Dinosaur comics has officially become my new favorite tool for social commentary. If T-Rex says it in that opening panel, I get the feeling anyone will listen. He doesn’t sound holier-than-thou, or patronizing; it’s just the voice of T-Rex, telling you to stop using the b-word. What could be simpler?

At the Oberlin Hip Hop Conference in 2000, Saul Williams gave the keynote. I had an audio tape of the speech, which I once listened to every day for an entire summer, interspersed with the original Handsome Boy Modeling School album. During the talk, Saul praises all the women who taught him, even when they were cursing him out. And he mentions, as an anology for whites using the n-word, how even though some women may choose to use the term discussed in Ryan North’s comic strip, he as a man will actively choose never to use it. A history of sexualized power imbalances and marginalization renders it unacceptable for a man to use such a term. Take that, Monterey Jack!