Let’s Talk About Sexism: 20 Comics That I Created When Thinking About Male And Female Roles In The Media

I drew these comic strips several years ago when I was back in school getting my Education degree. We were discussing sexism and misogyny in the media and someone brought up the old TV show, Three's Company. That show was near and dear to me! I told a couple of anecdotes about playing episodes of that show in some adult EFL classes in both Japan and Vancouver, Canada and we all wondered what damage I had done!

I had used Three's Company in the Language classes because it was funny, because contained a lot of physical and/or very simplistic humor, and because it was not overly linguistically challenging. It had also been a personal favorite when I was growing up and provided some nostalgic entertainment when I was feeling homesick or, perhaps, too hungover to plan a lesson.

This all got me thinking about how male and female roles were portrayed in Three's Company and how it may have influenced my own views on the matter. Sure, there were some very obvious and blatant sexist and misogynistic elements in the show, but how much of that was a feminist message in disguise. The raging bigot, Archie Bunker, from All in the Family was not intended to promote racism but to shine a spotlight on it, making it fun to learn: to become "woke" so to speak.

All this gave rise to Jack and Janet Dingle-nuts. The Dingle-nuts is a bit of an exploration of sexism, of how it can be a two-way street, an accidental wrong turn, an intentional detour and its pervasiveness in our lives. But, mostly, The Dingle-nuts are a tribute to the glory days of episodic sit-coms and a loving homage to Three's Company.

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