Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 4331-4335 (18-22, August 2020)
Farideh:
I hope Renee manages to talk Elliot out of his slump.
ZoeB:
--- Quote from: eschaton on 19 Aug 2020, 07:31 ---
--- Quote from: ihaveavoice on 19 Aug 2020, 06:19 ---Quick note that being attracted to Claire does nothing to alter Marten's sexuality. He's no less hetero for falling for a trans woman.
--- End quote ---
Again, I'm not up on my modern terminology, but my understanding is that trans people are by definition under the queer umbrella.
--- End quote ---
I disagree. Not that that's your understanding, only you get to say what that is, but that trans is necessarily a subset of queer, that there are no trans people who are not queer.
I mean, why are they "queer" by definition? What does "queer" mean in context?
Is a man who has had a vasectomy "queer" by definition? What about one who has been circumcised? Or *not* circumcised, if circumcision is "standard", "usual", *normal* in that society?
Something to ponder: are Guevedoces "queer" by definition?
--- Quote ---. Science 1974 Dec 27; 186 (4170): 1213-5
In an isolated village of the southwestern Dominican Republic, 2% of the live births were in the 1970's, guevedoces ... These children appeared to be girls at birth, but at puberty these 'girls' sprout muscles, testes, and a penis. For the rest of their lives they are men in nearly all respects. Their underlying pathology was found to be a deficiency of the enzyme, 5-alpha Reductase
--- End quote ---
5ARD for short. 17BHSD is similar. 3BHSD can cause such a "natural sex change" in either direction.
Many Trans people identify as queer. Some do not. Technically, I'm Intersex (see 3BHSD above) rather than Trans, and thus biologically far more different from the normal than the usual, common or garden cis or trans person. I did transition, and psych evaluation showed no significant difference from the more usual trans women, so close enough. I don't identify as being queer myself, though acknowledge that many people would say I must be by definition. I just deny that they know what they're talking about, and ask them to logically examine their definitions, assumptions, and conclusions, why they think that.
Claire is a woman with an unusual history. I have no idea whether she identifies as "queer" or not, but there's no evidence that she does. To assert that what apparently is a fairly standard het relationship has to be queer because of her past history seems unsafe.
How do we know that, for example, Sven wasn't born mildly Intersex, and had genital reconstruction as an infant to match the medical team's best guess as to his sex? Some syndromes there's a 99% chance they're correct, others it's a coin toss. Such situations are a heck of a lot more common than Trans. Would that make him "queer", and thus any girl who had a relationship with him be in a "queer" relationship? If (as is considered best practice today) there had been no surgery without informed consent, so his anatomy would be mildly unusual , would he be "queer" then?
We don't know Sven's operative history, and inquiries about his, or Padma's, or Hanners' exact genital configuration current or past would be severely creepy, no?
TLDR: Claire is a woman. Martyn is a man.
Now let's get back to Elliot and how he doesn't deserve to be hurt. Kudos to Renee and all good hearted people like her.
ihaveavoice:
--- Quote from: BenRG on 20 Aug 2020, 23:14 ---Okay: So it seems that, like some forumites, Elliot has assumed that 'let me think about it' was code for 'no' and has gone to a dark and sad place as a result. Which makes me think I know where this may go next.
If there is one thing that makes you vulnerable to making snap decisions its feeling down like this. So, when someone walks into the bakery (Roko?), sees sad Elliot and starts trying to cheer him up in way that could be interpreted as flirting with him, he's going to grab the chance with both hands. So, Clinton is going to come in to say 'yes' to find that the boat has sailed. Then he'll be the one feeling bad and likely to make a snap and poor choice and so on. So, we're going to have a chain of interim relationship choices which may or may not turn out to be long-term but with this unfinished business always hovering in the background.
If I'm right, Jeph has basically given himself about 3,000 strips of material as everything slowly works itself out.
--- End quote ---
One thing I really like about QC is how Jeph will often have a character take what could have been one of those spiraling stupid "just open your mouth and SPEAK, dummy!" problems to a friend to talk it out, and then they get a different perspective and adjust their actions accordingly. It would be really disappointing and annoying to have this play out with Elliot completely ignoring these and any other words of encouragement that Renee offers him and then doing something reckless as a result. And frankly, I'd say it's out of character. For all his mooning over unrequited crushes, Elliot has never seemed unreasonable or unwilling to listen to his friends.
I also don't really see him being in a "dark and sad" place right now. He's sad, sure, but it's an acute sort of pang from going straight from butterflies to uncertainty and having his insecurities flare up as a result. Not every strong emotional fluctuation is a descent into the abyss.
That said: SAD CRUMPLY ELLIOT FAAAAAAAAACCCCCEEEEEEEEE *collapses*
marbledmurrelet:
@ZoeB: As far as I'm aware, 'queer' can be used both as an umbrella term for LGBTQ+ (i.e. including the T) and more generally but also more specifically for people who challenge society's norms and binaries around sexuality and gender. I can see how it doesn't necessarily make sense to call a heteronormative trans person queer, though. And I absolutely agree that one partner having a different gender than the one assigned at birth doesn't make their relationships queer - that just reeks of the old "not a real woman".
I still think it's weird to call relationships queer or straight or gay in general, just because one or more of the people involved are. Or, think about this: you'd call a relationship queer because ONE of the people involved is - but wouldn't it just as well be straight because one of the people involved is? Hmm? Unless that one person somehow taints the whole relationship with their queerness...
oddtail:
--- Quote from: marbledmurrelet on 21 Aug 2020, 03:57 ---I still think it's weird to call relationships queer or straight or gay in general, just because one or more of the people involved are. Or, think about this: you'd call a relationship queer because ONE of the people involved is - but wouldn't it just as well be straight because one of the people involved is? Hmm? Unless that one person somehow taints the whole relationship with their queerness...
--- End quote ---
On the one hand, I share the sentiment that calling a relationship queer on the basis of e.g. sexual orientation of a person in it is a bit weird. I don't consider my marriage a queer one, even though both my wife and I are bi.
On the other hand, it's not about "tainting" anything with queerness. Queerness is a concept that exists in contrast with the cultural idea of straightness. It's unfortunate perhaps, but that's how it works. Similarly to how you're likely to see Barack Obama called a black man, but you'd be hard-pressed to see him called a white man, even if logically, he should be about as white as he is black, based on his family history. But that's not how it works.
Whiteness is an idea built around a default and an absence of a perceived characteristic. As harmful as that idea historically was, that's how it's still used, including by non-white people.
Similarly, if we say a relationship involving a queer person is queer relationship, I don't think it *automatically* follows that a relationship involving a straight person is a straight relationship.
I continue to wonder if the "queer" label for a relationship should be metonymic for the people in it, or a description of something about the relationship itself. Is there any semi-broad consensus on that?
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