''Dykes to Watch Out For'' (sometimes ''DTWOF'') was a weekly

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

Alison Bechdel Alison Bechdel ( ; born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. Originally known for the long-running comic strip ''Dykes to Watch Out For'', she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir ''Fun Home'', which ...

. The strip, which ran from 1983 to 2008, was one of the earliest ongoing representations of lesbians in popular culture and has been called "as important to new generations of lesbians as landmark novels like

Rita Mae Brown Rita Mae Brown (born November 28, 1944) is an American feminist writer, best known for her coming-of-age autobiographical novel, ''Rubyfruit Jungle''. Brown was active in a number of civil rights campaigns and criticized the marginalization of le ...

's ''

Rubyfruit Jungle ''Rubyfruit Jungle'' is the first novel by Rita Mae Brown. Published in 1973, it was remarkable in its day for its explicit portrayal of lesbianism. The novel is a coming-of-age autobiographical account of Brown's youth and emergence as a lesbia ...

'' (1973) and

Lisa Alther Lisa Alther (born July 23, 1944) is an American author and novelist. Personal life Alther was born in Kingsport, Tennessee in 1944. Her father was a surgeon, while her mother was a homemaker. She has 3 brothers and a sister. She graduated from W ...

's ''

Kinflicks ''Kinflicks'' (1976) is a novel by United States of America, American writer Lisa Alther. It was Alther's first published work, and the "subject of considerable pre-publication hyperbole." Plot summary The novel starts with a first-person reflect ...

'' (1976) were to an earlier one". It introduced the

Bechdel test The Bechdel test ( ) is a measure of the representation of women in film (and, by extension, in fiction in general). The test asks whether a film features at least two women talking to each other about something other than a man. The measure som ...

, a set of criteria for determining gender bias in works of entertainment, that has since found broad application.

Overview

''DTWOF'' chronicled the lives, loves, and politics of a fairly diverse group of characters (most of them

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

s) living in a medium-sized city in the United States, featuring both humorous

soap opera A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

storylines and biting topical commentary. The strip was carried in '' Funny Times'' and syndicated to a number of gay and lesbian newspapers, and also posted on the web. The first illustrated book edition was published by Firebrand Books in 1986. According to Bechdel, her strip was "half

op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page", is a written prose piece, typically published by a North-American newspaper or magazine, which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board. O ...

column and half endless, serialized

Victorian novel Victorian literature refers to English literature during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). The 19th century is considered by some to be the Golden Age of English Literature, especially for British novels. It was in the Victorian era tha ...

". Characters reacted to contemporary events, including going to the Michigan Womyn's Festival, Gay Pride parades and

protest march A political demonstration is an action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause or people partaking in a protest against a cause of concern; it often consists of walking in a mass march formati ...

es, and having heated discussions about day-to-day events, political issues and the way lesbian culture was changing. The strip was one of the most successful and longest-running

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

comic strips. On May 10, 2008, Bechdel announced that she was putting the strip on indefinite hiatus in order to complete her

graphic novel A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...

memoir ''Love Life'', which was eventually published in 2012 as ''

Are You My Mother? ''Are You My Mother?'' is a children's book by P. D. Eastman published by Random House Books for Young Readers on June 12, 1960, as part of its Beginner Books series. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association listed the b ...

''. On November 23, 2016, Bechdel broke the strip's hiatus with an episode called “Pièce de Résistance”. The same characters are shown addressing the eight-year gap and responding to the

election of Donald Trump The 2016 United States presidential election was the 58th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticket ...

. “Pièce de Résistance” was published in '' Seven Days'' and on Bechdel's website. The amount of traffic caused the website to crash. Bechdel also drew the cover for the November 23–30, 2016 issue of ''Seven Days'', featuring the ''Dykes to Watch Out For'' characters having Thanksgiving dinner. In the strip, the characters reflect on Trump’s presidency and write postcards to the White House for the Ides of the Trump campaign. The ''Seven Days'' post states that Bechdel “now draws single strips when inspiration strikes.”. In 2023, ''DTWOF'' was adapted as a streaming podcast series on Audible by playwright

Madeleine George Madeleine George is an American playwright and author. Her play ''The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence'' was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2014 and she won the 2016 Whiting Award for Drama. Early life George grew up in ...

and featured the voices of

Carrie Brownstein Carrie Rachel Brownstein (born September 27, 1974) is an American musician, actress, writer, director, and comedian. She first came to prominence as a member of the band Excuse 17 before forming the rock trio Sleater-Kinney. During a long hiatus ...

Roberta Colindrez Roberta Colindrez is a Mexican-American actor and writer known for originating the role of Joan in the musical ''Fun Home.'' Colindrez is also known for roles in the TV shows ''I Love Dick,'' '' Vida, and'' Amazon Prime's ''A League of Their Own' ...

, Roxane Gay,

Jenn Colella Jenn Colella (born Jennifer Lin Colella) is an American actress and singer. She began her career as a comedian and then branched out into musical theater. In her New York debut in ''Urban Cowboy'', she earned a 2003 Outer Critics Circle Award no ...

and Jane Lynch, with Bechdel's approval; forty years after the strip's debut.

Main characters

The strip ran for 25 years; the characters aged in real time, and their (unnamed) city changed in ways realistic of many US cities. Many of the characters were connected to the city's

feminist bookstore Feminist bookstores sell material relating to women's issues, gender, and sexuality. These stores served as some of the earliest open spaces for feminist community building and organizing. Prior to the spread of feminist bookstores, bookselling ...

, which faced insuperable commercial pressures when Bounders Books and Muzak (a parody of Borders Books and Music) moved in. Eventually Madwimmin Books closed, and some of its laid-off employees went to work at Bounders. Other characters are connected via working or studying at the university, shared housing, or romantic relationships. The central characters included: * Mo Testa (given name Monica), the central character, a politically committed lesbian feminist with a tendency to kvetch. She worked at Madwimmin Bookstore, and then briefly at Bounders Books and Muzak while earning a

library science Library science (often termed library studies, bibliothecography, and library economy) is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and ...

degree, finally getting a job as a reference librarian. * Lois MacGiver, a sex-positive activist,

drag king Drag kings are mostly female performance artists who dress in masculine drag and personify male gender stereotypes as part of an individual or group routine. A typical drag show may incorporate dancing, acting, stand-up comedy and singing, eit ...

, also a book clerk at both stores. Lois is housemate to Ginger and Sparrow, and dates single mother Jasmine, mother of

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

teenager Janis (originally introduced as Jonas). * Ginger Jordan, a struggling academic and English professor at Buffalo Lake State University, whose star student Cynthia was interning at the CIA despite coming out to her parents. Longtime housemate of Lois and Sparrow, Ginger eventually bought a house with Samia, a Syrian Muslim chemist in a lavender marriage to a man. * Sparrow Pidgeon (birth name Prudence), former

women's shelter A women's shelter, also known as a women's refuge and battered women's shelter, is a place of temporary protection and support for women escaping domestic violence and intimate partner violence of all forms. The term is also frequently used to ...

director and

New Age New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...

r-turned-atheist, who identified herself as a "bisexual lesbian" and became involved with a straight Jewish male activist, Stuart Goodman (jokingly thought of by the others as being "more stereotypically lesbian than many lesbians"). Sparrow and Stuart have a child, Jiao Raizel (or J.R.), and Stuart becomes a

stay-at-home dad A stay-at-home dad (alternatively, full-time father, stay-at-home father, house dad, househusband, or house-spouse) is a father who is the main caregiver of the children and is generally the homemaker of the household. The female equivalent is ...

; Lois and Stuart

homeschooled Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an onlin ...

Janis and J.R. * Clarice Clifford, a workaholic

environmental law Environmental law is a collective term encompassing aspects of the law that provide protection to the environment. A related but distinct set of regulatory regimes, now strongly influenced by environmental legal principles, focus on the manage ...

yer and college girlfriend of Mo's. * Toni Ortiz, a CPA and business manager, who had a child with Clarice; she was a stay-at-home-mom for several years while raising their son Rafael Clifford-Ortiz (or Raffi). Toni and Clarice had a

commitment ceremony A wedding is a ceremony where two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes. Most wedding ceremonies involve an exchange of marriage vo ...

in the backyard, a civil union in Vermont, and a (not legally recognized by the state) marriage at City Hall. They later explored the phenomenon of divorcing without court involvement. Clarice then moved in with Sparrow, Stuart and Lois, taking the room vacated by Ginger. * Harriet, a state human rights investigator, Mo's ex-lover, and single mother to daughter Isabel. * Dr. Sydney Krukowski, an academically involved, materialistic, yuppie

Women's Studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppress ...

professor with a compulsive spending habit, Mo's lover and a

breast cancer Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or a re ...

survivor. * Jezanna Ramsay (birth name Alberta), owner-manager of Madwimmin Books. After its demise, she taught English as a second language. * Thea, a Jewish lesbian with

multiple sclerosis Multiple (cerebral) sclerosis (MS), also known as encephalomyelitis disseminata or disseminated sclerosis, is the most common demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This d ...

who was Sydney's lover in college. Thea worked at Madwimmin Books, and afterwards taught art to kids. Long-term housemates Sparrow and Ginger purchased the house they had shared first with Lois and later with Stuart. When Ginger wanted to move on, the group was able to buy her share by Sparrow taking the Executive Director position at the state

NARAL NARAL Pro-Choice America, commonly known as simply NARAL ( ), is a non-profit 501(c)(4) organization in the United States that engages in lobbying, political action, and advocacy efforts to oppose restrictions on abortion, to expand access to ...

office. Only some of the characters' surnames were known, since such names appeared only when it was appropriate to the dialogue (when Ginger and Sydney, as college instructors, were addressed as "Professor Jordan" and "Dr. Krukowski", for instance) and were not established from the beginning.

Books

Strip collections

The strip had a number o
strip collections
including: * ''Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1986) (non-serialized comics from 1983-1986) * ''More Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1988) (strips #1-23, plus "Down to the Skin: A Mildly Erotic Epilogue" and a number of non-serialized comics from 1986-1987) * ''New, Improved! Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1990) (strips #24-77) * ''Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel'' (1992) (strips #78-126, plus "Serial Monogamy") * ''Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1993) (strips #127-170, plus "Flesh & Blood") * ''Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1995) (strips #171-221, plus "Sentimental Education") * ''Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1997) (strips #222-263, plus "Sense & Sensibility") * ''Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1998) (strips #264-297, plus "Demographic Rift") * ''Post-Dykes to Watch Out For'' (2000) (strips #298-337) * ''Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life-Forms to Watch Out For'' (2003) (strips #338-397, plus "Replicants") * ''Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For'' (2005) (strips #398-457) * ''The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For'' (2008) (strips #458-527, plus most of the preceding strips and "Cartoonist's Introduction") The first of these collections contained miscellaneous, individual strips; the serialized story centered around Mo began halfway through the second collection, ''More Dykes to Watch Out For''. Beginning with the third book Bechdel began including

graphic Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture, ...

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...

s" at the end of each book. Some were flashbacks, such as the tale of how everyone met in ''Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For'', or ''Serial Monogamy'', Bechdel's humorous "documentary" on lesbian relationships, but most have advanced the plot in new and interesting ways, such as Raffi's birth at the end of ''Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For''. While not a compilation, ''The Indelible Alison Bechdel: Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1998) included many of the strips Bechdel published in calendars, a timeline of the strip to date, and a fanciful "tour" of the "factory" where ''Dykes to Watch Out For'' is produced. ''The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For'', published in 2008, compiled most but not all of the strips that had ever been published under the title, along with a 12-page introduction in which Bechdel reflected on her time drawing the strip. The book won the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT fiction in 2009.

Literary references

As with Bechdel's popular autobiographical novel, '' Fun Home'', ''DTWOF'' included many literary allusions. For example, the name chosen for Sydney Krukowski references Stanley Kowalski, a character from ''

A Streetcar Named Desire ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' is a play written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947. The play dramatizes the experiences of Blanche DuBois, a former Southern belle who, after encountering a series of person ...

''. Sydney also drinks Loch Lomond, a brand of Scotch whisky famously invented by Hergé in ''

The Adventures of Tintin ''The Adventures of Tintin'' (french: Les Aventures de Tintin ) is a series of 24 bande dessinée#Formats, ''bande dessinée'' albums created by Belgians, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one ...

''.

References

External links

* {{Portal bar, Comics, Feminism, LGBT, United States 1983 comics debuts 2008 comics endings 1980s LGBT literature 1990s LGBT literature 2000s LGBT literature Comics characters introduced in 1983 American comic strips Comics about women Feminist comics Fictional lesbians Lesbian feminist mass media Lesbian-related comics Lesbian-related mass media in the United States LGBT-related comic strips LGBT literature in the United States