Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

Tai's characterization

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Jepser:
No offense, but I think this line of thinking is a bit narrow minded.

I know three gay people. All three are teachers (and very good ones, if you want to know).
In your reason, I should now have the idea that all gay people are teachers?
Even more, the portrayal of a fictional character should be the standard for how you see groups of people? I'm not saying Jeph doesn't make credible characters, but still.
Maybe it's because I'm not American, where parents think their children will be gay if they see gay people on tv.

Mad Cat:
I see her as more of a parody of the stereotypical hypersexualized college fratboys. Think about it. If she were a large male character acting the way she does, attending a coed college, working in the library to pay *his* way through school and lusting after all the hot chicks on his coed dorm floor, he wouldn't even stand out. He wouldn't even be noticed. Even shoulder chucking and dragging his underling out to get a... lemme look up a suitable piercing... let's go with a generic foreskin piercing, would not be outside the realm of uber macho fratboy behaviour.

But shrink Tai down to under 5' and make her a girl at a women's college and suddenly she becomes iconoclastic. THEN make her a lesbian and her coin flips again into stereotype land? Come on!

The idea that gays are hypersexualized isn't a stereotype or an indictment of homosexual culture. It's an indictment of MEN. The major moderating influence on the amount of sex men get is female choice. Gay men don't have that problem. They don't have that moderating influence, and so, SURPRISE, gay men get laid more often than straight men. So what?

And absent the concern over pregnancy, and largely the concern over contracting STDs, I would be seriously surprised if lesbians didn't get laid more often than straight women. It's nothing endemic to homosexual culture or stereotyped homosexual conduct, it's just the mechanics of the situation.

I don't see Tai as a hypersexualized girl, putting the adjective before the noun. I view her as a girl who happens to like sex, and bless her for that. Too many people, men and women alike, are psychopathicly repressed by American puritanical culture. There's a reason the evangelicals refer to their struggle to keep America sexually repressed as the "Culture War".

I agree with Freya. I imagine Jeph had already set so much of QC around Smif/Smith and then had the idea for a free-swinging character and the best way to fit such a character into the established fabric was to make the character a lesbian. Who knows, maybe she'll turn out to be a L.U.G. anyway.

Kairuka:
I think Tai is just really unrestrained. I also think she enjoys making other people uncomfortable. I think that perhaps the reason why she talks about sex so much is precisely because she likes making people squirm just a little. The fact that she happens to be a polyamorous lesbian and doesn't have to reach far to make people uncomfortable just seems to make things convenient for her. She is clearly kind of hypersexual in her intimate dealings with others. I suspect that if she were a straight girl, she would be like Samantha from Sex and the City (albeit with more complicated polyamorous relationships and possibly fewer random hookups). I think that if she couldn't talk about sex for some reason, she might be walking around telling really gross jokes or doing other crazy, random things. To me, she seems to be dedicated to shaking up the status quo for people around her. The club music in the library, I think, is a good example of her shaking up the status quo in a way that is not distinctly sexual.

I could be wrong, that's just how I've always seen her.

benji:

--- Quote from: Mad Cat on 13 Oct 2008, 08:13 ---The idea that gays are hypersexualized isn't a stereotype or an indictment of homosexual culture. It's an indictment of MEN. The major moderating influence on the amount of sex men get is female choice. Gay men don't have that problem. They don't have that moderating influence, and so, SURPRISE, gay men get laid more often than straight men. So what?

--- End quote ---

Agreed. To a point. Many gay men are monogamous and many are not. For those who have no real feelings of monogamy, however, there does tend to be less of a limiting factor then for straight men. It is easier to find gay men who are interested in purely sexual non-committed relationships then it is to find straight women who are interested in such relationships. Where it becomes a "stereotype" is when it is assumed that all gay men are non-monogamous. And promiscuity is occasionally used (I would say illegitimately) to indict gay culture.


--- Quote ---And absent the concern over pregnancy, and largely the concern over contracting STDs, I would be seriously surprised if lesbians didn't get laid more often than straight women. It's nothing endemic to homosexual culture or stereotyped homosexual conduct, it's just the mechanics of the situation.

I don't see Tai as a hypersexualized girl, putting the adjective before the noun. I view her as a girl who happens to like sex, and bless her for that. Too many people, men and women alike, are psychopathicly repressed by American puritanical culture. There's a reason the evangelicals refer to their struggle to keep America sexually repressed as the "Culture War".

--- End quote ---

Agreed. See above. Tai can be seen as representing a stereotype of gay culture, but she can also be seen as representing the realistic behavior of a woman who is queer and who loves sex. She's unapologetic about her behavior and the other characters around her don't condemn her for it. Why should her relationships with other women be forced into a rigid heteronormative structure? Sans the the need to preserve legitimate bloodlines, the reasons for fidelity are mostly optional. Nonmonogamy produces certain emotional complications at times, but so does monogamy. Early on, Tai actually says she doesn't do poly relationships, but she changes her mind. Once we've stepped outside the heterosexual paradigm, why shouldn't someone also be free to step out of the monogamous paradigm?


--- Quote ---I agree with Freya. I imagine Jeph had already set so much of QC around Smif/Smith and then had the idea for a free-swinging character and the best way to fit such a character into the established fabric was to make the character a lesbian. Who knows, maybe she'll turn out to be a L.U.G. anyway.

--- End quote ---

Another possibility: Tai may have originally been envisioned as a sort of foil for Scott, Marten's old boss (I think it's interesting, by the way, that Marten's bosses, his father, and his girlfriend have all been queer). It's interesting to look at how they're the same and how they're different. Both characters are friendly to Marten, both are bosses of his, and both are gay. But while Scott is older, relaxed, and seems to have a stable life to the point of being unshakable even when his job is eliminated, Tai is younger, energetic, and seems constantly embroiled in chaos. Their approach to sexuality is related to this. Scott refers to his boyfriend, and we get the distinct impression that he means the same one every time. Tai has a shifting relationship with a number of women. Sometimes she's monagmous, sometimes she's not. She also has a somewhat shifting gender identity; while she always proffered to be called "she" apparently, she did talk about going through a boy phase. 

St.Clair:
IMO, gender orientation doesn't really factor into it; she's just being a typical college student, early 20s and away from home.  No impulse control and the gonads are driving the bus.

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