2012-01-11
Explanation
In this comic, a son tries to come out to his father, but instead of simply saying he's gay, he uses overly academic language: he says he's "further right on the Kinsey Scale than is socially normative in your place and time." The Kinsey Scale is a real measurement developed by sexologist Alfred Kinsey that rates sexual orientation on a spectrum from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to 6 (exclusively homosexual). The father, equally steeped in statistical jargon, angrily responds that "in this family we fall within sigma of average local perceived ideal sexuality."
The son pleads that even though he "may be 3.7," he's still his father's son. The father disowns him but then adds the caveat "unless he's 1.9 or lower," revealing he'd accept the son if he were only slightly non-heterosexual. The final panel shows someone remarking that "it must've been nice coming out to a dad who understands sociological statistics," and the son's deflated "yeah..." suggests it was actually worse -- because his father's rejection was delivered with the same clinical precision. The comic satirizes how intellectualizing emotions doesn't make painful family dynamics any easier, and how academic framing can make bigotry feel even more absurd.