her, Dorothy just spent a bunch of time reading about autism after learning Joyce might have it, so it isn’t much of a leap for her brain to think those are dots to connect when they aren’t.
Given how quickly she backed off the Joe thing despite having a lot of background knowledge about what he used to be like when she finally actually saw how they were together, yeah I think she’ll be able to handle getting out of that trap.
She’s clearly capable of recognising when she’s wrong sooner or later and correcting.
A couple of things to notice: (1) Dorothy had no evidence that those dots don’t connect until after she touched Joyce, advanced a hypothesis and heard it denied; (2) Joyce hasn’t offered any evidence supporting any other hypothesis. An unsupported denial is a fairly weak argument, and takes longer to sink in.
1) Dorothy has also known Joyce for 5 months and that is enough time to discern whether your friend usually likes to be touched or not.
2) Most people might not appreciate being touched on the small of their back and pushed further to the ground, albeit in a gentle manner, without a proper warning or knowledge that such a thing is happening.
* laugh-cries in American *
If anything it might help her
In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. – RIP HST
if anything given the way walky basically joked about joyce having a girlcrush on dorothy she’d prolly love touching/being touch starved more than the opposite
(well i woudln’t want a strnager touching me but i def am physically clingy to my friends)
“Who are *They*?”
‘They are anyone who wants to be one of Them.’
“They” are anybody We don’t want to be one of Us.
Does the font look weird on this one?
It does to me.
Like everything was bold before and now it isn’t.
Yeah, I was checking the comments to see if anyone else noticed that.
It is harder to read, very light. And looks a bit jagged or pixelated.
It’s lighter weight. Like the weight from the small text (Joyce counting) was accidentally applied to all of it.
Also, is Joyce saying “and 6 and 7,” or is that “and 5 and 7”? I’m pretty sure it’s a 5.
zoomed in, it looks like a 6 to me. But I like the idea of her skipping from 5 to 7 because she’s a little startled.
hmm… how did this happen?
Or because she’s shortening the count on purpose.
zoomed in, it looks like a 6 to me. But I like the idea of her skipping from 5 to 7 because she’s a little startled and distracted by having to say she’s not startled so Dorothy doesn’t make a bigger deal out of it.
The lineart gets thinner between panels 2 and 3 as well. A preview of art shifts to come, perhaps?
I think the shading and/or coloring is different? but I’m not entirely sure how to describe the difference.
It’s a holiday weekend. The graphics are stuffed with turkey and a little sleepy.
Thank god it’s not just me, all the text looks skinnier and thinner and it almost gives me a headache to look at.
Yeah, was setting if anyone else noticed
Yes. Or *different*, at least.
Very. It looks like somebody took white-out over existing text and penciled in their own dialogue.
Yeah, looks like the product of an edit or something ?_?
It’s funny, because the font is tinnier than yesterday, and draw contour is thicker since last year (comparing with two years ago)
feels like it’s shrunk, or it’s the same font but a smaller size/not bolded or so (idk if willis has a set font for his comics or made a font out of his own handwriting)
I noticed this too. I thought they were whispering or something, but none of that makes sense. Maybe a line or two, but not the entire conversation.
I think this one was somehow scaled differently. The linework in the art came out smoother, but it made the text a little fuzzier.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dorothy be quite so foot in mouth as todays strip. That wasn’t very cash money of you.
The “with my hands” is a dead giveaway that she wants to impress. And knowing Dotty, impress translates into dominate.
Truly you have a dizzying understanding of these characters
I don’t think you understand her character very well at all.
Is it possible you’re projecting people who are like that onto a character whose not, based on some similar seeming behaviours that have completely different motivations and come from a different intent?
Yes some people talk about the things they read to try and flex and show off.
Here we have someone rambling and putting their foot in their mouth.
Indeed. “Oops, I got this wrong, and compounded it by trying to explain. Leave mouth in free-running mode while I think.”
I hate when that happens.
Well Dorothy, you shouldn’t touch without asking regardless.
But yes, some autistic folk do have aversion to touch without consent.
I know I do. Albeit I very much anticipate consensual touch from my future GF (*sigh*)
Well, she did ask, just not very understandably how she meant it.
And so do some who don’t! Because it’s awful and sucks, how do you other people tolerate it? Eugh. Gives me the willies. Gross willies.
The thing is she thought she had it was a miscommunication on that front. She thought Joyce understood what she meant and then was thrown off by what she assumed was a change in Joyce’s boundaries.
The fault is still entirely hers of course and she could be handling this a lot better.
She could be handling this better, but she’s not handling it that badly. She thought she’d communicated correctly about touching Joyce, pulled back when she realized otherwise.
She’s over explaining and digging herself deeper, but that’s understandable.
Dorothy saw something she could help with, but realized she she needed Joyce’s consent before doing so, so asked for it (that’s good!). There was a miscommunication what exactly she was asking (that’s bad, but an honest mistake). Dorothy realized she made a mistake, stopped, and tried to figure out what the mistake was (that’s good!). She further mistakenly connected the dots between this and something she read (that’s bad), then verbalized to confirm (that’s good!). When Joyce denied it, Dorothy discarded the notion (that’s good!).
So yeah, a lot of missteps, and ones she should really offer an apology for, but mistakes are how we learn and grow.
Yeah I was gonna say, I think that “yo, don’t just touch me out of nowhere” is hardly a thing that’s restricted to autistic people.
“I’ll plead the Fifth.”
Make mine a quart.
Literally could not wait to try that one out, could you, Dotty?
What are you even talking about?
Non-disabled people love to flaunt how they “know stuff”.
Dorothy doesn’t flaunt; she’s not social enough to have that concept available!
The knowledge just gushes forth from her, and she doesn’t think of considering the occasion and stopping it.
Studying is how Dorothy handles things. Of course she read up on autism, that’s who she is.
But despite how much stuff she studies how often does she actually go on about her knowledge? Pretty rarely. She doesn’t study to show off, she studies to learn.
She probably wouldn’t even have mentioned reading up at all if she hadn’t gotten thrown off by a perceived shift in Joyce’s boundaries and defaulted to what she read.
Like all fault is on her right now yes, and she’s absolutely putting her foot in it. But this is not Dorothy trying to be “I read a book, I’m the autism expert praise me.”
Yeah. I’m guilty of the same thing as Dotty here, except for my own disorder.
Which is not a good thing to do FYI.
Geez, Joe, do basic math!
Uh, no.
“Oh hey Joyce, now that I know you’re autistic I’m gonna completely ignore my actual knowledge of you and leap to assumptions based on generalizations!”
Exactly what Joyce was afraid of.
👏 👏 👏 💯
Joyce has a history of being touchy feely with people, not something I would expect from someone touch averse. And, yeah Dottie should know this.
Hoping maybe Joe calls Dorothy out on this in private later. You know Joyce, Dorothy a generic autism book isn’t going to teach you more then you already know about your friend s likes and dislikes.
Yes, but studying is how she handles things new to her.
At least she’s self aware enough to realise what an ass she’s making of herself, that should probably help her correct course in the future.
Joyce is very touch averse… in that she doesn’t like her food touching.
Joyce was surprised because she didn’t expect Dorothy to be there.
Dorothy projected that onto the “Autistic person” template she read all about.
Except she didn’t?
She didn’t assume Joyce hated touching. She literally touched Joyce after asking if she wanted help and then was surprised when it seemed like maybe Joyce’s boundaries had changed.
That’s when she jumped to the book, which while not the best response isn’t the same as assuming everything you know about a person is wrong because you read it.
Right, she’s just misinterpreting Joyce’s reaction to being touched by someone she has a very confusing set of feelings for, while she is in a mild state of arousal due to her proximity to Joe’s barely clad rear.
Exactly. Joyce was caught off guard because she was distracted, and didn’t expect Dorothy to be there.
Not really that she didn’t expect her to be there, since Dorothy did ask about showing her how to do the stretch correctly, but about being touched to adjust her position rather than having Dorothy demonstrate.
The reaction came after she already know Dorothy was there.
TBF as a guy who married an autistic woman, it can be hard to know where to start when you’re trying to make them more comfortable, so you tend to just err towards “I learned this about another autistic” and go from there. Dotty just has the additional problem of being a book nerd who thinks she’s good with people.
New Font?
I believe so. I am not sure if it is an improvement or not yet. It looks pretty, but till I get used to it, I will likely continue to read the new font as if the characters are whispering the whole time.
Oh, I love it. It’s so clean.
Not really. Look for Willis’s reply to A’s comment
Everyone needs an extra wheel though. What if you get a flat tire?
A fifth-wheel is more of a trailer, though. (Which I always took as a misnomer; the trailer itself almost always has more than one additional wheel.)
The ‘fifth wheel’ is the plate the trailer on an artic locks into, not an actual wheel-with-a tyre.
I get that Dorothy is clearly trying to do the homework, and I appreciate that, but it’s really clear how little experience she has in this area, and she’s (obviously unintentionally) othering her best friend in the process, which isn’t cool. Granted, their dynamic needs to evolve, they need to be on equal footing instead of Dorothy being the Problem Solver and Joyce being the one who needs help all the time in her eyes, but this isn’t helping that.
I do wonder if this is part of Joe’s side-eye here, given his mother and his own experience with the topic of autism, something he seems more comfortable around than Dorothy currently is, though it could also just be that he’s trying to spend time with his girlfriend, and Dorothy’s being a distraction.
At least Dorothy’s aware of her kind of accidentally plopping right into two different situations, she isn’t oblivious to that.
Yeah, what’s going on here is clearly a micro-aggression on Dotty’s behalf, she’ll be so much happier and at peace once she confronts her internalized ableism and eventually accepts that she’s (probably) autistic herself.
I don’t think she’s autistic, honestly, but I can buy that she definitely has anxiety problems, among other things.
I agree on that point, but I have a question: Was Joyce really diagnosed with autism?
Doesn’t matter for Dotty to be ableist AF.
No.
I already checked the previous moments, and yes, no
Women and minorities are very disproportionately undiagnosed because of systematic bigotries that have plagued the medical system for decades. Lack of diagnosis is really no means by which to invalidate the possibility, to say the least.
Plus, I know from experience that once you’re no longer a minor, many doctors seem to decide that it doesn’t matter if you might have some form of neurodivergence (or, assume that you’ve grown out of it??) and don’t really attempt to diagnose adults. So, hard agree to your points raised here.
Yeah, anyone else here read the idea that autism / ADHD can just be “grown out of” as especially infantilizing and ableist? T_T
I had a teacher who thought she could “just snap [me] out of it”.
This was the same teacher who once grabbed the textbook out of my lap and slammed it down on my desk (and consequentially my glasses) because I was “reading wrong”.
😭🫂
It. Never. Gets. Any. Easier.
This was over 20 years ago.
It gets better.
🥺 You really think so?
Its also just very expensive to get these kinds of things diagnosed as an adult. There’s a lot of programs to make it more affordable for kids, not so much for adults.
Probably because millions of parents have been lobbying for their kids for many years, but how much effort has gone into even pointing out that neurodivergent children eventually become neurodivergent adults?
@NGPZ: Overall, definitely agree. See Dina.
With Joyce though.. she was homeschooled. So an environment that was probably more accommodating of her in that regard. She’s not running into bullies and the like. And many social issues also overlap with being sheltered and home schooled.
And she hasn’t been diagnosed yet, she’s had a doctor say, basically ‘you should be evaluated’ but she hasn’t been yet because plot and also certain level of avoidance on Joyce’s behalf. Understandable avoidance, for sure.
Also because “US medical system”. That recommendation was less than a week ago. Without a time skip it would be completely unrealistic to have even a first visit with a specialist by now, even if she’d had no hesitation and made an appointment on the spot.
Yeah the fact that a doctor even said “you MIGHT have it, get the checked out” is a miracle
She has not been, but she’s had it suggested to be something she gets checked out.
Honestly, though, it is probable that she does have it, though she hasn’t really had time and opportunity yet to get it further explored. Normally, I’d think it was maybe Joyce dragging it out, much like she did with her glasses and the birth control, but this is pretty recent and I just genuinely think she hasn’t really had a good time to do it yet.
Speaking from experience, ‘you might have a life altering psychiatric disability ‘ is a bigger thing to handle than other medical issues.
I am not overly keen on describing autism as a disability, but I get what you’re saying. It’s also the sort of thing that is more difficult to get material help with given her eyes and her reproductive system are both physical things where there are more immediate remedies, so yeah, it’s a bit more complex for Joyce to tackle. In any case, I do think Joyce is taking it seriously, given her interactions with Dina about it, her talking to Becky about it, etc, it’s not her neglecting it to avoid change.
She definitely struggles in terms of understanding social cues regardless of what she might or might not be diagnosed with, looks like on some level shes trying to fix Joyce constantly becaisd in her mind she can’t have a problem if she’s the one fixing all the problems.
That, and she seems to have a strong desire for routine, and as Sarah puts it, “her brain is like a spread sheet”.
Perhaps Dotty should hang out with Dina more. Now that’d be some interesting chemistry, to say the least.
I’m not saying Dotty isn’t autistic, but I don’t read her as autistic.
She actually reminds me of myself a LOT.
Academically gifted, high strung, lot of drive*, need for organization, find socializing awkward.
*this went away as far as I can tell
I’m not autistic. I literally got tested for it. Well, I got tested for ADHD and based on the results they were like ‘we could test you for autism, but based on your responses today it would be a waste of your time to be evaluated.”
In my case, my autistic coded traits are a mixture of symptomatic of other conditions, or coping mechanisms for the same. I’m bipolar, I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and agoraphobia. I also could be said to have a brain like a spreadsheet, I make lots of them for my job. I could happily write training manuals all day and be happy.
I don’t think Dotty has autism, nor bipolar.
I think she has a variety of personality flaws, high anxiety, depression, and high organizational skills.
It’s also entirely possible that she is autistic and my reading of her as not being autistic is because I identify with her so much. Except I never wanted to be President, and I’m a man.
We know that Dorothy has no bad intentions, but after the last interaction they had, it is clear that the blonde will put Joyce as a real priority, and that is really scary, because for a moment if things reach chaos, she or Joyce They will be able to say something they may regret.
I think they both need to say a few things they’ll regret, and work it out.
Indeed
I think you have the best reply out of everyone. You acknowledge that she’s trying, but at the same time has some internalized ideas that she needs to work through.
What Joyce is saying is she isn’t adverse to Dorothy touching her. Joe might be, but Joyce is juuuust fine with touching.
I dunno, I think Joyce has a vague sense that there is something unusual specifically about Dorothy touching her. And I suspect that she has thought about it just enough to decide that she does not want to think about it more.
Dorothy caught her off-guard, which surprised her, then projected that reaction onto her mental image of an Autistic person despite everything she knows about Joyce.
Joe’s reaction doesn’t seem to be jealousy here. Joyce was bent over, Dorothy came out of nowhere and put her hands on her from behind without asking for real, and Joe’s reaction is a generic, “do you realize you’re being a third wheel?”
And Joyce’s reaction doesn’t read to me like what “juuuust fine with touching” implies. “I’m not … I’m not startled” sounds like it’s closer to a mild surprise than aroused.
Surprise third wheel to inviting herself to take the lead in a matter of seconds.
Dorothy is as Dorothy does.
oh Joe~
Ha ha Dorothy tried reading up on what autism is like in hopes of better helping her friend, but is doing a bad job of it, like it’s new to her or something. What an awful human being. You never saw Joyce being this awkward around her.
She’s a real tool, trying to do something she has no experience with and not being immediately good at it. The nerve.
It’s Dorothy.
Everything she does is performative on some level. She’s also incredibly ableist.
We don’t agree, you and I. That’s fine, too.
Performative? I can see how a lot of that about her exists in negative space. She’s fixated her entire life on being president, and as with any position in which being the everyman confer power upon you, it’s just as much, if not more, about what you AREN’T.
In other words, the allure of grandure of being president is a means by which The System silences her true self.
She’s conscious of her image due to political ambitions.
But the idea everything she does is about putting on a performance and not because she wants to do the right thing is pretty strange. That’s even why she’s struggling right now, she’s realising how naive the idea of doing the right thing and getting elected president is.
That is plainly untrue
I don’t think she knows she’s not immediately good at things, and doesn’t have to be.
I think she knows she isn’t, but thinks she has to be. Which is why she studies so hard. That doesn’t make her immediately good at things, but it probably does give her a leg up on people who who don’t in most situations.
This isn’t just a “let’s split the difference” thing.
I think she recognizes when she’s not, but still thinks she will be immediately good at things. Her downward spiral seems to be powered by cognitive dissonance. Maybe I’m just seeing what I’m familiar with.
Hear, hear!
Reading up on Autism doesn’t make her a tool.
Overwriting things she knows about her friend with things she reads about Autism makes her a tool.
I’m annoyed with her ignoring what she DOES know about Joyce to follow what she found in a book, not with the fact that she tried to read up and be helpful
Something that, as an autistic, we often do? We lose certainty in what we think we know about loved ones based on what we read in books. If something is ableist here it’s the reaction from some in the community seeing Dorothy try to help Joyce from a place of good intentions and anxiety over unfamiliarity, and deciding to attack her for it.
I understand your point and neither of us know what Dorothy’s head so I can’t actually refute you, but this reads to me more like she would rather go by that book knowledge than trust Joyce on knowing (and having known) herself. And that would probably be because Dorothy’s feeling too destabilized right now to have hard conversations when reading is an option, so it’s understandable, but it’s still not good.
Seems more like she’s questioning her own knowledge of Joyce and latching onto a book fact to cover something that seemed out of character.
She does have a bad habit of relying on citing data in social interactions when a more personal approach is needed.
I think reading up on it is fine, loudly declaring that you’ve read up on a lot of it sounds like either justification or performative.
I mean its not like she just started a conversation going in about all the reading she’s done on it. She misinterpreted something based on what she read and referenced it.
Because studying is how she handles things new to her.
I’m a software developer, which means my work is basically learning new stuff that isn’t my strong suit all the time, which means I spend a lot of my time being right in general but wrong in particular. I have nothing but sympathy for Dorothy today. She’s floundering because her study isn’t complete. I live that every day. Being wrong is how we learn to be right.
ew I forgot dorothy was still acting like Joyce is a toddler, the mac and cheese convo was so nice I thought that was over with
When your whole world is crumbling around you, you tend to to hold onto constants and one of those is that in Dorothy’s mind Joyce’s needs Dorothy
The reality is that Joyce is doing OK and Dorothy needs Joyce more than Joyce needs Dorothy
Yeah a large part of why Dorothy is here is she’s gotten so used to taking care of Joyce and Joyce always wanting to spend time with her that’s she’s trying to keep that going and hasn’t emotionally accepted that Joyce has other people she wants to be around sometimes. Never occured to her that she could be the third wheel friend to Joyce.
It’s a long road ahead for Dorothy, besides, in that talk it was clear that Dorothy was babbling with obvious fear and the fact that Joyce wants to repay everything Dorothy has done for her…let’s be honest, it worries too much.
it is a bit odd considering they also held hands during ‘laundry’ time, you’d think if she was fine with it then (even if she did ask her to leave at the ‘peak’), her back being straigthened wouldn’t be a s big a deal
People shake hands all the time; people take others’ hands to comfort them all the time. People do not casually touch each others’ bellies all the time; that’s a higher level of intimacy. Dorothy jumped in to help without following the protocol, that’s all.
Where is she treating her like a toddler? Like this isn’t great, but is clearly not her seeing Joyce as a child.
People are acting like she walked in and said “You hate touching now, book said so.” and not she was a little thrown off because based on past experience she assumed what she was doing to help with her posture would be okay and it seemed like it wasn’t, so she kneejerked and over corrected.
The toddler treatment seems to be how instead of demonstrating proper posture with herself like one might with a peer she immediately touched Joyce after injecting herself in a situation were her help wasn’t being requested. You can argue that each individual act isn’t inherently infantizing but the overall action does resemble the way a parent might handle a young child without first asking if they are fine being touched.
It’s a think that’s pretty common in stretching and yoga I think. It’s actually a lot easier to get postures right if someone helps adjust your posture, rather than just showing you. You can’t really see yourself to compare what you look like to what they look like.
And if you’re used to that, you might easily not realize someone new wouldn’t get what “may I show you how” means.
I don’t see anything “toddler” related here.
I don’t think that’s an autism thing by the way. I think that’s just an average people thing. Some people have an aversion to touch for any countless reasons. Maybe you just feel gross that day, or itchy, or tired, or whatever. Maybe getting suddenly groped from behind would make anyone slightly nervous or jumpy cause that’s a natural reaction to that happening. Just saiyan.
It’s both. No one really likes being startled with touch and many people dislike it, but it is also common and more extreme as an autism symptom, and we shouldn’t reduce it to ‘everyone feels like that,’ because it can stop people from getting support they might need (or realizing that they need it in the first place).
(this is less at you for reasoning about it here, and more at people at large dismissing symptoms as “how everyone feels,” especially when their kids try to tell them they’re having a problem)
Yeah, it’s a sensory thing, and sensory things in general tend to crop up more with autism. I am not really that pressed about people touching me for the most part, but stuff like rain drops hitting the top of my head if I do not have a hat or hat on is something I really dislike, along with too many people talking at the same time.
How about: most people feel like that, but it affects some way more than others — be kind.
As an autistic person who is touch sensitive, I don’t personally mind touch, but it has to follow one of these conditions.
1. It has to be asked for.
2. It has to be someone I know and am comfortable with.
3. It can’t be in the league of unexpected.
1 is because I have a history of having had my space treated in inappropriate ways by people I’m not comfortable with because I’m often quiet. Like some girl just coming up to me and stroking my hair without asking, some guy groping my chest for whatever reason.
2 for the same reason. I tend to gauge over a period of time if people are respectful of my boundaries now.
3 is because I would like some control over touch. I don’t personally mind sexual touch as long as I know we’re on the same page. It’s just not expected in my mind most of the time. (Also, it would have to be something cleared with partner ahead of time)
I am a huge cuddler, and will happily engage in full body cuddles with complete strangers and/or friends, I just have to know that I can say no at any time.
Ditto. I am a cuddly, touchy person (when I like someone I have the tendency to stroke their hair or want to hug them/lie one them) but my desire for contact has the same conditions, especially if someone else is initiating.
Yeah, I adverse to sudden touch as an autista, but I very much anticipate consensual touches from my future GF T_T
Fifth wheel drives seem to work best in slippery conditions. Like this one.
“I know we’ve known each other since September and we’ve shared a lot about how you think and feel, but I think you’re probably more like what I read in a book”
I’m actually very surprised so many college students have prepared “working out” outfits. They look specifically dressed for exercising instead of throwing on whatever loose shirt and bottoms they don’t mind sweating in.
I get why Joe, Dorothy, and Jacob do, given all three work out consistently. Sarah having such an outfit is either “rule of funny” or indication she may have gotten some of this stuff before she had set aside her idea of maybe macking on Jacob, and had intended to go this route before aborting it and just held onto the clothes.
Joyce, I forget if she had anything for when she fucked up her toe or not, but she is the type who’d have gotten some clothes for working out with her boyfriend.
We know Dorothy jogs and Jacob and Joe regularly work out, so that’s not too surprising to me, but Joyce’s might be a planned outfit (or one of the ones Billie bought her), but could also be clothes she had available for pajamas, under layers, etc, put together for gym time
It’s the same outfit she wore to work out that time she smooshed her toe.
i’m sure some ppl just reuse old gym uniforms but other than something specific like bike shorts and sports bras all you need is something easy to move around in and not too ‘flowy’ like along sleeve or frilly skirt in a way that’d get caught on a machine or so
maybe she got some ‘normal’ clothes when shopping with billie or more stuff off screen
Athlesiure fashion is pretty popular. id wear Joyce’s top or Dotty’s jacket pretty casually if I had them
Third wheels are superfluous, while fifth wheels are the linchpins of the transportation industry.
🙂
Oh yeah, she’s still not diagnosed. The spectrum is the spectrum……?
🛞🛞 🛞🛞 🛞👍 Ah, cronuts.
That’s an important point and bears repeating, because people keep forgetting.
Joyce has not been formally diagnosed yet. If you remember it happening, no you don’t.
Yeah, like, to be frank, she probably has it. It’s not like there’s a blood test they give you, so while it’s possible she’d be turned away, much like Dina’s faced frustration with, it wouldn’t mean she doesn’t have it.
When I first got tested, they said they did not believe I had autism because I had “a sense of humor”, and other extremely flimsy arguments, and focused in on my anxiety as being a false indicator when, no, that was just a separate issue that kind of fed into the autism issues. This was years ago, so frankly, a lot of the people giving these tests had some dubious qualifications.
Yeah, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be taking it to be fact now or as a more “open wondering” (in comic) or something.
I could get skipping a formal diagnosis testing. I’m actually getting a similar (maybe?) evaluation done this week; I’ve been on the waiting list since April. So, on a timescale level (while it could be sped up through the power of Narrative), it might just feel like it doesn’t fit. Or Willis might not to write it, for various reasons.
Either way, this does feel like an awkward convo. Not one that we need the guillotine for, though.
I think Willis has said, for all practical purposes it’s fact.
She got the suggestion less than a week ago. If your timeline is average, in comic time she’s never going to get the formal diagnosis. Without another time skip at least.
Rather than some “I’d never be like this” hot take about this fake person behaving in a suboptimal manner, I would like to share a small anecdote.
This one time, I was hanging out at the school playground (I was like 10-12, somewhere in there) and this kid was getting on my nerves. Like really pissing me off, being a right prick for no apparent reason, right? Well, I flipped the fuck out and started punching him (I was a very violent kid, it was an actual problem), and he was punching me back, and at some point he stepped away or something(?) and that made me even madder, so I went over to his bike and started stomping and jumping on it, trying to bend the spokes or whatever, but I just wound up getting my foot stuck or tripping or something like that, and so within a couple minutes of the guy showing up, I was face-down in gravel, mad as hell and now bleeding a little. So he’s just laughing at me now, and he comes over and gets his bike and leaves, and all I can do at this point is accept what just happened and get back on the swings and resume whatever conversation I’d been having with the friend who’d seen all of this happen in real time.
The moral of the story is, if you’re gonna piss off an autistic person, make sure you have a sturdy bicycle.
Great Advice 🙏
At least the idiot’s trying.
I mean they all idiots and trying in their own ways.
The strip is called *Dumbing* of Age for a reason :p
All so dumb
*plays “Dum Da Dum Doi Doi” by Terry Scott Taylor* on hacked muzak*
Yeah, I think some people forget studying is how Dorothy responds to things. She’s not trying to flex or be the best at autism allyship. She’s doing what she knows.
And she messed up. Sometimes you need that practical experience.
The drama it generates for us to read is she may know other people need practical experience, but she expects herself not to need it. She thinks she’s extraordinary, and she’s ordinary. And that’s ok, but it’s what she’s trying not to realize. She she recognizes that she has messed up, her instinct is to study more.
Oh, she’s like Brian Epstein or Billy Preston!
Or Stuart Sutcliffe, the original 5th Beatle.
Ya know what this autistic person hates when people treat them differently after they found out they had autism.(in terms of infantalizing me) It really hasn’t happen so much among my friend group or immediate family, but some extended family members act like Dotty, but worse.
Going into further detail In my family, there is a distinct hierarchy, with my sisters and me positioned at the lower end. This stems from my paternal grandmother, the matriarch of our predominantly Catholic family, who disapproved of us being Jewish. Her sentiments influenced the family’s dynamics. Additionally, my father, not being the first-born male, lacked the respect he deserved within our family structure . Consequently, certain cousins, aunts, and uncles, who previously paid little attention to me, began offering support and expressing concern for my wellbeing following my diagnosis. However, I’ve been independent since a young age. I graduated from both college and graduate school, held full-time jobs, and have been living on my own since I was 19. Currently, I’m still employed full-time with a decent salary and continue to live independently. Despite these achievements, my family’s recent attempt to engage deeply in my life and wellbeing feels insincere. It doesn’t compensate for the years of ostracization faced by my sisters, my mother, and myself, especially when I am self-sufficient and don’t require their assistance.
The thing is she didn’t actually treat Joyce differently, she asked if she could help her with her posture and then assumed based on past experience how she did it would be okay and was surprised when it didn’t seem to be okay and jumped to the only reference she had.
She didn’t just assume “Oh Joyce hates touching now because she’s autistic.” there was literally a situation that threw off her understanding of Joyce’s boundaries.
Assuming that her autism is the reason why she didn’t like being touched is treating Joyce different then usual, and not I don’t known observe she is with her boyfriend in a gym.
Hm. The new font and my terrible eyesight do not particularly mix.
Also, Dorothy. Stop. Just, Stop.
Dorothy shows off her flexibility by putting her foot in her mouth!
Dorothy has the problem of trying really hard to be a good person but being a bit too textbook about it sometimes. And as her life gets less structured and more complicated she isn’t able to tick all the boxes she wants. So her fear of failure starts to consume her. Not a fun time for Dorothy.
Dorothy is probably neruodivergent herself but borad systematic issues and her desire to go into has made her beleive that neurodivergency is a possible vulnerability she can’t afford to have.
*broad
*go into politics
Also has anyone else’s phone just embraced their dyslexia and just automatically corrects a word to the wrong spelling beacuse you just misspelled a word so many times your phone just assumes that’s how it’s spelled?
It’s actually a big step that Joe sees a third wheel and not the potential for a threesome.
You know what: Good Point.
Why? I thought Joe has felt like threatened. Like, suddenly Dorothy touching his girlfriend…
I saw it as Joe noticing how Joyce was uncomfortable by Dorothy being kind of a dick. I don’t like Joe, but I don’t think it’s a threatened response
Not its just Dotty is being a bit of a mess right now.
I don’t know how Joe feels about being a good bro to Danny, but I know I wouldn’t touch my friends’ exes with a ten-foot pole.
Joe showed his respect by not putting her on the “Do” list until after they broke up.
And when he found out that Dorothy had kissed Walky said that if she was that hard up he would have done her. Joe’s come a long way in a short time.
So when’s Dorothy getting /her/ diagnosis? And when she does, is she going to assume all of the stereotypes apply to herself too?
she doesn’t awnat anything ‘officially listed’ even tho she might also have some kinda anxiety disorder bc it’d affect her ‘political career’ (which yeah politicians suck buti ‘d rather trust a politician who’s willing to admit they need therapy and go to one versus someone who celarly has issues and refuses to get any kinda help)
Dorothy needs to get that looked at.
Joyce is not *startled*, she’s *aroused*. Joe doesn’t realize he’s the *actual* third wheel in this situation.
tbf joyce was more so staring at joe’s butt when dorothy came in and not checking dorothy out lol
based
Hilariously wrong.
this is what it looks like when someone touches Joyce and she’s aroused by it. https://www.dumbingofage.com/followyourlead/
today is what it looks like when someone touches Joyce and she’s thinking “what?”
I’m a huge DorothyxJoyce shipper, but I didn’t read arousal between them at all today.
Suddenly, Joyce is able to reach the floor…
What’s surprising given that Joe knows about the laundry is that he’s not immediately jumping to “threesome”. I mean, it’s a terrible idea, but it’s Joe’s kind of terrible idea.
Old Joe.
Possibly.
And even if the brain impulse is still there since these things can take time to unlearn completely, he understand its completely inappropriate. Which is still progress.
I think Willis is just flexing their drawing skills at this point.
Also, I think most people don’t like it when someone with whom they have an awkward sexual history surprises them by touching their body while they’re in a vulnerable position. I don’t think that’s an autistic thing at all.
As an autistic person with an aversion to being touched, boy am I glad I didn’t do Thanksgiving with extended family this year. Forget political arguments, where are the articles with tips on how to survive the Hug Gauntlet?
All you need is the t Ds of Dodgeball.
Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge.
🫡
Just don’t be Daffy
https://youtu.be/8cuihrjLNAo?si=-IvH1XBhnWPKdOVj
You can move to a country where they don’t do thanksgiving, or hugs. I do neither and american people I know going all huggy is always weird – even weirder are non-american people who take social clues from american fictions and now hug random people. So even in another country you won’t be perfectly safe I guess.
Huh, I always thought we (in US) were rather reserved, and in other places they hug more. Live and learn….
Not all other places are the same.
Hell, there are regional differences even within the US.
I come from a rather large family that love hugging. Thankfully they all obey my wishes and understand I don’t like being hugged so with me I get fist bumps.
They are once again focused on kids– and I like the increased attention that is going toward kids being able to set their own boundaries, but I wish there was more, “Hey, you know how you didn’t learn about setting and accepting boundaries 30 years ago? It’s time to catch up.”
(One of my aunts is like this, she gets so offended if I don’t want to hug her. One year, she insisted in leading a blessing before dinner and made everyone stand and hold hands, and when people seemed annoyed before and had a lukewarm reception afterward, she was like, “Oh, it’s such a difficulty, what a hardship to have to hold hands for a minute.” She thinks she’s a very self-aware and empathetic person.)
Serious question for David Willis, if you read this: the ink lines in this strip look fantastic. Did you do something differently with your technique to make them so smooth?
I’m away for Thanksgiving weekend, saw a typo, didn’t have Photoshop with me, downloaded GIMP, fixed the typo by copy-pasting it away, resized and saved. GIMP must downscale differently, as it’s also why the typeface looks thinner.
That’s funny, I wouldn’t have expected it to have such a noticeable effect on the appearance of the lines. Thanks! I hope you had a good weekend.
Speaking as one autistic person, if you touch me unexpectedly and I tense up, it’s fine to apologise for it! I won’t think your ablelist for assuming that just because I tensed up when you touched me I don’t like being touched. Other autistic people may prefer that you make no concessions to their autism at all, so you should probably ask them, except you can’t, because that itself would be treating them differently because they’re autistic, so good luck with that!
“…won’t think you’re ableist…”
I forget to grammar when I’m irritated.
But maybe don’t make a big thing about how autistic people don’t like to be touched, just apologize for touching and move on.
And do the same if a non-autistic person tenses up when touched unexpectedly.
Oh wait, so overexplaining your motivation out of an anxious need to make fully clear your intentions is no longer a common autistic trait in this scenario, for the purposes that this time it made us realise another person was trying to understand issues with us that might arise as associated with the label we keep intentionally demanding to singularly encompass a broad spectrum of lived experiences… before they came up?
What?
“Autistic people blah blah blah, and you’re autistic, so therefore you blah blah blah”
Fuck all the way off with that shit, Dorothy. You know Joyce better than that.
(Sorry, I just heard way too much of that over the years.)
Yeah it was a bit much.
“autistic people have an aversion to being touched” as opposed to neurotypicals who love being grabbed without warning at all times?? listen to words that come out of your mouth, Dorothy
Neurotypicals are strange creatures from what I’ve observed
The fifth wheel, also known as the steering wheel.
Joyce’s butt is hot, but Joe’s one is way more toned.
i cant wait for dorothy to have her autistic realization
I love touch
can’t get enough of it
but I generally like to know to expect it
and it’s nicer from someone I know
Clearly Dorothy is a fifth COLUMN. Big Lesbian has convinced her, in the spirit of equal representation, to interrupt these entirely m/f proceedings and represent the will of the homoerotic people.
Hi, can you direct me to where I can find said Big Lesbian? No particular reason, just would like to introduce myself 👉👈
Oh real bad gravatar roll for that comment lmao
I’m a FAT lesbian if that helps any
Thank you Joe
Funny enough, I think Dorothy assuming there’s A Touch Thing™ in play is kinda similar to the commenters assuming the same thing. Joyce only seems confused it even came up, not bothered at all. She hasn’t signaled in any way that touching her was unwelcome, just that she didn’t know what Dorothy meant right away. Dorothy’s the one who brought it up for seemingly no reason and without provocation.
Because that is An Autism Thing and Joyce may be Autistic so therefore it must be a Joyce thing despite all past experience and knowledge, of course.
Yo Dorothy. Not everyone on the spectrum is the same!! I don’t like being touched but some (like Joyce) don’t mind it!
Dorothy is a cringe-inducing dork sometimes, but I’m surprised at the amount of people here seeming to imply she’s some kind of hellish monster. She knows she fucked up and she’s trying to do better, even if very awkwardly for now. She’ll get there.
AND OF COURSE I GET THE DOROTHY PFP AUGH I don’t even like her sob
She’s probably not gonna get that much better in regards to her internalized ableism until she’s forced to confront it somehow and makes a giant melancholic mess as a result.
Ideally that wouldn’t be the case, but this isn’t *smarting* of age
I don’t know that her ableism is “internalized” per se because I’m not so sure she actually is disabled. She probably has anxiety, sure, but she doesn’t really strike me as being on the spectrum. Not saying she’s not, but I don’t think it’s certain enough to confidently assume she is.
That said, I’d kind of appreciate it if you didn’t engage with my posts anymore. I have you blocked on Twitter for a reason.
the wheels on the ship go round and round, round and round…
–Dave, but are they making any progress