Perhaps corporations, not being biological entities in the traditional sense and not having arisen via natural selection, simply lack the biological imperative to pass on their genes and thus have no mating instincts or reproductive urges, and by extension, no use for concepts such as romantic love or gender.
And occasionally they spawn daughter companies, though that is usually asexual reproduction, even as they tend to profit from inheriting multiple traits.
I’m not sure I would suggest such a strong equivalence between reproductive urges and romance beneath a comic about ‘Aaah! Homosexuality!‘. Not to mention that we have seen quite a few robots and AIs seeking companionship too, with several of them having more active sex lives than some of the ‘living’ cast members.
I thought from the start that scientist was female, until Unity mentioned gaiety. She is in a better position to judge, so I guess Tony is male after all.
I don’t know how she would be better able to judge unless she’s looking at the script. Right now Unity seems to be in fangirl mode and that doesn’t give me much confidence in her powers of discernment. >_>
You’re doubtless correct but I’ve seen it spelled “Tony”, and in any event I question anyone outside of the Precocious universe being able to distinguish between the pronunciation of an “i” and a “y” in oral conversation. >_>
Happens all the time with audible uppercase letters in Discworld, and the titular character of Psmith (the ‘p’ is silent, like in ‘psychic’) insists he can tell when people are spelling his name as ‘Smith’ when talking to him.
She was surprised that Tip was dating a guy in “If I Ran the Zoo”, since Tip was heretofore not gay, but she flipped because Tip was dating a mutant gerbil. Which was the same topic fueling her hotel rant.
But it’s kind of hard to believe that she’s either homophobic or species-phobic, since she’s secretly in love with a human female zombie.
Sorry Awgiedawgie, but logical fallacies require the use of logic. Sexual psychology is NOT logical.
And self hate is a thing that many people revel in.
I wish I lived in a universe where everyone understood their own motivations and drives all the time.
If one is homosexual and in complete denial of the fact, which is exactly how Sweetheart has been presented since Artie first said she was gay, one can be homophobic.
She’s not “secretly” in love with Unity, she’s unknowingly in love with Unity. And she has an irrational hatred of anything that threatens to make her realise this.
@awgiedawgie Logic doesn’t enter into it, I’m afraid. People can BE homosexual but still be scared to death of that fact or be so filled with self loathing that they are genuinely phobic. Tragically so in too many cases. And Sweetheart has cross species issues she’s not coping with well, either.
Also, I don’t think it was quite so much that Tip was dating “a mutant gerbil” that flipped her out as much as that he was dating *Artie*. She also had genuine concern that Tip would get emotionally burned by Artie, though that turned out to be unfounded since Tip’s own Mojo and narcissism pretty much make him burn proof from anyone who isn’t Tigerlily.
An odd thing- we don’t appear to have a word for “principled or otherwise *perhaps* justified disagreement with the LGBTQAH agenda”… just a mock-medical term implying a phobia not found in real life.
Although Tip did seem to be rather disappointed at being rejected by Niue just because he wore a hat.
Interesting that Tip once claimed that he’d only been rejected by one person, and said that she was in a mental institution – implying that it was Tigerlily. So apparently he forgot about Niue. But Tigerlily hasn’t so much rejected him, but she’s definitely toying with him. She did, after all, ask him to join her in her Positronic Love Tower instead of going back to SH.
Pygar, I don’t think that is a mock-medical term. I think it is a genuine medical term. And it does not denote any political stance against a perceived conspiracy.
Actually, BRGR, it is a mock medical term, because homophobia does not refer to any medical condition, but rather to a societal condition, and it’s not an actual phobia like any other phobia, but rather a (usually intense) hatred of certain people. But apparently it was less likely to be rejected if they just made it sound medical and called it a phobia, rather than just calling it what it is. In some people it may be fueled by fear – whether it’s fear of homosexuals themselves, or fear of oneself becoming one – but it is not a fear. So why don’t we just call it what it is – Hate.
I tried looking it up some time ago, in that index doctors use to add a numeric code to worded diagnosis. No dice. I’m sure there must be someone out there who actually is homophobic; I’m sure someone out there must be cheesephobic. No neutral or respectful term seems available… just the slur.
If there had been a widely used non-judgemental term for homophobia, it wouldn’t have remained as a non-judgemental term for long. People who do dreadful things to homosexual people simply because they dislike their sexual orientation would try to use it to explain their actions, and the term would be tarnished by association.
Your best bet would probably be to explain what you feel without looking for a label for it.
I wasn’t discussing haters or harmers, of which, I am sure, there must be some quantity.
I’ve been called homophobic because I asked to see the text of an actual US law against being gay, before I was willing to say there should be recompense for said law…
awgiedawgie, as Pygar pointed out, hatred is something different than a phobia. Just because people use it incorrectly, as they often do with psychopathological terms (e.g. retardation, schizophrenia, psychopathy), does not mean the condition does not exist.
It does cover willful ignorance, as well. Such as, without impugning anyones motives, asking to see laws against being gay. I don’t believe there has ever been a US wide law. Nor do I believe that there were any state laws against being gay, per se. However, every state prohibited sodomy (which is more broadly defined than its common usage) and that prohibition was almost exclusively enforced against same sex behavior.
Wordfinder has “cosmognosis”, which is the study of the heavens from the astronomical, cosmological, physiological, and ontological points of view. So somewhere between an astrophysicist and a priest? Would explain the interest in UFOs.
I’m going to say that it’s an opossum and the pouch would be easy to spot if this wasn’t a waist-up shot. Including a commonly-male name along with male biological characteristics usually leads to some assumptions, correctly or not.
I don’t recall what we’ve established about Sweetheart’s opinions. It’s possible that she’s somewhat conflicted on more than one point about having a crush on a female, American zombie of a different species.
There is some discrepancy here. Yes, the Virginia opossum does have a white face. But wombats don’t have the long hairless tail like the opossum has.
Granted, Unity’s not always the brightest bulb in the box, but she did call it a marsupial, and the Virginia opossum is the only marsupial found in North America. Wombats are only found in Australia.
But since this is a genetic mutation, it could be any member of the opossum family. Most of the species are fairly uniform in colour.
Tony’s not really chunky enough to be an unmodified wombat e.g .www dot australiazoo dot com dot au slash our-animals slash amazing-animals slash images slash wombats.jpg (I think the comment system ate my last comment because of the URL)
Australia has brushtail possums, they don’t have white faces like the Virginia opossum. They do have bushy tails, but as we’ve seen a few days back, Tony has a scant fur on his caudal appendage.
Tony may or may not be a New World Opossum (I expect he is. Didn’t Sarge draw some waaay back in the New Orelans arc?), but he’s definitely no Wombat. The lack of flat, black nose kind of gives it away. Do a koala with mouse ears and brown fur and you’re basically there.
Could be a pademelon. I think the critter I saw while walking down to the bus yesterday might have been one of those. But it might have been a wallaby.
Nobody picked up on “cosmognothics”? That should mean “secret knowledge/enlightenment about the universe at large”. Perhaps they might have some insights into the Gates? And then of course, this is a particularly weird universe….
The classic male/female differentiator in cartoon characters is long eyelashes on the females. See early Disney, not to mention some peanut company advertisements. But Sheanon has never played by those rules, so maybe just ignore this comment.
It’s not a part of the general art style, sure, but the Violet Bee drone lost its eyelashes when Nick started using it, and regained them after Bubbles was installed in it.
Okay honest here, I totally didn’t realize Sweetheart was having a delayed reaction here, and thought she was terrified of gay marsupials for inexplicable reasons.
Are we stuck with binary sexes in this universe?
If so, how do self-aware corporations mate?
Corporate mergers. Less candlelight and wine, more paperwork and meetings.
But how do they decide which gender to assign whom, if we are stuck with binary sexes in this universe?
They pick gender at the character creation screen
I don’t know, mergers result in one corporation where there used to be two. That’s almost the exact opposite of reproduction.
Agreed. So I guess reproduction is she a group of disgruntled employees pull out to create a new company…?
When. Reproduction is when. Why did my autocorrect change it to “she”?
Why did my autocorrect change it to “she”?
I don’t know why, but I often reverse the “S” and the “W” keys when I type. If you tried to type “shen”, it would correct it to “she”.
Yeah, ok, that makes sense. It’s right there next to it too.
Perhaps corporations, not being biological entities in the traditional sense and not having arisen via natural selection, simply lack the biological imperative to pass on their genes and thus have no mating instincts or reproductive urges, and by extension, no use for concepts such as romantic love or gender.
They still do mating dances none the less.
And occasionally they spawn daughter companies, though that is usually asexual reproduction, even as they tend to profit from inheriting multiple traits.
I’m not sure I would suggest such a strong equivalence between reproductive urges and romance beneath a comic about ‘Aaah! Homosexuality!‘. Not to mention that we have seen quite a few robots and AIs seeking companionship too, with several of them having more active sex lives than some of the ‘living’ cast members.
Unity seems to be assuming that Tony can’t be short for Antonia. 😛
Perhaps, perhaps not…I don’t see any pants on than marsupial! B
I thought from the start that scientist was female, until Unity mentioned gaiety. She is in a better position to judge, so I guess Tony is male after all.
I don’t know how she would be better able to judge unless she’s looking at the script. Right now Unity seems to be in fangirl mode and that doesn’t give me much confidence in her powers of discernment. >_>
Here is a hint: She is standing right in front of her, getting a good eye-full of her anatomy.
Not to mention that Unity can actually hear his voice.
Good point. ^o^
That’d be ‘Toni’.
You’re doubtless correct but I’ve seen it spelled “Tony”, and in any event I question anyone outside of the Precocious universe being able to distinguish between the pronunciation of an “i” and a “y” in oral conversation. >_>
Happens all the time with audible uppercase letters in Discworld, and the titular character of Psmith (the ‘p’ is silent, like in ‘psychic’) insists he can tell when people are spelling his name as ‘Smith’ when talking to him.
And then we have the last panel here:
http://narbonic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2005/09/050916.jpg
And she comes out of her trance at the comically appropriate second.
Wait, Sweetheart is homophobic – or thinks she should be? I can’t remember when and if that came up before – anyone recall?
Was it in reference to Sweetheart’s self-loathing?
I feel like it was touched on in “If I Ran the Zoo.”
There was also her drunken hotel rant (I want to say it was in “Choose.”)
“Miscegenation isha sign o’ the end times!”
“This room-service bill is a sign of the end times…”
Let’s give her some slack… she just got kicked awake, so to speak. “You can’t mix matter and antimatter cold!”
She was surprised that Tip was dating a guy in “If I Ran the Zoo”, since Tip was heretofore not gay, but she flipped because Tip was dating a mutant gerbil. Which was the same topic fueling her hotel rant.
But it’s kind of hard to believe that she’s either homophobic or species-phobic, since she’s secretly in love with a human female zombie.
“But it’s kind of hard to believe that she’s either homophobic or species-phobic, since she’s secretly in love with a human female zombie.”
You don’t know much about American conservatives, I take it?
There is a subset of American conservatives who are homosexual and homophobic.
Forgive me for pointing out a logical fallacy, but it is impossible to be both homosexual and homophobic.
If one is secretly homosexual, but wants to hide that fact, they may feign being homophobic, but they cannot, by definition, be both.
So Sweetheart might pretend to be homophobic, but she really isn’t.
Sorry Awgiedawgie, but logical fallacies require the use of logic. Sexual psychology is NOT logical.
And self hate is a thing that many people revel in.
awgiedowgie, I thought being attracted to your own sex is a requirement for homophobia, because otherwise there would be nothing to be afraid of.
But what do I know.
I wish I lived in a universe where everyone understood their own motivations and drives all the time.
If one is homosexual and in complete denial of the fact, which is exactly how Sweetheart has been presented since Artie first said she was gay, one can be homophobic.
She’s not “secretly” in love with Unity, she’s unknowingly in love with Unity. And she has an irrational hatred of anything that threatens to make her realise this.
@awgiedawgie: How would that be a fallacy? Self-loathing is a thing that exists.
@awgiedawgie Logic doesn’t enter into it, I’m afraid. People can BE homosexual but still be scared to death of that fact or be so filled with self loathing that they are genuinely phobic. Tragically so in too many cases. And Sweetheart has cross species issues she’s not coping with well, either.
Also, I don’t think it was quite so much that Tip was dating “a mutant gerbil” that flipped her out as much as that he was dating *Artie*. She also had genuine concern that Tip would get emotionally burned by Artie, though that turned out to be unfounded since Tip’s own Mojo and narcissism pretty much make him burn proof from anyone who isn’t Tigerlily.
An odd thing- we don’t appear to have a word for “principled or otherwise *perhaps* justified disagreement with the LGBTQAH agenda”… just a mock-medical term implying a phobia not found in real life.
Although Tip did seem to be rather disappointed at being rejected by Niue just because he wore a hat.
Interesting that Tip once claimed that he’d only been rejected by one person, and said that she was in a mental institution – implying that it was Tigerlily. So apparently he forgot about Niue. But Tigerlily hasn’t so much rejected him, but she’s definitely toying with him. She did, after all, ask him to join her in her Positronic Love Tower instead of going back to SH.
Pygar, I don’t think that is a mock-medical term. I think it is a genuine medical term. And it does not denote any political stance against a perceived conspiracy.
Actually, BRGR, it is a mock medical term, because homophobia does not refer to any medical condition, but rather to a societal condition, and it’s not an actual phobia like any other phobia, but rather a (usually intense) hatred of certain people. But apparently it was less likely to be rejected if they just made it sound medical and called it a phobia, rather than just calling it what it is. In some people it may be fueled by fear – whether it’s fear of homosexuals themselves, or fear of oneself becoming one – but it is not a fear. So why don’t we just call it what it is – Hate.
I tried looking it up some time ago, in that index doctors use to add a numeric code to worded diagnosis. No dice. I’m sure there must be someone out there who actually is homophobic; I’m sure someone out there must be cheesephobic. No neutral or respectful term seems available… just the slur.
If there had been a widely used non-judgemental term for homophobia, it wouldn’t have remained as a non-judgemental term for long. People who do dreadful things to homosexual people simply because they dislike their sexual orientation would try to use it to explain their actions, and the term would be tarnished by association.
Your best bet would probably be to explain what you feel without looking for a label for it.
I wasn’t discussing haters or harmers, of which, I am sure, there must be some quantity.
I’ve been called homophobic because I asked to see the text of an actual US law against being gay, before I was willing to say there should be recompense for said law…
Pygar, that’s a whole other problem entirely. That’s someone labeling you without even knowing whether the label fits you. In other words, ASSuming.
awgiedawgie, as Pygar pointed out, hatred is something different than a phobia. Just because people use it incorrectly, as they often do with psychopathological terms (e.g. retardation, schizophrenia, psychopathy), does not mean the condition does not exist.
It does cover willful ignorance, as well. Such as, without impugning anyones motives, asking to see laws against being gay. I don’t believe there has ever been a US wide law. Nor do I believe that there were any state laws against being gay, per se. However, every state prohibited sodomy (which is more broadly defined than its common usage) and that prohibition was almost exclusively enforced against same sex behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_States
Cosmognothics? Knowledge of the Universe?
Stumped Google…
Bing, too.
Wordfinder has “cosmognosis”, which is the study of the heavens from the astronomical, cosmological, physiological, and ontological points of view. So somewhere between an astrophysicist and a priest? Would explain the interest in UFOs.
Astrologist?
Extrapolating from its various word parts, it is “the science, study, or practice of the knowledge of life, the universe, and everything”.
So does that mean they’re trying to find practical applications for the number 42?
I’m going to say that it’s an opossum and the pouch would be easy to spot if this wasn’t a waist-up shot. Including a commonly-male name along with male biological characteristics usually leads to some assumptions, correctly or not.
I don’t recall what we’ve established about Sweetheart’s opinions. It’s possible that she’s somewhat conflicted on more than one point about having a crush on a female, American zombie of a different species.
_American_ zombie?? Ah yes, I could I forget the old Canada-US feud, dividing lovers like the Capulets and the Montagues…
“how could I” blast twitchy posting finger…
Feud? What feud?? Aside from the point that being Canadian is like living next door to the Simpsons?
Robin Williams described Canada as a really nice apartment over a meth lab.
Hey! We’re the _best_ meth lab,
‘Possums have white, pointy faces. Try “wombat”…
There is some discrepancy here. Yes, the Virginia opossum does have a white face. But wombats don’t have the long hairless tail like the opossum has.
Granted, Unity’s not always the brightest bulb in the box, but she did call it a marsupial, and the Virginia opossum is the only marsupial found in North America. Wombats are only found in Australia.
But since this is a genetic mutation, it could be any member of the opossum family. Most of the species are fairly uniform in colour.
Tony’s not really chunky enough to be an unmodified wombat e.g .www dot australiazoo dot com dot au slash our-animals slash amazing-animals slash images slash wombats.jpg (I think the comment system ate my last comment because of the URL)
Australia has brushtail possums, they don’t have white faces like the Virginia opossum. They do have bushy tails, but as we’ve seen a few days back, Tony has a scant fur on his caudal appendage.
Good spotting. Pretty much has to be an opossum, then. He could be a common opposum – they don’t have such distinctively white faces.
Unless he’s a long nosed potoroo.
Now, a day later I recall that Walt Kelly’s Pogo Possum was a solid gray.
I wanna know how Tony’s glasses are staying on.
Nerdwax.
https://www.nerdwax.com/
Tony may or may not be a New World Opossum (I expect he is. Didn’t Sarge draw some waaay back in the New Orelans arc?), but he’s definitely no Wombat. The lack of flat, black nose kind of gives it away. Do a koala with mouse ears and brown fur and you’re basically there.
Could be a pademelon. I think the critter I saw while walking down to the bus yesterday might have been one of those. But it might have been a wallaby.
I believe koalas have two thumbs on each paw. So Unity is honouring gay marsupials by being more like them.
Nobody picked up on “cosmognothics”? That should mean “secret knowledge/enlightenment about the universe at large”. Perhaps they might have some insights into the Gates? And then of course, this is a particularly weird universe….
That’s the way I’d take the etymological breakdown, but the actual definition might have some other significance…
If Unity’s got an extra thumb on one hand today, how ’bout giving us a treat and have her screw in some lightbulbs?
What she has today is three hands. Remember the “selfie hand”?
http://skin-horse.com/comic/of-his-3/
Which she apparently keeps in Hammerspace when she’s not using it.
The classic male/female differentiator in cartoon characters is long eyelashes on the females. See early Disney, not to mention some peanut company advertisements. But Sheanon has never played by those rules, so maybe just ignore this comment.
It’s not a part of the general art style, sure, but the Violet Bee drone lost its eyelashes when Nick started using it, and regained them after Bubbles was installed in it.
Way to keep it classy there, Snowflake. Have fun in Sensitivity Training.
She never acts like it, but if I recall correctly, Sweetheart’s the only one who’s actually taken the Sensitivity Training.
My first thought was that Babe just came out of her paralysis and processed the kiss from Unity.
“For heaven’s sake, you narcissistic twit, Sweetheart prefers girls!” —Artie Narbon.
…OK, your timing is just terrible, Sweetheart.
Okay honest here, I totally didn’t realize Sweetheart was having a delayed reaction here, and thought she was terrified of gay marsupials for inexplicable reasons.