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Dykes To Watch Out For is a Comic Strip by Alison Bechdel .

The strip documents the life, loves, and politics of a group of characters (most of them Lesbian s) living in a medium-sized city in the United States , featuring both humorous soap-opera storylines and biting topical commentary. Some readers have speculated that the town the main characters live in is based on Minneapolis, MN. The central characters include:

  • Mo Testa ("Mo" is short for "Monica"), the central character, a politically committed Lesbian Feminist with a tendency to whine, recently earned a Library Science degree;

  • Lois McGiver, a Sex-positive activist, Drag King , and housemate to Ginger and Sparrow (with whom she had an affair when both were in their twenties), currently dating single mother '''Jasmine''', mother of Transgender teenager '''Janis''' (originally introduced as Jonas);

  • Ginger Jordan, a struggling academic and professor, currently dating '''Samia''', a Muslim lesbian;

  • Sparrow Pidgeon (birth name Prudence), a Women's Shelter director and New Age r-turned-atheist, who identifies herself as a "bisexual lesbian" and is currently involved with a man, '''Stuart''', with whom she has had a child, '''Jiao Raizel''' (or J.R.);

  • Clarice Clifton, a workaholic environmental lawyer (and Mo's lover in college), her wife '''Toni Ortiz''', an accountant and homemaker, and their son '''Raffi''' (short for Rafael);

  • Sydney Krukowski, an amoral yuppie academic, Mo's lover and recently a Breast Cancer survivor; and

  • Jezanna (formerly Alberta), manager of the late gay and lesbian bookstore Madwimmin Books, which also employed Mo, Lois, and '''Thea''', a Jewish lesbian, and former lover of Sydney, with Multiple Sclerosis .


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

According to Bechdel, her strip is "half op-ed column and half endless, serialized Victorian novel". Characters react to the contemporary events, including going to the Michigan Womyn's Festival , Gay Pride parades and protest marches and having heated discussions about day-to-day events and political issues. The strip is one of the most successful and longest-running Queer comic strips. It has had a number of collections, including:

  • ''Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1986)

  • ''More Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1988)

  • ''New, Improved! Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1990)

  • ''Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel'' (1992)

  • ''Spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1993)

  • ''Unnatural Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1995)

  • ''Hot, Throbbing Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1997)

  • ''The Indelible Alison Bechdel: Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1998)

  • ''Split-Level Dykes to Watch Out For'' (1998)

  • ''Post-Dykes to Watch Out For'' (2000)

  • ''Dykes and Other Carbon-Based Life-Forms to Watch Out For'' (2003)

  • ''Invasion of the Dykes To Watch Out For'' (2005)


The first of these collections contains miscellaneous, individual strips; the serialized story centered around Mo begins halfway through the second collection, "More Dykes to Watch Out For".


CONTRIBUTIONS TO POPULAR CULTURE


The strip contributed the ''Mo Movie Measure'', which was embraced by some feminists. It originates from a 1985 strip in which a character says that she only watches a Movie if it satisfies the following requirements:

"one, it has to have at least two women in it, who

two, talk to each other about,

three, something besides a man."


The name ''Mo Movie Measure'' is a misnomer as neither Mo nor the other regular characters had been introduced yet at the time of this strip's publication.

The strip is also the origin of the phrase "Does ''anal-retentive'' have a hyphen?"


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