[0603] Puff
└ posted on Thursday, 31 July 2014, by Novil
- Husband: What’s up, honey? You’re looking worried.
- Dorothy Cambridge: Oh, it’s nothing. I just had a talk with the mother of one of my male students.
- Dorothy Cambridge: She made some bizarre threats, but that’s about it.
- Husband: Don’t let the haters get you down!
- Dorothy Cambridge: Now I’m in the right mood to finish my blog post about how gender equality can only be achieved by castrating all boys and drilling a hole into them.
- Husband: Go ahead!
- Dorothy Cambridge: Hmm, where’s my laptop?
- Husband: Honey, shall I make you a sandwich?
![[0603] Puff](/comics/2014-07-31-0603-puff.png "[0603] Puff")
@ Thor:
In short: Yes, absolutely.
Extremism in feminist movements is existent. Up to parts where it does not have to do anything with the original intend anymore. And it’s hurting the movement as a whole on quite a substantial level.
So there is no way they should get a “Get out of it free”-card, just because what they claim to represent (gender equality, as far as biological facts allow it) is a good thing and to be endorsed.
(And to anyone confused by or unsure about the “biological facts” above: It for example makes no sense to add pissoirs to women bathrooms just for the reason of equality. Nor to remove them from male bathrooms for that reason. And while I consider the possibility of child leave for both genders a good idea, the sheer facts of pregnancy mean it makes sense for the women’s version to be longer than the men’s.)
OmegaB wrote:
Oh, we all know Ye Thuza is somewhat crazy. I’d still say she pales in comparison to Cambridge here, though.
(Now that doesn’t mean I endorse kidnapping or murder. But we must not forget that this here is a satire. And to be taken with a grain of salt.)
Like a very wise person once said: “Never be afraid to be the first to resort to violence”.
@ Greg Taylor:
Several actually. Have you not been reading the last few pages?
(And sorry for the triple-post.)
@ ehrgeiz0:
You think that’s bad? I know four or five males who’re struggling with if they want to go through the time and expense of transgender surgery, and have commented wistfully to me that there should be a way to just turn all men into women to start a true golden age of civilization. I happen to be male, and have informed them I’m happy to remain that way-but they’re all sooooo sure that I’d be much happier if they could wave a magic wand and make me female.
To me, the main difference is who has to put up with that monthly period of bleeding and major cramps…
Castrating feminists and the men who love them…
Among the defenders of the notions expressed in this arc: “The SPLC is the American Gestapo” and “Feminism 101 is ignorance and misandry”.
Goodness, yes. Look, just because a fool or a bigot agrees with a given idea is not in and of itself sufficient reason to directly associate that idea with the fool or the bigot. But it’s a *bad sign*. If the person who made the remark about the Gestapo can tell us anything about the actual Gestapo that isn’t straight from a Wikipedia entry, I’ll be shocked. If the person who flat out claimed that rape and wage gap as they exist in the United States aren’t partially serious expressions of systemic misogyny *doesn’t* start talking about how women are unfairly hoarding erotic capital after a few paragraphs of discussion, I’ll be surprised.
Look at the response to the husband? He’s a bitch or he’s broken. What a pathetic man. He’s a sissy of some sort. All sorts of aspersions on his manhood. I suppose this might be some sort of deep sting on the comic’s part, luring all of this stuff to the surface to lance it later. I certainly hope so, because that would be a much more interesting story than this farcical strawman plot.
Someone remarked-truthfully-that this story is only acceptable when the appropriately hated group is the one portrayed. Had she been a black man advocating black power for the Black Panthers (and god, given this discussion I’m just imagining how much minsinformation would come out there), people would be deeply uncomfortable. Rightly so.
But here we have, in this comic, a character that might as well have been lifted whole cloth from AM talk radio/Fox News/Jack Chick/Rush Limbaugh portrayal of a radical feminist, stuck her in some panels of a comic, and turned the crank to wind things up and watch them go. So, what, is this comic going to be some counter-Sinfest or something? I don’t even know what’s going on here. Militant radicals like Cambridge get *ink* in this country, they don’t have power!
@ An Cat Dubh:
Odd, I Thought Hardcore Feminist Hated Transgendered Individuals, but I ‘spose I Shouldn’t Make Assumptions Like That.
@ Luke:
The holes are from lobotomies. He’s had a few.
It worked!
What is the *puff* supposed to be?
@ Threadnaught:
True enough, but I can’t say I care for these arcs… As a general rule, it bugs me when they get political. The insulin arc was fantastic, but this one was just… painful, not least because it was so predictable. While I acknowledge the sad truth that people like Cambridge actually do exist, my remaining sanity can’t stomach the idea of her being allowed to teach, at least not at our protagonists’ grade, let alone gain Umbridge-ey High Inquisitor powers over things like uniform – did she strongarm the Principal, or what?
…And if I’ve learned anything about humanity on the internet, then it’s probably happened at least half a dozen times by now. Ugh. Excuse me; I’m going to go hit something for a while.
It seems like Dorothy’s reign ends the way it started, with an unlawful abduction. She inserted herself into power by abducting the biology teacher and now she got abducted herself.
Anyway, since the arc looks like it may end soon, I think I’d like to address the controversy around this arc.
Most of the strips in this arc has about 250 comments. Now, if we look at the arc where Larissa visits Landon’s parents, only one strip has that many comments. It’s the one where Harriet destroys the painting Larissa gave to Landon. That strip also differers from the rest in that Harriet is the star since in most of the other strips, the star was Larissa. In this arc however, Dorothy is the star of most of the strips. In any strip where someone else was the star, far less comments are posted. The strip where Cloud asks his mom to strangle Dorothy has the least amount of comments. The strip where Ye Thuza threatens Dorothy (Dorothy is of course there, but Ye Thuza is the star) has the second least amount of comments.
So, I think the high number of comments is mainly due to how this arc is done. Unlike the “Larissa visits Landon’s parents” arc where Larissa was the main actor of the strips and Harriet was the secondary actor, Dorothy was the main actor in most of this arc’s strips.
That said, the comments themselves differs. When Harriet destroyed Landon’s painting, a lot of people accused Harriet of twisting Christianity. In this arc however, it was generally Novil who was accused of twisting feminism rather than Dorothy. I can think of some possible explanations to that.
Criticism against feminism is rather messed up in the first place. Imagine you’re politically active or you have a social network with a lot of followers. Let’s assume you generally support what the feminists does, but there are some questions where you disagree with them (considering that feminists themselves disagrees with each other in a lot of questions, it’s impossible not to.) Voicing that disagreement can easily lead to a backlash where you’re branded a sexist. However, people who actually are sexist are most likely appealing to other sexist people in the first place and don’t need to worry about the backlash. This phenomena is not something that occurs 100%, but often enough to skewer the criticism against feminism towards the side of sexism since people who aren’t sexists hesitates to criticize feminists. This means that a lot of people are used to criticism against feminism coming from sexists.
Then there’s the ambiguity of what is being criticized. One comments says “Novil isn’t criticizing feminists, just the extremists of them” and gets a lot of thumbs up. Another comment says “Most feminists I know are like that” and also receives a lot of thumbs up. That leaves conflicting messages. If there are a lot of people who think the average feminist really is like Dorothy, then maybe Novil is one of them. If it is, then these strips are directed at the average feminist and not only the extremists. Of course, S&W has a lot of strong female characters and so does Gaia, so at the very least I think Novil should be given the benefit of doubt.
Carl W. Roden wrote:
I don’t know if I should laugh at your uninformed comment or weep that you might one day have kids?
Ducky slippers!
Fred wrote:
FGM is explicitly illegal in most, if not all, Western countries. MGM (circumcision), on the other hand, is not only still legal in most of those same countries, but is still a standard practice in some (e.g., the U.S.) despite medical evidence and the position of every relevant medical board being squarely against its use outside of medical emergencies.
Genital mutilation in general is a disgusting practice, and should be stopped everywhere.
Rakeesh wrote:
Where in the heck did that even come from? The comment in question was very specifically citing sources and raising specific objective criticisms of sources someone else had posted, and you immediately jump to that sort of prejudiced, sexist criticism of them?
Look in a mirror.Rakeesh wrote:
That probably has at least something to do with his wife openly advocating the genital mutilation of all males everywhere, with him just nodding along and agreeing.
@ Crystalgate:
Hey, now, stop being reasonable. Don’t you know that’s not allowed on internet comment sections?
😛
Friend of mine linked me to the beginning of this storyline. I can’t really evaluate the comic as a whole, but speaking as a newbie to the world of raccoon propaganda… This entire arc has a weird, disjointed quality to it. Almost every strip has just been ‘here is a completely insane, misanthropic idea; the end.’ I expected the snarky cast members to make snarky comments, or show some kind of reaction, but no–it’s mostly mute passivity. Does that even count as a punchline?
I applaud the strip for avoiding the ‘protagonist/authorial voice demolishes strawman’ conclusion I anticipated, but I’m not sure ‘crazy lady surgically removed from the setting via magic(?)’ works as a resolution either. If that is to be the end of her, then it’s as bizarre and random a conclusion as the comics that preceded it. It robs the storyline of any real weight–don’t mess with Ye Thurza’s kid is a message I think we all can support but as plot points go it’s a bit like treating the sky is blue as a shocking reveal.
Oh please no, not this piece of walking crap. Not anymore. Just remove her from reality.
I’ve spent the past two days reading all of your comic strips for Sandra and Woo, and I have to say, this is quite possibly one of the greatest webcomics that I have stumbled upon (although, I didn’t use that website to find it). So many emotions and character, and backstories, and…wow. You’ve earned yourself another follower!
@ Luke:
My god, there are two of us now…
And she was never seen again… much to everyone’s delight.
I would have liked to see how it was done but that would probably exceed the rating on the comic and probably wouldn’t be very professional anyway. And if there’s one thing that Ye Thuza ISN’T, it’s unprofessional. We’ll likely never know how she did it nor will anyone find any proof of said disappearance. No signs of struggle, no objects disturbed, just vanished without a trace after a fishing trip. Strange how history repeats itself, isn’t it?
Ye Thuza didn’t threaten anyone. She told a story of her family to the sky and promoted job opportunities in the Middle East. Cambridge just happened to be there at the time – it sure didn’t look like a private lake to me.
All evidence is purely conjecture – and should a report to the police be made, I’m sure it’ll get out about the kind of whirl-eyed whack job Cambridge wa–*cough*–is.
(Yep, she’s that good.)
I have this weird feeling that, even if the most probable thing is that Ye Thuza finished off Dorothy, something different happened :l Like, I dunno. Dorothy knocked out Ye Thuza, even if it’s REALLY improbable
@ Jabberwock:
Of course it was different than the extremely conservative religious mother of Larisa’s boyfriend.
For one thing, she portrayed actual, common, and even respected beliefs among a given group of people-in this case, conservative Christians. She wasn’t the lunatic fringe. For another, she was given a decent and even virtuous motive-protect her son-and her ‘villainy’ was in her foolish, hostile execution. She was a human being, in other words. She wasn’t a caricature.
Her murder wasn’t also, yknow, cheerfully advocated either, so hey. Difference.
@ Lukkai:
No one is suggesting it should have a get out of jail free card.
The problem is that Cambridge is, y’know, the only character in this strip whose feminism (radicalized as it certainly is, well past the point of absurdity, like you would need to go to the most militant left wing coffee shop in Berkley to get this nonsense) is a primary feature of her character is…this.
@ Woden:
This is not the format to get into a prolonged discussion about the realities (excuse me, the ‘question’) over whether or not women are underpaid, underrepresented, and proportionally much more often the victims of violent crimes at the hands of men, than men are of women. For these kinds of things to be untrue, we’ll first have to take as given that all sorts of organizations with different agendas are somehow either conspiring together or coming to the same false conclusions separately, like the FBI, the Justice Department, the CDC, I could go on…but anyway. You’re right about one thing, though. I will confess to prejudice in this point. I did after all suggest that I would be hearing about female erotic capital if the discussion went further down that rabbit hole.
Of course the thing is, this is a criticism based on an idea, so…
Anyway, as for the criticism of the husband. Yes, that’s my point. My point is that this arc has been all about characters for whom the most contemptible, vitriolic and misogynistic rhetoric can be ‘fairly’ applied. Cambridge is a man hating, penis fearing, take over the world lunatic who wants to ruin our children, and her husband is an emasculated, whipped, sissified bitch of a man. Those would all be fair descriptions of those two characters as portrayed in this arc.
Now maybe you don’t see that as a problem. You know, because women are taking over the country or something and by gum men are getting a raw deal and something must be done! Or it could be a legitimate, fair-minded concern that as time passes, the pendulum is beginning to swing too far, and that gender issues are not *exclusively* the province of women, homosexuals, and the transgendered but can also be a serious problem for men. Things like unfairness in custody arrangements, insufficient consequences for false accusations, so on and so forth. Maybe that’s the sort of criticism you and others are offering.
If so, I’m not sure why I’m the first person to mention those things. Strange, isn’t it? Anyway, I don’t recall when the last time was we saw a person of color in this comic. Cloud’s Mom derives from Burma of course, but she appears in the comic to be white (not surprising. Black and white strip). So next week, we’ll have one of the first black characters in the strip. He will immediately begin loudly pursuing Sandra! Much will be made of his designs on dating her, and his skill at basketball. He will loudly and frequently moan about how the white man is keeping him down, and man where da #$^* his welfare check at?! He will do these things while sipping a forty from a brown paper bag on the corner.
Wow. So she finally did it. Good job, Ye Thuza. Pushing murder like this.
Rakeesh wrote:
Yes exactly, one exists commonly the other is a horrible caricature.
@ Luke:
I was worried about that myself.
Rakeesh wrote:
I have spent the last 30 years of my life in the south-eastern US; the so called “Bible Belt”. In all that time, I’ve maybe met 3 people who were anything like Landon’s Mom. In about half of that time, I’ve met over a dozen people who make Cambridge almost look sane. Fortunately, I’m perceptive enough to understand that fringe wackos are fringe wackos, and I firmly support much of the feminist agenda. But if I’ve observed any difference regarding Christian and feminist extremists, it’s that Christians are far more vocal in denouncing and distancing themselves from the hateful morons. Mainstream feminists all to often support and defend them.
Rakeesh wrote:
– Called up the church and asked them to burn a preteen girl.
– Not the lunatic fringe or a caricature.
Sure. Whatever you say.
How the hell does a woman like that even get a man?!
Unless he’s more Ken doll than man!
@ r2d2go:
Yeah, the entire lesbian coming out party with Zoey is effectively pure plot.
Sure the whole thing with Larisa and her Insulin, did give an insight to the character, but that introduction could’ve always been done without the Zero Tolerance Fail.
I’ll be glad when this storyline is over. Outrageous McFeminist was so over the top that she killed off any verisimilitude and caused most of the attempted humor to fizzle. There were a few mild chuckles, but mostly this storyline has been a colossal waste of time to me, whatever others have felt. I’m not saying she wasn’t a Bad Person, just an Unbelievable Person. Good riddance and the sooner the better.
This is so strange, we need some answers Oliver!!
@ Rakeesh:
@ Jabberwock:
I want you both to read my response about that Feminism 101 blog. It’s on page 2 of the comments. Go. Read. Learn.
@ SilverBulletX:
I think it’s supposed o be a tranq shot.
Ummm, violence isn’t the answer?
Wait now I gotta deal with this bastard? Aaaaaaaargh better take my earplugs and helmet.
I hope I get a bonus for this.
I think if Cambridge is placed in middle of a true, profund and intese place to deal with the real world differences, taking a real cultural shock and making ot rethink about your own values is a best or worse way and learn how to deal with gender problems. But in the real world hardly happens for real people.
Have some other problems to think. Ok the whole arc is a parody about the extremists and the (bad) feminism, but I have other points to think.
In the [0596] comic, the two masked people take a teacher and one ot them show a “Privilege-o-meter”, looking like a gun. Leave the idea about the old teacher is killed of “vanished” just for doing your own work. “Vanished” without a signal?
About the principal, leaving a teacher to harm all male students and can’t do anything?
In [0601] New School Uniforms, you see Cloud being punished to trying to kiss a girlfriend. You can think about other students having a hard time dealing with the Cambridge.
I like how Ye Thuza is in the tag line. You know what’s going down.
All the same I wonder were exactly Cloud’s mom sent Miss Feminazi? I hope somewhere that’s -140F in the sunshine.
@ Zeterai:
@ Jabberwock:
I don’t really care what your own anecdotal experience is, even if we could credit it as both completely accurate and honest. Look it up for yourself. Throughout the Bible Belt-which is not actually the same thing as the SE US-views expressed by Landon’s mom are mui Klee popular and common than militant, radicalized feminism. Which is no surprise, given that militant, radicalized feminism is not a potent political force nearly anywhere in the nation. Militant radicalized anything, really.
Conservative Christianity, though? Why goodness, in 2014, *evangelical Christians* still can have a profound impact on presidential elections, to say nothing of Republican politics. Over the past generation, evangelicals (which isn’t what Landon’s mom was, wasn’t she catholic?) have actually been decisive in multiple presidential elections, and scores of senate and house seats. If you can name me *one* senator or congressman or governor for whole militant feminists were a powerful, numerous political force I’ll admit your anecdotal evidence is completely valid this very second.
Look, we can argue all day long about how fair a portrayal Cambridge is, and whether or not she is an authentic version of real, common fanatics or a strawman to make Jack Chick blush. But damnit, there is no serious argument as to whether figures such as Cambridge are *common* or anything but extremely rare. I don’t care what you think your anecdotes suggest to you, I can simply look to reality of business and politics and discover that if they are so much more common than conservative Christians, they’re strangely like the ether in physics of the early 20th century-unproven, undetected, immeasurable, but damnit we just know they’re there!
Thor wrote:
You rang? I wear an actual fedora in real life, and have been compared to ‘MRA’ members. I acknowledge that I don’t need extra rights though because I am a man and will make my way in a system without special favors. I’ll prefer to have the odds and everyone’s hand turned against me honestly and you’ll notice right away that I don’t give a damn what others think to support that.
I can agree that the character is bent into a Poe’s law pretzel, but at the same time there is a complete acceptance of extremist ideas out there in bubbles of web forum groupthink exactly like these and maybe a comic like this is what is needed to start discussion on said acceptance. As much as the defenders say otherwise, disturbing scenarios crop up such as the comparison of two people that went to a bar hooking up mutually under the influence of alchohol being some form of rape and laws needing to be enacted against such. Further assuming that one was a man and it was all his fault somehow. These are real arguments getting bandied about on the web and if something needs to get lampooned out there it will.
There is a corollary to these arguments about men afraid to stand up for their own gender because they are instantly the bad guys in many of these web centric forum and blog bubbles no matter how moderate their stance actually is. They are whipped by a need for acceptance whether it comes from a real or imagined lady(ies) or purely group acceptance.
I feel it comes from the lack of responsible fathers and strong male figures out there and entire generations of boys being raised by women with a real resentment against the male gender that left them in the lurch. It is these boys that become susceptible to this kind of groupthink and need for acceptance eroding their self-respect.
It was my own wife who mentioned that angle to me as that never would have occurred to me otherwise and was a shocking revelation of truth to me.
Simplifying everyone that doesn’t agree with you into a single bloc looks foolish and is the root of most human dissent.
There may be extremists in the feminists movement but there are precious few voices saying it’s ok to stand up to them because we are in an era of ultra political correctness with an undercurrent of every man assumed by default to be a fedora wearing creeper that couldn’t possibly have an opinion more advanced than ‘hurr hurr bleach my wifebeater and get back in the kitchen”. So yes, something that needed to be said is being said here.
I think I’d be equally uncomfortable as I am with Cambridge if it were a white MRA extremist lampooned up there as I don’t think ANY special interest groupthink is necessarily the answer to society’s problems. I’d like to think I’d be equally uncomfortable anyway with the knowledge that I’m just as biased as anyone else. It’s really the locked goosestepping pendantic regurgitated responses I see that bother me more than the actual messages presented. Such as the overuse of the word fedora.
Signed,
The Fedora Wearing-est of Them All
Bring it bros and bro-ettes. (Womyn…snerk)
@ Threadnaught:
Except that event is actually almost directly taken from more than one actual event played out in schools, schoolboards, and courts. The question of zero tolerance, specifically regarding drugs.
And even in that arc, the principle was am over zealous idiot, who enjoyed his own pomp and status too much to use his brain. He wasn’t a ridiculous monster. And he wasn’t killed or kidnapped or assaulted either.
Hey, after we cover black thug stereotype man in a future arc, maybe we can get welfare queen black momma lady, and then maybe we can get Stalinist socialist academic (Jew) guy fr an appearance. Because remember! It’s ok if it’s in satire, or if it points to some problem that exists no matter how rare.
@ Otaking:
I agree. Criticizing feminists in our society is strongly condemned.
*snerk*
Judging from the responses to the womenagainstfeminism-group, it seems to be. There is quite a lot of hand-wringing over a few women wo don’t want to be represented by feminism.
@ Nachtschattengewächs:
I’ll restate my precious objection, altered to suit your criticism: if feminism is so powerful as to be almost above reproach in our culture…why are there so few strident feminist politicians? CEOS? Newspapers? Television shows? Businesses? Religions? On and on when we look at the indicators that, for any other topic, would b signs of real power-money, political clout-feminism doesn’t show up. The good news is that this is a problem that is, slowly, being corrected by broad social momentum. We are slowly (still) *approaching* a parity not of feminist politicians, but female politcians period. As this continues to the eventual point of equal representation, well in 2035 we’ll recognize ‘yikes! We had some work to do back in 2015!’ just like we look back now to 1995 to a time when the only conceivable role for a woman in the Oval Office was as wife or sex scandal.
Remember, men! We have scores of Presidents, thousands of congressmen, tens of thousands of governors and state congressmen. We’ve got nearly every major corporation, almost all d the wealthiest people in the world, we’ve still got a lock on judges. This all just goes to show that militant radical feminists are a serious political force in our…wait.
Duck slippers???
That’s kinda sad. She was probably anti-men with power because of some sort of tromatizing event that took place in her young development. Sure it was annoying, but being a woman in power meant to her that she conquered her demons, and that she was now a better person for it. And while her “fixing” problems only just created more, it’s not like they were too harmful. It’s not like people would follow her blog a s law. This was her life, and her husband was okay with this for whatever reason, and you can see in this strip that they are happy doing what they do, how they do it. But just because she annoyed the son of a ninja-esc family, she is now (most-likely) gone. :/