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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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It's tough, because, for me, it had more to do with the character arcs he gave his characters. The comic started off with Slick and Monique both being losers. Slick went around with all the fake swagger of a guy who just took a PUA seminar, and Monique was an attention whoring social climber. A lot of the humor revolved around the fact that both these characters thought more of themselves than they were, and were often both the butt of jokes. It was a good pairing of characters with obvious flaws ripe for humor circa the 2000's. A dynamic forms where Slick is a misogynistic loser friend zoned by Monique, while Monique is a slut trying, and failing, to sleep her way to higher social status. It's a dysfunctional relationship where you can honestly say they deserve each other.

The feminist stuff creeped in slowly, and then quickly. Slick stopped being character at all, and became some sort of totem for the manifold evils of men. Monique on the other hand transformed into this good at heart, if mislead by society, icon for all the saintly aspects of womanhood. It got extremely sex negative, with even a longtime budding romance between two incredibly sweet side, relatively emotionally mature characters nixed at the last moment all sex is rape, and only platonic friendships are good and pure. This while "The Sisterhood" more or less displaced all the rest of the cast to dispense on the nose feminist talking points and try to awaken the entire rest of the cast to the patriarchal matrix.

That's about when I stopped reading. This further turn towards anti-woke, anti-trans, MAGA supporter definitely comes as a surprise to me. Skimming some, it's interesting to see his previous sex-negative views transmogrified into anti-coomer, anti-degeneracy comics. I can't say I disapprove, although I wonder if he ever softened on characterizing seemingly all sexual relationships between men and women, even emotionally healthy monogamous partnerships, as evil and wrong.

+1 to surprised by the anti-woke, anti-trans, MAGA turn about. Stopped paying attention during the feminism arc and just had it categorized in the same place it was back then. Weird.