Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT: 2821-2825 (27 - 31 October 2014) Weekly Comic Discussion Thread
Neko_Ali:
--- Quote from: AprilArcus on 30 Oct 2014, 21:45 ---
--- Quote from: Neko_Ali on 30 Oct 2014, 20:54 ---Which for most trans people sets in and they can verbalize it by the age of 4-5. Usually long before they are given the ability to express that identity.
--- End quote ---
I prefer to avoid universalizing narratives like this.
I presented androgynously as a preteen and did not have a clear sense of my female identity or trans status until I was 14. Before puberty, "gender" seemed like a purely superficial distinction like race. I'd certainly have preferred to have been a cis girl, but in practical terms it didn't seem to matter much that I wasn't perceived that way. After puberty, that dissonance became a lot less academic and more of a clear and present threat to my sense of self and ongoing source of personal misery.
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I prefer to avoid it generalizing as well. That is why I chose the word 'most' in there. My own experience is atypical because I didn't even know being transgender was a thing that existed until I was about 22. But I knew something was wrong by the time I was 3 or 4. I just didn't have the wordage to verbalize it beyond wishing I was a girl. I'm just going by what gender experts say, that people's genders tend to be set and expressible by that age.
--- Quote from: ReindeerFlotilla on 30 Oct 2014, 21:58 ---Here's the thing. Whether you divined my specific intent, you recognized what I was saying. Just as I recognized that you are discussing gender, despite the fact that you use the words "male or formerly male." Male isn't a gender term except at a remove of implicit assumption: If A is male, A must be a man or boy. Except, if you accept gender as construct, you know that A being male tells you nothing about whether A is a man or boy.
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Man/Woman and Male/Female are used as descriptive terms for both physical sex and gender though. All to often interchangeably. Which is why I find terms like perceived X or assigned X at birth to be more accurate and less troubling. Because it makes clear the distinction. As I said, I understood your meaning and what you were saying. But I have a lot of experience parsing these conversations that many people don't have, and could easily fall into the all to common expectation that being transgender is some switch you flip part way through your life, instead of a life-long journey of self discovery, doubt and discrimination.
--- Quote from: Nepiophage on 31 Oct 2014, 00:01 ---For God's sake let's not have not this discussion of trans identity AGAIN. We've been through it at enormous length at least three times already. There's a thread in DISCUSS where all this is thrashed out.
Also rule 1 below applies in spades, doubled and redoubled.
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Believe me, I wish we didn't have to keep having this conversation. If you think it is tiresome, imagine how it is for us who have to have it or deal with it on a daily basis. It's absolutely exhausting. But it's a fight we can't put down, since we're fighting to not have a basic core element of our lives erased.
valkygrrl:
--- Quote from: Neko_Ali on 31 Oct 2014, 06:01 ---
If you think it is tiresome, imagine how it is for us who have to have it or deal with it on a daily basis. It's absolutely exhausting. But it's a fight we can't put down, since we're fighting to not have a basic core element of our lives erased.
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Why? You don't have to make a _political_ argument the core of your life. It can be as simple as, I'm a human being and you will treat me with the base level of decency that everyone deserves because of that, the personal aspects of my life and how I choose to lead it don't require justification, I'm not hurting anyone so buzz off. The core would then be in the living.
When you add justifications, especially for the personal, that invites a counter argument. 'Because x' puts x up for debate and if x is debunked you're put in a very bad position.
Not to mention the content of those justifications put you at odds with people who should be your natural allies. People like me who are ready to say screw the patriarchy and its (biological) sex based social rules but find arguments about brain sex and of statements of identity instantly negating a physical and social history (and possibly a current physical reality) distasteful.
I don't care what you identify as in your head. *holds out a hand* I'll take you as you are right now, what you choose to show the world is fine and good and wonderful and doesn't need to be justified to anyone.
And if it ever changes, it'll be just as fine and good and wonderful.
Is it cold in here?:
So, then, speaking about the comic:
What are some of the most common ways that spending early life assigned male could have affected Claire's mindset about going into a het dating relationship?
BenRG:
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 31 Oct 2014, 10:39 ---What are some of the most common ways that spending early life assigned male could have affected Claire's mindset about going into a het dating relationship?
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An awful lot depends on when she started self-identifying as female. Additionally, the primary male-model in her early life would normally be her father, who abandoned the family and about whom she has such negative feelings it's a trigger. So, it's questionable if there would have been a male courting behaviour role model for her that she is emotionally able to copy. Really, an awful lot depends on what her primary romantic role-model is and that is almost certainly a woman.
It wouldn't surprise me if, being something of a bibliophile, if she has read a lot of romance novels (especially classical ones) and she's imprinted a bit on the female protagonists.
Neko_Ali:
A funny thing is though is that Claire hasn't been shown as being a bibliophile. She wants to be a librarian, so it makes sense that she would enjoy reading and books. And we've seen other characters wandering around with their noses in books, but not Claire. She seems more interested in librarian as teacher rather than librarian as book lover. In fact, she kind of called out Gabby on that when that was the reason she took up the internship. Because Gabby just liked books.
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