Author Notes - This chapter isn't necessarily connected to any of the others. Today, we're going to talk about the effect that poor representation in media can have. Admittedly, I wasn't able to talk about this topic quite as much as I would've liked. But I hope I did a decent enough job with it. We're also going to be talking about autism a bit today, because of course we are. Because the author (me) can't help but insert the topic into everything she writes, intentionally or otherwise, since she's AUTISTIC HERSELF.

In order to talk about this, I bring up a blatant parody of the show 'How I Met Your Mother'. I'll admit, I've never seen the show. But I watched a video by Lily Simpson about it (if you talk this opportunity to harass her, go bang a cactus), and... boy howdy, is that show transphobic.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - WHO'S A JOY, WHO'S A BOY

The Loud Kids were all asleep. When the kids are away, the parents come out to play. And by 'play', I mean Lynn Sr now had the TV all to himself. He was sitting on the couch with the volume all the way down, flickering through the channels.

'Found anything yet?' Rita asked.

She was sitting right next to him. Only there because he was there in the first place.

'OOOOOH! I remember this!' Lynn Sr, just a little too loudly. 'How I Encountered My Wife. I watched that all the time when it came out.'

'I was never too into it,' Rita said. 'But it was really popular back in the day. Must be if they're still airing it.'

'Kind of a good thing you never got invested, because the finale kind of… sucked. But I remember liking this episode! 'The Imploding Spicy Sub'.'

Well, Lynn Sr remembered liking the episode all right. A few years ago. At first, it didn't seem so bad at all. In fact, even Rita was laughing along at some of the jokes. That was, until they reached one line of dialogue in the episode. A line spoken by one of the main characters while he and a friend were in an office building. One guy (Bernard) was seated at a desk, while the other (Ned) entered the room. What he said made Lynn feel ill.

'Hey, Bernard!' Ned said. 'A whole bunch of models just arrived in the lobby. Rumour has it that one of them is really a dude.'

When this one line was spoken, Lynn stared at the screen in total horror. Rita, too, found herself taken aback by this line, but not as much as her husband. Right before Lynn was about to ask if Ned - one of the show's protagonists, mind you - really just said that, the 'joke' continued.

'Wanna play a game of 'Who's a Joy, Who's a Boy'?' Ned asked, as though this was a perfectly normal thing to do.

Bernard sighed. 'It's the same answer every time: the one in the turtleneck.'

The comment about the turtlenecks was seemingly a non-sequitur (especially since the Louds' youngest daughter liked wearing them), but that was the least of Lynn Sr's worries.

'Did… did he really just say that?' Lynn asked. 'What is wrong with him?!' He paused. 'What is wrong with me?'

'Just some terrible joke from the 2000's,' Rita said with a frustrated sigh. 'They were making all sorts of unfunny jokes like that. I still remember that joke The Thompsons made about that cheap yacht. What do you mean, what's wrong with you?'

'I… I used to like this episode. Does that mean I used to find that joke funny? A joke whose only value is making fun of people who are just like LJ? It wasn't even that long ago!'

'Don't be so hard on yourself. A lot of jokes back then weren't exactly in good taste.'

'Rita, this episode only aired a few years ago.'

'… Oh.'

The episode continued as normal, as though nothing ever happened. Really, not even that joke was mentioned again, like it wasn't something that needed addressing. And that's what had rubbed Lynn the wrong way the most. It wasn't a remark meant to demonstrate how wrong Bernard and Ned were, but instead a 'harmless' little joke at the expense of people who didn't deserve it.

Lynn must've been staring at the TV in horror for a while, because he felt Rita wrapping her arms around him.

'It's okay, honey,' She said. 'She didn't see it. It's just a joke. A really bad and stupid joke that mocks people just for who they are. But a joke nonetheless.'

'But… but this show was so popular!' Lynn said. 'How many jokes like that are in this show? In other stuff I used to watch? Heck, in stuff we're watching now! All those times that people laughed at people like Lynn. And for what? Because their way of expressing themselves is different? What kind of influence did these jokes have?!'

Rita sighed. 'I doubt all of the problems Lynn is facing are because of these jokes. … But, and I'd hate to say it, they definitely have not helped. People may have gotten some nasty ideas from these shows. Let's… let's just hope that Lynn never sees them.'


What Lynn Sr and Rita severely underestimated was just how common those types of jokes were in comedies. Not just mere crossdressing jokes, which ran the gamut of being harmless fun or actually hurtful. But those jokes found themselves in some truly unexpected places.

Some, Lynn Jr could live with. Like that one SpongeBob episode, where Patrick pretended to be a woman named 'Patricia'. It was funny enough that she didn't care one bit. Okay, so it bothered her a little, but Patrick wasn't doing this to be bad or anything. He just wanted to avoid someone who he thought wanted to chase him out of town. Perfectly understandable!

But there was one example that broke Lynn. Right down the middle. And it was an episode of a show she was barely paying attention to. It was a show that she only watched sometimes, when she had nothing better to do and Lincoln was already watching it: Futuvision. A show made by the same crew as The Thompsons, about some lovable idiot who ends up 1000 years into the future and tries to get hooked up with a mutant. At least, that's what Lynn had picked up from her limited time watching it.

She had just gotten home from a serious game and was ready to watch some TV, only to realise that it was Lincoln's turn and the boy was already taking advantage of it. He was watching an episode of Futuvision, of course, which Lynn recognised from its (admittedly really cool) theme song. She was just about to walk up the stairs when Lincoln called out to her.

'Hey, Lynn!' He said. 'I think this episode is about the Olympics in the future or something. Sounds like it could interest you!'

'The Olympics, huh?' Lynn said. 'Eh. Could be cool. Alright, I'll check it out. But if it's boring for five seconds too long, I'm leaving.'

Lynn was only half paying attention, but from what she could gather, the episode was about an Olympics-style event for robots. Which struck her as the only thing her and Lisa could really bond over. The show's primary robot, Denter, apparently wanted to enter the event with his expert denting and bending skills, only to be intimidated by the other robots being about a hundred times better than him.

'Has this robot guy trained at all?' Lynn asked.

'Not really,' Lincoln said. 'He just kinda spends most of his time drinking and watching TV.'

'... Are you sure we should be watching this? Mom and Dad could get mad at you.'

'Eh, they don't seem to care. I'm nine! I'm old enough to watch this.'

'Well, if you insist.'

It didn't take long, however, until something pissed Lynn off. And that moment was when the show depicted two different scenes of robots practising for their bending events. One shot, the robots were big and tough. The next, the robots were so incredibly and overly feminine that the shot alone would've broken Lynn's mind. What really set her off, however, was what each shot depicted.

The apparently 'masculine' robots were bending girders literally labelled 'unbendable' like they were just bending straws. No problem at all. The 'female' robots, however, were struggling to bend coathangers. Lynn watched it with her mouth agape. Struggling. Coathangers. They were struggling. With. Coat. Hangers.

'Now wait a moment!' She yelled. 'How come those boy robots are breezing through these tough jobs while the girl robots are barely able to do something as simple as bending a freaking coathanger? Do these writers think women - athletically trained women - are all weak and dainty?!'

Lincoln's eyes darted between her and the TV. 'OOO-kay. On second thought, watching this episode may have been a bad idea.'

Lynn crossed her arms and kept watching, just in case. Things only got worse from there, when Denter quite literally dressed up as a 'fembot' in an attempt to win medals. Lincoln's eyes went wide with horror, and he kept a close eye on Lynn. She wasn't quite at a murderous rage. Yet.

'Pffft, no way,' She said. 'If he's as lazy as you tell me he is, then he's gonna get his shiny metal butt kicked.' She chuckled. 'Oh, I cannot wait to see that!'

That was not what happened. To Lynn's horror, Denter somehow managed to win every single event in the women's league without a sweat! Despite, you know, never training for this in his whole life.

'Oh, bullcrap!' Lynn shouted.

'Uh, Lynn,' Lincoln. 'Maybe you should keep it d-'

'How the hell is he winning all these events?! Do the writers really think some dude can just show up and beat all these women athletes? Shows what they think of women!'

'I-I don't think that's what they were going for.'

Lynn pouted. 'So they didn't think through something this obvious?'

The episode only deteriorated from there, especially when Denter saw it fit to get a more 'physical' change so he wouldn't have his medals taken from him. There were at least five things wrong with this plot point, but comedies gonna comedy. It wasn't trying to be a documentary. Clearly.

'I can't watch this, because it's wrong and freaky and sick!' That time-travelling main character said. 'That being said, I will watch out of curiosity.'

Lynn chuckled. 'Okay, that was a funny line. But still! There's nothing wrong or freaky or sick about being like this! Not at all. Why do they have to frame it like it's some weird - what's it called again - Frankenstein stuff?'

'Uh… maybe we should watch something else,' Lincoln said.

'No, no. Not yet. I wanna see if they turn this thing around.'

To say the least, things did not turn around. If anything, they just got worse. The two women in the main cast (the male-dominated gender ratio would have annoyed Lynn if she had noticed) clearly didn't approve of 'Denterella's' behaviour. There was one line of dialogue, coming from the mutant character who the time-traveller - and Luna - were quite fond of.

'Stay the hell out of our gender!'

And that was Lynn's breaking point. She fumed so hard that Lincoln feared for his life, until she kicked the coffee table as hard as she could and stormed up the stairs.


Ever noticed something for the first time, and then realised it was everywhere? Like it was suddenly springing up everywhere you went, when you had never noticed it before? That's precisely what the Louds were dealing with. These types of jokes were, simply put, everywhere on TV. From kids shows treating a crossdressing man like a joke on its own, or classic sitcoms from the 2000's straight-up using a very unfortunate word.

Lynn avoided most of these shows by pure luck, thank goodness, because most of the shows she watched were too focused on sports to make these kinds of jokes. The reality of just how bad all these jokes were, however, only hit her a few weeks after that awful episode of Futuvision. Leni was sitting on the couch, since it was her time with the TV, and she was staring at a notebook. Lynn wouldn't have noticed if Leni hadn't started the conversation.

'Oh, hi Lynn!' She said, as Lynn was heading for the stairs. 'Just making sure that my show is okay to watch.'

Perhaps unfortunately, this piqued Lynn's interest.

'Okay, you're gonna need to elaborate,' She said. 'What the heck does that mean?'

'Well, a lot of shows have really bad jokes in them,' Leni said. 'Jokes about how people like you are actually boys in dresses. And some shows use really bad words, like this one that ends in 'Y'. I think. So we've been writing up a list of shows that we can't watch anymore.'

'... You've been doing what now?'

'Have a look!'

Lynn took the notebook and looked it over. The first thing she noticed was how long the list was. It had a surprising amount of things listed on it. The Thompsons, Futuvision, How I Encountered My Wife… Stuff like that was to be expected. But then they were things like Pet Investigator, a movie Lynn hadn't even heard of.

'Pet Investigator?' She read out loud.

'Oh yeah, that one's bad,' Leni said, cringing. 'I think the guy finds out he slept with a woman kind of like you, and he scrubbed his mouth out with a toilet brush. Also, I think he exposes her by-'

'Okay, I did not need to know the details. Why is this list so long anyway?'

Leni shrugged. 'A lot of people like making those jokes, I guess. Even though they're not funny. And not in the same way Luan's jokes aren't funny.'

A voice shouted from the second floor, 'I HEARD THAT!'

Lynn read through the list a second time around. It was a long list, but most of it was stuff she had never heard of. With a groan, she tossed the notebook onto the coffee table and sat on the couch. Just to sit there and fume, really.

'... Sorry,' Leni said in a small voice.

Lynn sighed. 'It isn't your fault. It's just that… why do people keep making jokes about people like me?! And not even funny ones either. They're just jokes about how I'm not really a girl cos I've got the wrong body parts! Do they think trans people like me don't watch TV or something?'

'I… don't know.'

'I'm lucky. I got a bunch of people in my life who know I'm a girl and don't try to tell me otherwise. But think of all the other people like me! What's it like for them?'

'I… don't know.'

Lynn couldn't help sighing a second time. She knew Leni meant well, but her 'commentary' wasn't exactly contributing much to this complicated issue. Seeing as this conversation wasn't going anywhere, Lynn got out of her seat and headed for the stairs. Thinking about how people like her were made into utter jokes in the media gave her rage she had to use somehow.

'Wait, Lynn!' Leni said.

Lynn groaned and stopped, turning around. 'What now?'

Leni tapped her fingers together, and let out a forlorn sigh. 'I know I won't know what it's like to be you, cos no one ever thought I was a boy, but I think I understand what you're going through.'

The earnest tone in her voice got Lynn curious again. Perhaps this convo would go nowhere, but her curiosity got her sitting back on that couch again.

'Alright,' She said. 'I'll bite. What do you mean?'

Leni averted eye contact. 'You know how I'm autistic, right?'

'Yeah. So is Lisa. I don't really get it, but it makes you think a little differently, I think. The specifics kinda vary between person to person, but I get the gist of it. … I'm also pretty sure Luan's like that too.'

'You too? … Wait, no, that's not what I wanted to talk about! I… also get some mean things said about me cos of that.'

Lynn went from barely paying any attention at all to putting her entire focus on Leni. It was something she had never really thought about before. Sure, she had heard some nasty things said towards Leni, but nothing that Leni seemed to even notice.

'... From us?' She asked.

Leni giggled. 'No, not from you guys. I know it's just teasing. And I know I'm not the brightest knife in the tree.' Her smile dropped. 'But other people can be really mean.'

'How so?'

Leni cringed. And Lynn cringed too.

'N-Never mind!' She said. 'You probably don't wanna talk about it.'

'No, I do,' Leni said. 'Cos it happened. And maybe hearing about it happening to me will make you feel a little less lonely. I've seen people in the halls of my school walking around like this,' She lifted her arms up into her signature dinosaur-like pose. 'And making stupid faces when they walk past me. They hang their jaws open and pretend to drool everywhere.'

Lynn recoiled so hard, you'd think she had just gotten puked on.

'Aw, what is wrong with them?!' She cried. 'What's wrong with the way you walk? And you don't drool everywhere! … Even if you did, they still shouldn't do that.'

'Other kids have joked that I don't even know how to make a sandwich for myself. Which I do know! I've been called an idiot just because I don't get sarcasm very well. And… a-and sometimes they call me something really bad.'

'What?'

Leni hesitated, then leaned in closely to whisper it. It was a horrible word, not unlike the T–word often slung at people like Lynn. Except this horrible word began with R, a word aimed to insult and drag down people like Leni. And when Lynn heard it…

'WHAT?!' She shouted. 'Oh, that's awful!'

'It's not all bad, though,' Leni said. 'Last time someone called me that, Lori was there. And she got mad. Like, really mad. Madder than I've ever seen her.'

Lynn laughed. 'I bet that would've been fun to see.'

'Sometimes, I've overheard people using 'autistic' like it's an insult. Like, they'll see someone freaking out over something, and they'll say something like 'that is so autistic'.'

That killed Lynn's laughter. She didn't even have a response to that. Just pure disgust for these kinds of people. Why would 'autistic' even be an insult, unless you thought autistic people were worthy of mockery?

'Jeez,' She said, her voice low. 'People will make fun of anyone who's different.'

'Autistic people like me don't show up on TV very often,' Leni said. 'Kinda like trans people like you. And when we do show up… we're not really even people. Just kinda objects, I guess, that, like, don't even get their own stories. We're burdens, weirdos, idiots… I don't like seeing myself on TV.'

'Huh. … Does it hurt?'

'A little. It does kinda hurt to know that, like, some people out there really think that about me.' She smiled. 'But it's fine! My family loves me for the way I am! I'm not alone, cos I got Lisa. And you're not alone either! You've got Harold! We just kinda have to ignore the TV, I guess.'

Lynn couldn't help thinking of that one Futuvision episode. And of how popular the show was. And of how many people must've seen that episode and 'learned' something from it.

'Do you think shows like that have any, um… influence?' Lynn asked. 'You know, with real people?'

Leni shrugged. 'Maybe. I've been called 'Rain Man' a few times. Like the movie. So maybe there is, like, an influence. It might be hard having to deal with people who think they know what we're like, but I think we can deal with it!'

Lynn grinned. 'Yeah. After all, it isn't my fault if these people trust TV to get their information from! I'm willin' to convince people who might wanna learn. And those who don't wanna learn don't matter!'

Author Notes - I remember watching the documentary 'Disclosure' on Netflix, which was about how transgender people have been depicted in the media. Despite not being trans myself, I ended up relating to a lot of what they had to say as an autistic person. While being autistic and being trans are obviously two different things, they're both made into jokes in the media. And are also seen as something that can 'take your child away from you'. And can also lead to one being an outcast for reasons beyond one's control. And... alright, you get the point.

Because of this, I feel a sort of 'kinship' with transgender people. A kindship that is almost definitely one-sided. It's part of why I'm so quick to defend them, even though I'm not trans myself nor do I know anyone who is (or so I think). Granted, EVERYONE should be accepting of trans people regardless of whether or not they can relate, but my point is that I do and I want to help them out because of it.