**looks up lyrics**
… the song appears to be about getting old, losing friends, and then dying…
I mean, sure, not particularly appropriate, but not sure it was worth all caps and an “Agh” either. Unless I’m missing something?
Honestly, panel one is probably some of the best summation you can get on it, it’s just not especially clarifying. If anyone could pick out a truth that’ll fit another individual with 100 percent accuracy on cue, like half of my twitter feed would not exist.
Yep. Every time I’ve tried to explain the difference (as I see it, because everything is subjective) I’ve had to write seven hundred words, delete it, and write a different seven hundred words. Carla’s summary isn’t clarifying, but I doubt she wants to delve into a ten-minute explanation Malaya might not have been looking for.
And Carla sums up my opinions on gender. (‘There is no definable parameter for what genders actually entail so they’re pretty much meaningless, aren’t they? But also, I feel some kind of affinity to girl that I don’t for other options, so I guess I’ll keep it.’)
(Cis and probably qualify as low femme, but like. Gender is weird and presentation takes effort.)
Also, I like that Carla has definitely caught on, offers what advice she can in a supportive way, and will almost certainly be open for more support if Malaya wants it again. Carla’s being a good trans mentor here.
Languages with grammatical genders, I take it? Sympathy. (Another weird social concept: language itself. Glad it exists but it boggles my mind to think about it.)
My money was on restrictive social concepts of gender. Thai has grammatical gender though, right? I don’t think Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean have gender. Japanese doesn’t.
Japanese DOES have grammatical gender just not in a western way. First person pronouns are gendered (its complicated) and there’s other gendering in the language as well.
It’s both, the word for I changes depending on your gender and age, there is also many differences in the way women (are expected to) talk and the way men do, and this rules are very strict, it’s another big hurdle that trans/nb people have to go through than they don’t with languages that are not or at least less gendered.
But of course every country has it’s own bs to put up with.
That’s not grammatical gender, though…that’s societal norms being expressed though language. A woman who ‘boku’s would be using perfectly grammatical sentences, she’d just be challenging gender norms.
The social concepts thing gets… weird, in East Asia. Especially so if you include South East Asia into the mix. China, Japan and Korea are probably as close as you get to western concepts of conservative on the topic, but are still vaguely more accepting of non-conformance than most western conservatives (note that this applies only to gender and nothing else, and even then is very very iffy, such as mixed opinions on actual transgender-ness as opposed to GNC, and being less acceptive though not quite totally unreceptive of AFAB non-conformity.) Then you get places like Thailand and Singapore where being trans is fine and dandy, but not conforming to gender roles outside of being trans is looked down on.
Colleges have counseling centers that are free to use, but I somehow suspect a college IU’s size doesn’t have enough staff for the population. I know some schools have a limit to how many appointments you can make a semester and/or have obscene wait times, both of which can really fuck up a student in crisis. (Hell, it often takes multiple sessions just to get a feel for each other as therapist and client. And stuff as tricky as gender takes TIME.)
The other problem is that psychologists and therapists are… not always great at dealing with certain issues. LGBT stuff, transness in particular, is a pretty common pitfall. (Especially since Malaya may not be binary trans.) Given how much damage a bad psychologist can do, I don’t blame Malaya for going for a known, supportive peer instead of someone who isn’t vetted as queer-friendly. (Even if IU has queer-friendly psychologists on staff, if they don’t have enough services for the people Malaya may not be able to get in with one. And because mental health is stigmatized but college students are overwhelmingly stressed, anxious, and depressed, it almost certainly is understaffed.) Carla’s advice is good, but it isn’t a cut-and-dried answer that settles whether Malaya’s trans perfectly and forever and it makes sense that that’s what Malaya really wants.
(And given the sense Malaya’s kind of dissociative, I wonder how much the ‘everything is fake’ and assuming everyone else is the same – which, 18-year-old, self-centeredness and lack of empathy for other people’s experiences are pretty common when your frontal lobe’s not done yet – is maybe because Malaya is uncertain of their identity and trying to hide that fact. Not saying Malaya’s an asshole because they’re questioning, but maybe figuring that out would help them realize other people aren’t constantly putting on an act about everything for anyone who may be watching.)
(Side note: Psychologists Not Getting their patients is also why I hesitate about Amber getting therapy – she clearly has deep psychological shit, but the likelihood that she has something like DID and the degree to which the academic community Does Not Get that is so high I worry it’d do more harm.)
(Secondary side note/anecdote of how this shit fucks you up: While I was in outpatient at a mental hospital, the first paychiatrist I was assigned completely refused to believe I was autistic. I was diagnosed formally a decade before, by an institution that’s one of the premier specialists on autism in the country. He was in the same city so there’s no way he didn’t know they were experts in the field. He had only barely interacted with me where my diagnostic tests had been over months and including at least one set of tests that took most of a day. Girls did not get diagnosed in 2004 unless they REALLY fit the profile! Pretty much anyone diagnosed when I did is going to learn at least a few coping mechanisms, and the thing at the time included trying to get us to present more neurotypical!* I was specifically originally diagnosed with the form that doesn’t include speech delays when his issue was that I was ‘too social’ to really be autistic. If I’m not autistic I have about seven or eight different disorders’ worth of distinct symptoms that are covered under the autism banner. None of this mattered to him. I ended up getting switched to a different psychiatrist. He said he didn’t know why I was so upset when my not being autistic was ‘a good thing’ – which I really didn’t have the time to unpack while horribly depressed – and apparently changed my diagnosis in the system without telling anyone to attachment disorder. We realized this before I was discharged, which is good because that could have seriously made my life harder getting support services later. A bad mental health professional can FUCK YOU UP, and among the worst and most likely to encounter is someone uninformed with rigid ideas of how something ‘should’ present.)
* Still is in at least some schools of thought, but these days we at least have a lot of people who can say ‘no this isn’t actually helpful’ and some people in control who are willing to listen.
I was diagnosed with ASD* in middle school (around 1999/2000), and you’re absolutely right about treatment at the time revolving around ‘coping mechanisms’ and presenting as neurotypical. The schoolteachers who told my parents “we’ll just snap him out of it” didn’t help, either. It always seemed disingenuous to me to encourage passing for “normal”, while teaching you to immediately drop whatever you’re doing and go do some breathing exercise when you start feeling overwhelmed. It’s like they built their strategy around anger management techniques.
Therapy and support groups helped me figure out my miswired brain, so for the most part I just come across as introverted now, but didn’t do shit for my social anxiety. (That’s always going to be there, but getting thrown headfirst into the workforce helped me work through it more than anything else.)
Misapplied therapy is a waste of time at best.
(AS, but a lot of disorders have since been swept into one big “Autism” category. Honestly I’ve never been comfortable with that; it makes people in general flip a mental switch from “this person is normal” to “this person is broken”, like we’re all Rain Man or something.)
Like, obviously some coping mechanisms for the world being big and distracting are necessary, because it’s better than being so overwhelmed I start hurting myself in distress (virtually all my stims are self-harming), but you get such better results telling kids ‘yeah eye contact’s not necessary if it makes you uncomfortable, let’s work on making you feel as comfortable in the world as we can and find ways for you to communicate your needs that work for you.’ And even when I pass and it doesn’t expend that much energy, people still ask if I have an accent (something about my cadence or intonation is very distinctive, and I’m not aware enough of it to know what.) Passing’s always conditional and you’ll probably not catch everything, so why waste the effort?
(I was AS and okay being grouped under the larger autism banner, but then I always identified as autistic and am like ‘yeah, my brain’s different. And? I like my brain like this.’ Ableists will ableist, I just roll my eyes and continue waving my neurodiversity flag.)
As expected of someone that loves hersef too much and someone who hates everything. Now, can we please return to see if Raidah fights Joyce because of what Joyce did? Or the evil dads plot?
I wonder what ever happened to Monty Python’s 16 ton weight: that might fall from the sky on Blaine & Ross, right? That’s something that definitely could happen.
Speculation on how much Carla’s interest in Malaya was just the hot bod, or did she sense a kindred non-cis person? Did Carla suspect Malaya might be not a cis woman before Malaya raised the question earlier?
First panel had mirrored my own thoughts from the past couple of days: “Is it seriously just a matter of taste? You could like boy stuff, girl stuff, or a blend of the two, and it could be totally independent from how you were born?”
As a dumb cishet I will admit I’ve thought it strange that Malaya sure dresses in some oddly small articles of clothing for an AFAB trans person, but then I remember seeing that guy in the supermarket wearing very tight and very short cutoffs with a long sleeve metal band tee. If you’ve got it, flaunt it I guess.
Yup that’s the thing. Cis people dress weird but trans folk are expected to have a uniform or something. The same people who wouldn’t bat an eye at a cis woman in pants and a sweatshirt will lay into a trans woman for not wearing a dress. Then lay into her FOR wearing a dress because clearly she’s just in it for the stereotypes.
So it seems like Malaya doesn’t feel like her body is “hers,” like she doesn’t feel like a “girl” and is kind of surprised when she sees herself.
But she doesn’t seem to feel like a “boy” either. I don’t feel like she would feel better if she looked down and saw boy parts.
She doesn’t know what she is. And that’s frustrating.
OK now I’m gonna go off the rails, ok?
So. There are people who are sexually attracted to robots. Not necessarily sex dolls (though there are those people too) but, like, sci-fi robots. C3PO and stuff. Some of them even like to dress up as robots. You following? They identify not only as attracted to robots, but as BEING a robot trapped in a meaty human body.
Now, imagine you were one of these people, but you were born 1000 years ago. Long before robots were a thing. Maybe… just maybe you’d feel like Malaya. Like your body is wrong and you don’t know what it would take to fix it.
So maybe Malaya identifies as something that she has never seen or experienced. Maybe it hasn’t been invented or discovered yet. But once it is — she’ll look at it and go “THAT. THAT is what I feel like!”
(also, they’re doing a dissociative plotline over on Questionable Content right now, where a sentient robot lady has been uploaded into a new body, but it doesn’t feel like “her” so she’s constantly looking down and feeling like it’s NOT HER BODY that she’s seeing. Interesting parallel, I think.)
My guess is currently nonbinary Malaya, but it’s also possible that with most of the sympathetic trans narratives implying you always knew when Malaya is definitely questioning, Malaya doesn’t feel ‘trans enough’ to actually count despite feeling strong affinity towards maleness.
Also, given Shortpacked!Malaya was pretty much exclusively sexually attracted to a robot (though not necessarily romantically,) interesting choice of analogy.
It’s not really surprise at seeing herself so much as the only reason she has labelled herself is female before is because she has the parts everyone slaps a female label on. She has expressed a like of her physical body before so it isn’t that she dislikes it or that a part of it is wrong… so much as the identity label of female is wrong. That alone can lead to dissatisfaction and frustration and feelings of confusion when you don’t actually hate your body or any of its collective parts but it is mislabelled.
It’s more like ice being mislabelled as steam. The core components are the same but they are still not the same in expression or in how they interact with others so you can’t interchangably refer to one as the other. Malaya is likely some variety of nonbinary but would need to actually research nonbinary labels to figure out what is most accurate for herself or if none of the existing ones quite fit.
How about this: For cis people, gender is a self-fulfilling prophecy: they act like, and feel like, and look like, their gender because that’s how they think their gender feels and acts. The prophet of gender is, of course, society.
So things are simple and predictable in cis-land, until you learn that Western culture used to dress girls in blue and boys in pink. And then you write stuff about self-fulfilling prophecies to try to explain the paradox of fixed gender roles that are obviously relativistic.
I hope I’m not oversimplifying too much when I try to describe trans-ness as “people whose socially assigned gender roles don’t work for them.” Defying gender roles would be no big thing – except that society gets very uptight when its prophecies don’t come true, because many people’s sense of self depends on their relationship to predictable societal norms. If a person with a penis can use the women’s rest room, that subverts the whole mechanism – and then how do other people with penises know they’re really men?
I have a lot more thoughts, but I’m cishetmale so the more I write about gender, the more likely I’ll say something really ignorant.
I’m also cishet, and for me “self fulfilling prophecy” is a good way of describing my gender identity.
Three witches said some bullshit about my way of identifying myself based on my genitals when I was a baby, and I and everyone else decided that witch-based gender identity is a great way of organising society so we went along with it.
Thinking more about my last paragraph: it’s not necessarily that I’m more ignorant than people with less privilege – it’s that my ignorance is more dangerous because I’m so privileged, and I’ve likely absorbed some oppressive ideas without realizing it. So i want to be extra careful not to spout ignorant stuff that could hurt people.
That’s too vahue and super historically inaccurate. By that logic, the suffragettes were all trans. I actually saw a pamphlet once say all women who wore pants are trans following your logic.
200 years ago you’d have a solid argument there. Today you really don’t. Men are fighting for paternity leave and becoming single dads and growing their hair long and wearing unbifurcated garments. Women have fought for so many rights that were not societally acceptable.
The gender gap is closing and honestly that’s a lot of the friction and fear and co fusion.
Even for cis people gender is increasingly a choose your own adventure.
Yeah, I think the distinction is that gender roles and gender identification aren’t the same thing. At least in our culture – partly because we’ve been loosening up on strict gender roles for generations now.
Identification is largely internal – though external validation certainly helps.
Role is much more external – taking a traditionally male job doesn’t make you a man.
Though in a culture with more strictly defined gender roles things might blur? If the only way to take on a different gender role is to pass as that gender? A woman disguising herself as a man to serve as a soldier, for example. IIRC, in some traditional cultures it was possible to take on the role and identification of the other gender, but not to do so separately, since the gender roles were strictly separated. How close that would be to our modern concept of “trans” isn’t clear to me, though it’s obviously related.
I’m a cishet male and I’m pretty sure I’m already not acting how my gender is “supposed” to act, just from the fact that I’m not all that into sports and my favorite tv show is a cartoon about ponies.
I’m pretty solidly cishet male myself (IMO), but have never been into/was raised not to buy into the dominant, which is to say, toxic male culture. (For a while there I was part of some pretty toxic subcultures, but I like to think I’m getting better.)
Also cis/het male, but raised in a situation that let me miss out on some of the toxic masculinity. There are still things I catch though. Things I wasn’t even aware of. Probably some I’m still not.
Cis/ace-demi male, and I doubt I’ve ever acted the way men are “supposed” to act. I suspect being the only boy in my generation had a lot to do with that.
I always knew I’m a woman (though begrudingly sometimes, I still hate having my period), and I don’t usually really care. Like, it was never an issue. I always thought that’s what it means to be cisgender. You’re f/m and you just don’t question it. Or it’s not important to you. Which kind of has the same effect, no?
Don’t think that that’s true at all. The socially prescribed gender role of “girl” or “woman” has never, ever fit for me and I’ve fought against it my entire life to some degree.
Yet, I am unquestionably a woman.
I don’t think gender roles and gender are the same or even very closely related. I know a trans man who wears lipstick sometimes, so clearly he did not transition to get away from everything feminine. I also know a trans woman who is butch.
Yeah, that’s how I feel too. Society would probably think I’m very masculine if you ran my life through a binary algorithm. But I am 100% a ciswoman, always have been, and will fight anyone who says otherwise.
There’s got to be more to it than feeling like you don’t meet the expectations, or it being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I can’t really explain it to you without going into some vague diatribe or a very specific, disturbing account of my own non-universal personal experience as a binary dysphoric trans woman that makes me think I should really look into a career writing body horror.
it’s the people with the rigid ideas about how men and women should behave who interpret women or men wanting to do other things as ‘wanting to be the other gender’. It’s a fantasy of the people who like to prescribe how others should act.
Wanting to drive cars, build trains, ride horses, cook, win boxing matches or elections has nothing at all to do with what gender a person has. Some societies only allow a certain gender – or in most cases, rather, sex, because both are seen as the same thing – to do one or another of those things.
As far as I as a cis lesbian women can understand what being trans is about, being trans is something more basic, a deep-seated knowledge that the body parts don’t match how the person feels as a person. Wanting to drive cars, build trains, …. is also not related to being trans, cis or none-binary.
Though there is an indirect relation as society’s pressure to conform to a gender-stereotype puts pressure on different things depending on which gender you are perceived to be.
When, historically speaking, women presented as male to keep safe or do jobs women weren’t supposed to do, I think it’s farfetched to interpret all or even most of them as trans or non-binary. In a society that is very rigid, people hide who they are to be safe or do the things they want. Passing as someone of the group in power is a way to gain opportunities, wealth, safety- as long as you don’t get caught.
I always was annoyed with people who wanted to tell me I shouldn’t do things (go out at night, learn to code, …) because I was a women. I wanted the same opportunities, the same rights, the same freedom as the men. Never wanted a penis though, Freud really had some crazy ideas.
I’m also annoyed with everyone who keeps commenting whenever I wear lipstick, just because they are not used to it, because it doesn’t fit in with their idea of me being butch (which never was my idea, I’ll stop now before the rant gets going).
As sexualities carry between universes…. She’s asexual and…her romantic attraction is hard to determine, but it at least potentially includes women, possibly exclusively – her only known romantic relationship was with Malaya, who, if she identified as anything but a woman in that universe, was not out to anyone, even Ultra-Car.
Guessing the thought process is that UC might reassess her orientation to include a non-female Malaya, but since we never saw SP!Malaya explore gender it’s a moot point. (Shortpacked’s diversity already tore a hole in that reality, there’s nothing left to lose!)
I’m feeling what Carla is saying. I’m NB, and for me gender is kind of a loose idea, it’s just there. I also know that for trans men/women/anything in between or around, gender may matter a lot! And both are equally important! Also I really LOVE how Carla is the like, ultimate Malaya kryptonite. Malaya can be as sarcastic as possible but Carla is just able to flip anything around.
She continues to be one of my favourite characters.
Why is the Scarlet Spider talking to that infant about gender? That discussion is likely to end in either a full diaper or Ben dissolving into brownsauce.
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“Who says you can’t have your cake and eat theirs, too?”
(Dumbing of Age Book 10: I’m So Fuckin’ WISE Now)
Only if they have chocolate cake, or cheesecake.
Can I have my pecan pie and eat theirs too?
Keep your filthy paws off my pecan pie, you damn dirty Clif.
I dunno, I prefer either of “Dumbing of Age Book 10: It’s Totally Made Up” and “Dumbing of Age Book 10: It’s So Good To Get Both Flavors.”
I mean, I’d seriously go with DoA Book 10: Gender is Bullshit
I’d definitely go with Book 10: I’m so fucking WISE now!
And the word WISE is absolutely massive and written entirely with major characters bending to form the shapes of the letters. :P)
Carla is goals. Malaya will figure things out.
Carla is ridiculously adorable
Gender.
*shaking 8-ball* its ???????
Kreply hazy. Try again later.
“Signs point to yes.”
Uh, wait a minute.
Oh no! Your gender cheer has gone flaccid!
….
I’ll show myself out.
LOL
I’m sure it’ll be back at some point!
carla did good work today
*plays The Alan Parsons Project’s “Old And Wise” on the hacked speakers*
THAT IS NOT APPROPRIATE HAVE YOU EVER PAID ATTENTION TO THE LYRICS
AGH
**looks up lyrics**
… the song appears to be about getting old, losing friends, and then dying…
I mean, sure, not particularly appropriate, but not sure it was worth all caps and an “Agh” either. Unless I’m missing something?
Ah, Deliciously Sarcastic and Humbled / Genuine. The two genders.
Nice to know Carla goes both ways.
bithanksual
I personally prefer the bitter, reluctant ‘thank you’ forced out of people by social mores.
It’s an acquired taste. Kinda like black licorice.
Carla continues to be a delight in every way. Thus the universe keeps on spinning.
She has to forget you asked. “What happens on Garbage Roof, stays on Garbage Roof.”
Oh, Carla. It’s definitely not easy to explain, that’s for sure.
“I asked Carla a question and hoped for deep, clarifying wisdom. The error is mine alone.”
Honestly, panel one is probably some of the best summation you can get on it, it’s just not especially clarifying. If anyone could pick out a truth that’ll fit another individual with 100 percent accuracy on cue, like half of my twitter feed would not exist.
Yep. Every time I’ve tried to explain the difference (as I see it, because everything is subjective) I’ve had to write seven hundred words, delete it, and write a different seven hundred words. Carla’s summary isn’t clarifying, but I doubt she wants to delve into a ten-minute explanation Malaya might not have been looking for.
And Carla sums up my opinions on gender. (‘There is no definable parameter for what genders actually entail so they’re pretty much meaningless, aren’t they? But also, I feel some kind of affinity to girl that I don’t for other options, so I guess I’ll keep it.’)
(Cis and probably qualify as low femme, but like. Gender is weird and presentation takes effort.)
Also, I like that Carla has definitely caught on, offers what advice she can in a supportive way, and will almost certainly be open for more support if Malaya wants it again. Carla’s being a good trans mentor here.
I’m pretty much like you, but male, and I know how you feel. Living in east Asia, it gets even more annoying.
Languages with grammatical genders, I take it? Sympathy. (Another weird social concept: language itself. Glad it exists but it boggles my mind to think about it.)
My money was on restrictive social concepts of gender. Thai has grammatical gender though, right? I don’t think Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean have gender. Japanese doesn’t.
Oh yeah, also that. Society.
Japanese DOES have grammatical gender just not in a western way. First person pronouns are gendered (its complicated) and there’s other gendering in the language as well.
Plus yes huge social pressure.
It’s more like gendered style and vocabulary than grammar, AFAIK.
It’s both, the word for I changes depending on your gender and age, there is also many differences in the way women (are expected to) talk and the way men do, and this rules are very strict, it’s another big hurdle that trans/nb people have to go through than they don’t with languages that are not or at least less gendered.
But of course every country has it’s own bs to put up with.
That’s not grammatical gender, though…that’s societal norms being expressed though language. A woman who ‘boku’s would be using perfectly grammatical sentences, she’d just be challenging gender norms.
Spoken Chinese doesn’t even have gendered pronouns. He/She only becomes an issue when you write things down.
Thai has some gendered pronouns, and particles. Aside from that, I can’t think of any grammatical gender.
The social concepts thing gets… weird, in East Asia. Especially so if you include South East Asia into the mix. China, Japan and Korea are probably as close as you get to western concepts of conservative on the topic, but are still vaguely more accepting of non-conformance than most western conservatives (note that this applies only to gender and nothing else, and even then is very very iffy, such as mixed opinions on actual transgender-ness as opposed to GNC, and being less acceptive though not quite totally unreceptive of AFAB non-conformity.) Then you get places like Thailand and Singapore where being trans is fine and dandy, but not conforming to gender roles outside of being trans is looked down on.
YES finally Carla says something kind and great!!
This strip is a mine for book 10 titles!
“Go not to the Carla for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.”
Or go with someone that actually can help with mental health, but knowing Malaa she will also reject professional help even if she could get benefits.
Malaya*
Colleges have counseling centers that are free to use, but I somehow suspect a college IU’s size doesn’t have enough staff for the population. I know some schools have a limit to how many appointments you can make a semester and/or have obscene wait times, both of which can really fuck up a student in crisis. (Hell, it often takes multiple sessions just to get a feel for each other as therapist and client. And stuff as tricky as gender takes TIME.)
The other problem is that psychologists and therapists are… not always great at dealing with certain issues. LGBT stuff, transness in particular, is a pretty common pitfall. (Especially since Malaya may not be binary trans.) Given how much damage a bad psychologist can do, I don’t blame Malaya for going for a known, supportive peer instead of someone who isn’t vetted as queer-friendly. (Even if IU has queer-friendly psychologists on staff, if they don’t have enough services for the people Malaya may not be able to get in with one. And because mental health is stigmatized but college students are overwhelmingly stressed, anxious, and depressed, it almost certainly is understaffed.) Carla’s advice is good, but it isn’t a cut-and-dried answer that settles whether Malaya’s trans perfectly and forever and it makes sense that that’s what Malaya really wants.
(And given the sense Malaya’s kind of dissociative, I wonder how much the ‘everything is fake’ and assuming everyone else is the same – which, 18-year-old, self-centeredness and lack of empathy for other people’s experiences are pretty common when your frontal lobe’s not done yet – is maybe because Malaya is uncertain of their identity and trying to hide that fact. Not saying Malaya’s an asshole because they’re questioning, but maybe figuring that out would help them realize other people aren’t constantly putting on an act about everything for anyone who may be watching.)
(Side note: Psychologists Not Getting their patients is also why I hesitate about Amber getting therapy – she clearly has deep psychological shit, but the likelihood that she has something like DID and the degree to which the academic community Does Not Get that is so high I worry it’d do more harm.)
(Secondary side note/anecdote of how this shit fucks you up: While I was in outpatient at a mental hospital, the first paychiatrist I was assigned completely refused to believe I was autistic. I was diagnosed formally a decade before, by an institution that’s one of the premier specialists on autism in the country. He was in the same city so there’s no way he didn’t know they were experts in the field. He had only barely interacted with me where my diagnostic tests had been over months and including at least one set of tests that took most of a day. Girls did not get diagnosed in 2004 unless they REALLY fit the profile! Pretty much anyone diagnosed when I did is going to learn at least a few coping mechanisms, and the thing at the time included trying to get us to present more neurotypical!* I was specifically originally diagnosed with the form that doesn’t include speech delays when his issue was that I was ‘too social’ to really be autistic. If I’m not autistic I have about seven or eight different disorders’ worth of distinct symptoms that are covered under the autism banner. None of this mattered to him. I ended up getting switched to a different psychiatrist. He said he didn’t know why I was so upset when my not being autistic was ‘a good thing’ – which I really didn’t have the time to unpack while horribly depressed – and apparently changed my diagnosis in the system without telling anyone to attachment disorder. We realized this before I was discharged, which is good because that could have seriously made my life harder getting support services later. A bad mental health professional can FUCK YOU UP, and among the worst and most likely to encounter is someone uninformed with rigid ideas of how something ‘should’ present.)
* Still is in at least some schools of thought, but these days we at least have a lot of people who can say ‘no this isn’t actually helpful’ and some people in control who are willing to listen.
I was diagnosed with ASD* in middle school (around 1999/2000), and you’re absolutely right about treatment at the time revolving around ‘coping mechanisms’ and presenting as neurotypical. The schoolteachers who told my parents “we’ll just snap him out of it” didn’t help, either. It always seemed disingenuous to me to encourage passing for “normal”, while teaching you to immediately drop whatever you’re doing and go do some breathing exercise when you start feeling overwhelmed. It’s like they built their strategy around anger management techniques.
Therapy and support groups helped me figure out my miswired brain, so for the most part I just come across as introverted now, but didn’t do shit for my social anxiety. (That’s always going to be there, but getting thrown headfirst into the workforce helped me work through it more than anything else.)
Misapplied therapy is a waste of time at best.
(AS, but a lot of disorders have since been swept into one big “Autism” category. Honestly I’ve never been comfortable with that; it makes people in general flip a mental switch from “this person is normal” to “this person is broken”, like we’re all Rain Man or something.)
Like, obviously some coping mechanisms for the world being big and distracting are necessary, because it’s better than being so overwhelmed I start hurting myself in distress (virtually all my stims are self-harming), but you get such better results telling kids ‘yeah eye contact’s not necessary if it makes you uncomfortable, let’s work on making you feel as comfortable in the world as we can and find ways for you to communicate your needs that work for you.’ And even when I pass and it doesn’t expend that much energy, people still ask if I have an accent (something about my cadence or intonation is very distinctive, and I’m not aware enough of it to know what.) Passing’s always conditional and you’ll probably not catch everything, so why waste the effort?
(I was AS and okay being grouped under the larger autism banner, but then I always identified as autistic and am like ‘yeah, my brain’s different. And? I like my brain like this.’ Ableists will ableist, I just roll my eyes and continue waving my neurodiversity flag.)
One time I had a therapist who gave me a packet called “What It Means to be a Woman.” That was fun.
As expected of someone that loves hersef too much and someone who hates everything. Now, can we please return to see if Raidah fights Joyce because of what Joyce did? Or the evil dads plot?
I think most people would be happy if the evil dads never showed up again and we got a footnote saying they died on the way to their home planet.
a footnote saying they died on the way to their home planet
“Freak lightning storm at Indiana University. Fortunately nobody was hurt. Other than Ross and Blaine.”
I wonder what ever happened to Monty Python’s 16 ton weight: that might fall from the sky on Blaine & Ross, right? That’s something that definitely could happen.
Or they might be assaulted by a gang of vicious thugs wielding raspberries…
If by gang of vicious thugs you mean Amazigirl, Sal, Ruth and Sarah wielding a baseball bat covered in raspberries, then sure.
I’d rather see Hell’s Grannies.
I would love that.
You’ll get more Danny and Drew and like it!
In another universe, Danny is named Nancy and he and Drew form a detective team known as Nancy Drew. I’m pretty sure that’s a thing that exists.
In this universe they, uh..
..form an LGBT-themed band, using an atypical selection of instruments..?
Speculation on how much Carla’s interest in Malaya was just the hot bod, or did she sense a kindred non-cis person? Did Carla suspect Malaya might be not a cis woman before Malaya raised the question earlier?
That first panel literally encapsulates an hour-long conversation my spouse and I had over the weekend. Willis, your timing is scary-good sometimes.
First panel had mirrored my own thoughts from the past couple of days: “Is it seriously just a matter of taste? You could like boy stuff, girl stuff, or a blend of the two, and it could be totally independent from how you were born?”
Sums it up nicely.
That’s a pretty good answer while also deeply unsatisfying when you are questioning
I maintain that Carla is my favourite character in this webcomic.
I second this. She has danced along the line of manic mad genius and actual nice person very, very well.
As a dumb cishet I will admit I’ve thought it strange that Malaya sure dresses in some oddly small articles of clothing for an AFAB trans person, but then I remember seeing that guy in the supermarket wearing very tight and very short cutoffs with a long sleeve metal band tee. If you’ve got it, flaunt it I guess.
Yup that’s the thing. Cis people dress weird but trans folk are expected to have a uniform or something. The same people who wouldn’t bat an eye at a cis woman in pants and a sweatshirt will lay into a trans woman for not wearing a dress. Then lay into her FOR wearing a dress because clearly she’s just in it for the stereotypes.
Wear whatever, y’all.
So it seems like Malaya doesn’t feel like her body is “hers,” like she doesn’t feel like a “girl” and is kind of surprised when she sees herself.
But she doesn’t seem to feel like a “boy” either. I don’t feel like she would feel better if she looked down and saw boy parts.
She doesn’t know what she is. And that’s frustrating.
OK now I’m gonna go off the rails, ok?
So. There are people who are sexually attracted to robots. Not necessarily sex dolls (though there are those people too) but, like, sci-fi robots. C3PO and stuff. Some of them even like to dress up as robots. You following? They identify not only as attracted to robots, but as BEING a robot trapped in a meaty human body.
Now, imagine you were one of these people, but you were born 1000 years ago. Long before robots were a thing. Maybe… just maybe you’d feel like Malaya. Like your body is wrong and you don’t know what it would take to fix it.
So maybe Malaya identifies as something that she has never seen or experienced. Maybe it hasn’t been invented or discovered yet. But once it is — she’ll look at it and go “THAT. THAT is what I feel like!”
(also, they’re doing a dissociative plotline over on Questionable Content right now, where a sentient robot lady has been uploaded into a new body, but it doesn’t feel like “her” so she’s constantly looking down and feeling like it’s NOT HER BODY that she’s seeing. Interesting parallel, I think.)
My guess is currently nonbinary Malaya, but it’s also possible that with most of the sympathetic trans narratives implying you always knew when Malaya is definitely questioning, Malaya doesn’t feel ‘trans enough’ to actually count despite feeling strong affinity towards maleness.
Also, given Shortpacked!Malaya was pretty much exclusively sexually attracted to a robot (though not necessarily romantically,) interesting choice of analogy.
It’s not really surprise at seeing herself so much as the only reason she has labelled herself is female before is because she has the parts everyone slaps a female label on. She has expressed a like of her physical body before so it isn’t that she dislikes it or that a part of it is wrong… so much as the identity label of female is wrong. That alone can lead to dissatisfaction and frustration and feelings of confusion when you don’t actually hate your body or any of its collective parts but it is mislabelled.
It’s more like ice being mislabelled as steam. The core components are the same but they are still not the same in expression or in how they interact with others so you can’t interchangably refer to one as the other. Malaya is likely some variety of nonbinary but would need to actually research nonbinary labels to figure out what is most accurate for herself or if none of the existing ones quite fit.
Gee Carla, why does Willis let you get TWO scoops of Thank You?
As Plasticwrap pointed out above, she’s bithanksual.
How about this: For cis people, gender is a self-fulfilling prophecy: they act like, and feel like, and look like, their gender because that’s how they think their gender feels and acts. The prophet of gender is, of course, society.
So things are simple and predictable in cis-land, until you learn that Western culture used to dress girls in blue and boys in pink. And then you write stuff about self-fulfilling prophecies to try to explain the paradox of fixed gender roles that are obviously relativistic.
I hope I’m not oversimplifying too much when I try to describe trans-ness as “people whose socially assigned gender roles don’t work for them.” Defying gender roles would be no big thing – except that society gets very uptight when its prophecies don’t come true, because many people’s sense of self depends on their relationship to predictable societal norms. If a person with a penis can use the women’s rest room, that subverts the whole mechanism – and then how do other people with penises know they’re really men?
I have a lot more thoughts, but I’m cishetmale so the more I write about gender, the more likely I’ll say something really ignorant.
I’m also cishet, and for me “self fulfilling prophecy” is a good way of describing my gender identity.
Three witches said some bullshit about my way of identifying myself based on my genitals when I was a baby, and I and everyone else decided that witch-based gender identity is a great way of organising society so we went along with it.
“When shall we three meet again
in thunder, lightning or in rain?”
“When the next birthing’s done,
and we decide daughter or son.”
“By the pricking of my thumb,
Thou shalth like the colour blue”
“Who would cross the Bridge of Death
Must answer me these questions three,
Ere the other side he see.”
…wait, I’ll come in again.
Shut upKeep going and take my money!“We mark here you had a son.”
“Where the place?”
“The birth sheet.”
“‘Cos they were born with dangly bit.”
And, of course, the classic:
“There’s something rotten in the kingdom of enforced gender roles.”
Thinking more about my last paragraph: it’s not necessarily that I’m more ignorant than people with less privilege – it’s that my ignorance is more dangerous because I’m so privileged, and I’ve likely absorbed some oppressive ideas without realizing it. So i want to be extra careful not to spout ignorant stuff that could hurt people.
That’s too vahue and super historically inaccurate. By that logic, the suffragettes were all trans. I actually saw a pamphlet once say all women who wore pants are trans following your logic.
200 years ago you’d have a solid argument there. Today you really don’t. Men are fighting for paternity leave and becoming single dads and growing their hair long and wearing unbifurcated garments. Women have fought for so many rights that were not societally acceptable.
The gender gap is closing and honestly that’s a lot of the friction and fear and co fusion.
Even for cis people gender is increasingly a choose your own adventure.
Yeah, I think the distinction is that gender roles and gender identification aren’t the same thing. At least in our culture – partly because we’ve been loosening up on strict gender roles for generations now.
Identification is largely internal – though external validation certainly helps.
Role is much more external – taking a traditionally male job doesn’t make you a man.
Though in a culture with more strictly defined gender roles things might blur? If the only way to take on a different gender role is to pass as that gender? A woman disguising herself as a man to serve as a soldier, for example. IIRC, in some traditional cultures it was possible to take on the role and identification of the other gender, but not to do so separately, since the gender roles were strictly separated. How close that would be to our modern concept of “trans” isn’t clear to me, though it’s obviously related.
I’m a cishet male and I’m pretty sure I’m already not acting how my gender is “supposed” to act, just from the fact that I’m not all that into sports and my favorite tv show is a cartoon about ponies.
I’m pretty solidly cishet male myself (IMO), but have never been into/was raised not to buy into the dominant, which is to say, toxic male culture. (For a while there I was part of some pretty toxic subcultures, but I like to think I’m getting better.)
Also cis/het male, but raised in a situation that let me miss out on some of the toxic masculinity. There are still things I catch though. Things I wasn’t even aware of. Probably some I’m still not.
Cis/ace-demi male, and I doubt I’ve ever acted the way men are “supposed” to act. I suspect being the only boy in my generation had a lot to do with that.
I always knew I’m a woman (though begrudingly sometimes, I still hate having my period), and I don’t usually really care. Like, it was never an issue. I always thought that’s what it means to be cisgender. You’re f/m and you just don’t question it. Or it’s not important to you. Which kind of has the same effect, no?
Don’t think that that’s true at all. The socially prescribed gender role of “girl” or “woman” has never, ever fit for me and I’ve fought against it my entire life to some degree.
Yet, I am unquestionably a woman.
I don’t think gender roles and gender are the same or even very closely related. I know a trans man who wears lipstick sometimes, so clearly he did not transition to get away from everything feminine. I also know a trans woman who is butch.
Yeah, that’s how I feel too. Society would probably think I’m very masculine if you ran my life through a binary algorithm. But I am 100% a ciswoman, always have been, and will fight anyone who says otherwise.
There’s got to be more to it than feeling like you don’t meet the expectations, or it being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Gender identity, gender presentation, and gender roles are 3 very different things…though gender stereotypes tend to conflate them.
I can’t really explain it to you without going into some vague diatribe or a very specific, disturbing account of my own non-universal personal experience as a binary dysphoric trans woman that makes me think I should really look into a career writing body horror.
it’s the people with the rigid ideas about how men and women should behave who interpret women or men wanting to do other things as ‘wanting to be the other gender’. It’s a fantasy of the people who like to prescribe how others should act.
Wanting to drive cars, build trains, ride horses, cook, win boxing matches or elections has nothing at all to do with what gender a person has. Some societies only allow a certain gender – or in most cases, rather, sex, because both are seen as the same thing – to do one or another of those things.
As far as I as a cis lesbian women can understand what being trans is about, being trans is something more basic, a deep-seated knowledge that the body parts don’t match how the person feels as a person. Wanting to drive cars, build trains, …. is also not related to being trans, cis or none-binary.
Though there is an indirect relation as society’s pressure to conform to a gender-stereotype puts pressure on different things depending on which gender you are perceived to be.
When, historically speaking, women presented as male to keep safe or do jobs women weren’t supposed to do, I think it’s farfetched to interpret all or even most of them as trans or non-binary. In a society that is very rigid, people hide who they are to be safe or do the things they want. Passing as someone of the group in power is a way to gain opportunities, wealth, safety- as long as you don’t get caught.
I always was annoyed with people who wanted to tell me I shouldn’t do things (go out at night, learn to code, …) because I was a women. I wanted the same opportunities, the same rights, the same freedom as the men. Never wanted a penis though, Freud really had some crazy ideas.
I’m also annoyed with everyone who keeps commenting whenever I wear lipstick, just because they are not used to it, because it doesn’t fit in with their idea of me being butch (which never was my idea, I’ll stop now before the rant gets going).
Carla wants to Taste The Rainbow!
Of Thanks
As the parent of a soon-to-be teenager, I absolutely would buy a 36×24 framed print of panel 5 and hang it above my bed.
Carla knows pretty well how people work.
…. look it’s probably reading too much into this but…
Is Carla Bi?
As sexualities carry between universes…. She’s asexual and…her romantic attraction is hard to determine, but it at least potentially includes women, possibly exclusively – her only known romantic relationship was with Malaya, who, if she identified as anything but a woman in that universe, was not out to anyone, even Ultra-Car.
And anything that’s even hinted at attraction in this universe has been aimed at women. Both in actions and in her comments.
But what’s Word of God on whether Carla is UltraCar from Shortpacked and whether her asexuality carries over?
She’s definitely talked about not being personally interested in sex.
She has demonstrated an interest in being stepped on, so she may be into BDSM contact that doesn’t involve actual sex.
Ultra Car called herself homoromantic (as in women). I fail to see why that would be different here.
Guessing the thought process is that UC might reassess her orientation to include a non-female Malaya, but since we never saw SP!Malaya explore gender it’s a moot point. (Shortpacked’s diversity already tore a hole in that reality, there’s nothing left to lose!)
There’s no logic…I just forgot her referring to herself as homoromantic and didn’t want to extrapolate too hard from the evidence I did remember.
(Cismale here; spent a lot if time with queer/trans/enby, etc, friends)
Probably too simplistic; but I feel it coupd be summed up, “Gender is what you nake of it?”
Re: Personal identification and expression vs. societal roles and expectations; passive cis acceptance vs. active trans/enby reconstruction; etc.
Carla is 100% spot on in every possible way here and I am HERE for it.
I mean she’s spot on, but she’s not really helping Malaya. I was kind of hoping for more.
Of course, she’s Carla. She’ll likely follow up on this.
She *is* helping Malaya, Malaya just doesn’t appreciate it…yet.
I don’t think that’s really all that helpful. Of course, we don’t know what Malaya really wanted.
But mostly, I wanted to see them actually talk.
CONCUR. Carla is easily the most put together of all the chars.
Is that a pun on the other version of her being a robot?
Will the real Lucy please stand up?
I’m feeling what Carla is saying. I’m NB, and for me gender is kind of a loose idea, it’s just there. I also know that for trans men/women/anything in between or around, gender may matter a lot! And both are equally important! Also I really LOVE how Carla is the like, ultimate Malaya kryptonite. Malaya can be as sarcastic as possible but Carla is just able to flip anything around.
She continues to be one of my favourite characters.
Many people are not ready for a nuanced discussion of gender.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DS9gWclX0AAmT20.jpg
Why is the Scarlet Spider talking to that infant about gender? That discussion is likely to end in either a full diaper or Ben dissolving into brownsauce.
Ah-ha
GENDER IS FUCKIN WEIRD Y’ALL
Gender is a prison and I chewed through the bars.
not written by me, but “gender is a performance and I just got booed off stage” is my favorite