| Oct. 12th, 2007 @ 02:26 am Perhaps I Didn't Make Myself Clear |
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Prior post: I remark on the fact that I have noticed a trend in webcomics.... that the further out on the fringe the author was in terms of their "gender identity," the greater it seemed their tendency was to engage in world-building--- or rather world re-editing-- where the norms not only of gender and sex, but of time, space, gravity and even particle physics were completely abandoned and replaced. Off the top of my head I listed three comics--- Unicorn Jelly, written by a polyamorous cohabiting bisexual; Pastel Defender Heliotrope, which is written by a post-op male-to-female transsexual; and Ozy and Millie, written by a person who wavers between proclaiming homosexuality and pre-op transsexuality.
(allow me to add one other: De^x/dx, which is--so far as I can suss out from the autobiographical strips--- authored by either a gender-bender or a hermaphrodite.) I could name other strips, but my point is made.
Of course, this was immediately followed by a great number of people (using the word loosely) who COULD NOT GET THE POINT.
Many of them could not get the Point if they doused themselves in Point musk, went out and did the Point mating dance in the middle of a field full of randy Points.
The POINT being, that I was remarking on a trend I had observed, in these strips and elsewhere, and was only capable of pondering about.
However, the point, apparently, to some people was to take an opportunity to criticize my views on gender issues, or break out into open braying of "mean, stupid hatemonger," and other popular epithets for anyone who isn't as groovy with it all as they themselves.
Okay, a few NEW points for y'all.
1)There's a word for "transsexualism" in the medical community. It's called "dysmorphia." Going to a doctor to get your boobs or your wang chopped off is no more normal, healthy, or rational than the guy who goes to the doctor to get his arms and legs chopped off, or Micheal Jackson trying to turn into a white woman.
2)of course there are lots of doctors and psychiatrists who will tell you that it is---especially at umpty thousand dollars an operation or $100 an hour. There's a word for THEM, too. "Unprincipled." There are doctors who will insist that it is perfectly normal to stick an ice pick through your eye socket and scramble your frontal lobe, too. And bull me no crap about "brain chemistry." The most learned neurosurgeons and chemists on earth barely know what they're doing up there, and the honest ones will openly admit it.
3)let me get this straight: you can take tens of thousands of dollars' worth of unnecessary surgery, tremendous pain, and a lifetime of hormone injections just to maintain the facade, but you can't take some blogger saying something bad about it? I can just see that conversation--- you on the operating table while the doctor saws away at your testicles with a steak knife--- "Whaddya cryin' about? Did the local wear off?" "Noooo, that mean man on the internet said mean things about meeeeee!"
If you'll pardon the irony, you need to grow a pair. Or better yet, keep the ones God gave you.
5) I can't believe you think I'm supposed to be cowed and humbled by your poo-flinging namecalling. Maybe I'd be more hurt by people calling me a "stupid hateful bigot Nazi etc" if they A: didn't use that invective every five minutes B:didn't use the same epithets for everyone in their lives who upset them. "You ate the last donut? YOU NAZI JEW HOMO!"
5) "GLBTs are great! GLBTs are Wonderful! GLBTs deserve our respect! And if you disagree with us, we'll punish you by calling you a GLB or T!"
... what unholy force keeps these brain donors breathing?
Not impressed by your self-justifications, not impressed by your epithets and slurs, and just in general really REALLY not impressed with YOU.
The exit---------------------> is THAT way. |
rhjunior
I really am curious.
I really do want to know what you are seeing that I am not.
Re: I really am curious.
Ah, but the ones God gave me tried to kill me, literally!
Okay, I'm a diaperfur, so I can enjoy some parts of his comic, but really... does he have to go so off-the-wall with it? It's just silly >.>
Jennifer Diane Reitz, a bisexual polyamourous transsexual, writes both Unicorn Jelly and Pastel Defender Heliotrope. THE SAME PERSON. Your "trend" of four is now a trend of three. Considering all the webcomics out there, a disproportionate number of which are written by people who are GLBT, and are about people who are GLBT, that's a vanishingly small number of rewritten universes.
You are deliberately distorting facts to make your point. No wonder people aren't getting your point.
What's your point?
1: Almost all storytelling involves a distortion of the way the universe works. The type of story and the universe in which it's told determine a lot of that.
2: World-building seems to be a current obsession. There are a lot of fictional universes out there where every deviation from 'normal' reality is painstakingly rationalized, explained, and/or justified.
3: The ratio of GLBT webcartoonists is surprisingly high. The Internet being the bastion of anonymity that it is, it's hard to determine who's what. Nor does it really matter. Even if you could tell the straight cartoonists from the gay ones, I think there would be too much variation on both sides of the spectrum to get any definitive answers.
Still, it's something to consider.
I was saying that A seems to be followed by B, NOT that B is necessarily always preceded by A.
Though I will state for the record that it's self evident why so many liberals are into sci fi and fantasy. Its the only place outside of a University thesis where their worldview can be made to work.
Also, a higher percentage of artists are gay than is true for the general population. This is probably at least as true in webcomics as in other artistic fields.
Didn't Calvin and Hobbes invent a device that could travel back and forth in time as well as duplicate living sentient beings? Wasn't this wondrous device made of corrugated cardboard? And wasn't his little red wagon capable of breaking orbit and traveling to Mars and back? A Mars with a breathable atmosphere and comfortable climate, no less?
The "fundamental changes to reality" element is simply the most obvious line of criticism you can level against a comic strip. It's the easiest way to attack something. So you only notice it in comics you already have reason to dislike.
psst: Ralph said that he noticed a trend that GLBT -> webcomics with rewriting of natural laws, not a rule and not w.w.r.o.n.l. -> GLBT. Avoid inflating "trend" to "rule" and avoid reversing the direction of correlation.
Calvin and Hobbes is quite obviously a story about a KID and his IMAGINATION. Everything that the artist does points you towards remembering the days of being a kid when you believed in magic and time travel and light sabers. It's a call to remember your innocence and look more kindly on 'stupid' things that kids do.
"World-building" itself is not the issue here. The issue is building a world which completely and intentionally contradicts natural laws as they are, as well as a world which does not follow its own rules. Every writer builds a world to some extent, but GOOD writers who have a least a basic understanding of the concept of a natural law will create their world with a certain respect for the real world. They will stick close to reality, expand on principles and laws that already exist, and stick to their own rules.
...then again, this is the internet.
The level of technology your talking about, we may as well go with pure and unadulterated manipulation of the genetic code itself. Men are born as boys and woman are born as girls and they are to grow up into those roles as men and women from the boys and girls they are born as.
To change their body to fit "what they really feel like on the inside" is nothing more than a pinicle of Narsissim and does nothing more than feed and fuel their own desires to be something they are not. You were born a man, deal with it. You were born a woman, deal with it. Learn to love the body God made you and do not ask questions as to why you were made the gender you were.
This is insanity in any time period or at any level of technology. If this becomes accepted, I mean really accepted, what's next?
"I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look."
But I have a question for you, especially with the splash page you had up the other day. I understand you have a real life (and more power to you for having one) and that drawing comics is time consuming and not exactly paying the bills, but it seems to me you spend an awful lot of time on your blog here going back and forth with people about things.
Now I may not agree with most of your opinions, but I totally respect your dedication to your ideals and even more so your ability to defend them. I'm from Austin, Texas, where there is a plethora of very "political" people who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag, much less defend their position from intelligent criticism. But I've seen only a handful of regular posters on the blog who are able to put up a decent argument for or against your positions, but you still seem to be taking the time to respond to even those who are just mudslinging in either direction. It seems that even when you don't have time to update the comics, you still have time to respond to a lot of the posts on here.
If I may ask, why is it that this seems to be a big priority for you?
One possible explanation is that this is sort of his way of "taking the country back", in a way. I know he's talked about how the liberal media controlled the news for decades, both here and in IRC, and how the internet gave conservatives the power to fight back.
Perhaps, in his own way, he feels that winning an argument here is another nail in the coffin of liberalism, and the media's tyrannical grip on information.
It's just a guess though. =P I'm sure he has his own ideas.
No matter how much surgery you go through, no matter what you chop off and add in...if you were born with one X and one Y, you are a man. And after that surgery, you're a man with very, very damaged plumbing system. No more than having white skin makes Michael Jackson a Caucasian.
just so you know....
That story severely disturbed me out as it WAS. But to know it could be (and probably would be, if she isn't lying) the brain-child of a demonic entity...
That is just... disturbing.
beyond disturbing.
RH is probably the only one who believes in demons here, right?