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NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! 🤯
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
Patrick Willems @patrickhwillems.bsky.social ⋅ 1m
The Verge @theverge.com ⋅ 2d
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️𝓝𝓪𝓷𝓲 
CARLA-AID woMAN: “OH YEAH… YOU DO!!!”
If Carla ain’t showin’ up in mere seconds (with or without pie-throwing devices), I will be disappoint.
‘Course, “in mere seconds” could mean a dozen strips, so maybe December, our time?
i don’t expect carla being someone to necessarily hide it but she prolly wouldn’t bother giving joyce an explanation either
I look forward to how Carla responds to this. And I agree that she will show up despite not appearing to be within hearing distance right now.
Carla is by far my favorite character in this comic.
First of all Joyce, there’s not really “all the way” like you’re probably imagining, because feminine and masculine are not opposites. There are many different kinds of genders, some of which don’t even have names yet.
Second of all, yes, NB and genderfluid folk also fall under the trans umbrella!
⚧️
Hey, she’s working on it!
See, I actually didn’t know this. Thought they were like, separate categories or something. In retrospect it seems extremely obvious.
… Luckily for me I have the internet to teach me these things because I have a friend who’s way more in the know who would absolutely mock me mercilessly for my ignorance.
> who would absolutely mock me mercilessly for my ignorance.
Your “friend” is an ass. Unless their goal is to discourage understanding and curiosity, this is horribly counter-productive.
Yes. This. What you said.
what was said previously. mocking people for honest ignorance is counterproductive. Willful ignorance will get mocked after ignored corrections, but honest didn’t know? You get a lesson and a chance to ask questions
It also depends on the fact that some people doesn’t really consider themselves trans that have theses terms. My best friend, who is genderfluid, doesn’t consider themselves trans while I, who is agender, do consider myself trans. I guess it’s really a matter of representation / label.
Yeah it’s interesting, because I didn’t think of myself as trans either for some time, because as far as I know I’ve always been this way, not really transitioning from any one “original” gender and only not knowing what to call myself until relatively recent years.
But akin to a term like neurodivergence, that’s just how umbrellas work, fluid and all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I didn’t consider myself trans for a time because I felt like to do so would be coopting the transgender experience or something. My understanding of trans narratives was of suffering, and I wasn’t suffering *that much* (and looking back, I question this as well) around my gender, and so it would be inappropriate for me to take that label for myself.
I’m glad I got past that and now have a much wider understanding of trans people and see that it is, in fact, a label that is right for me.
I like the “words are tools” ethic. Title yourself with what feels right, change your mind if want, respect what people call themselves, don’t get too hung up on formal definitions and granular doctrine. Always remember that while words and titles can have a lot of impact, they don’t actually confer real essence onto anything, they’re just noises we make to attempt to communicate.
I think the important thing is that nonbinary/genderfluid/genderqueer/agender/otherwise gender non-conforming are entitled to be under the trans* umbrella if they want. If they don’t want, if they prefer to be considered entirely separately from binary trans*, that is entirely their choice to make.
Honestly, I’ve been an out and happy enby for ~7 years and I just found out last year that my ass counts as trans. My life partners have been buying me trans flag coloured stuff for four years and just assumed I knew.
Most friends treat me like I’m some shade of NB but i just don’t feel the need or desire for that sort of label at the moment. (also i just really don’t love the word “non-binary”). I do think of myself as queer though (And i do love the word “queer”)
As a computer guy, I want to respectfully, and with some humour, suggest “analogue”. Binary implies discrete states, non-binary both suggests a _lack_ of discrete states, but also that something is defined by what it isn’t. Anything being defined as “not something else” always sucks. Analogue can absolutely comprise discrete states but offers a functionally infinite range throughout its scale, which accomodates nuance and also adjustability.
haha, i like it but it feels like it would be inscrutable to most people, and while some don’t mind explaining their gender, i’d rather dispense with it so long as i can cope with just being read as a weirdo dude. =)
also, i think that sense is more or less intrinsic to the catch-all term “queer”, which i also like because it feels openly dynamic and political. (not that other identifiers don’t have these connotations too, that’s just where i’m at personally)
I don’t think I have ever commented, but I have to let you know that I super super love this. Having used “enby” a lot, I really appreciate your point about the challenge of being defined by what you are not. <3 Thank you.
I like the idea of being analog. Analog in a digital world!
(“Analog” was also the name of a sci-fi magazine I read as a kid.)
…But never analogous!
It’s a bit odd for me, ‘cuz being trans, most folx in the work world do expect me to fit into a certain binary. And honestly, I’m just much too lazy to follow through on putting effort into passing for one gender or another. Too much work! I’d much rather be a happy lump of Play-Doh (not wedded to any certain mould) than worry about being seen as any particular gender.
…Glad I’m not the only one! ;-D
I just need to point out that the last panel is absolutely hilarious in portuguese because “transes” as a verb means to uh, to fuck. To boink.
Dorothy’s Inner Monologue: On the one hand, outing someone like this, even if they are public about their status, could be inappropriate if it might change the way Joyce thinks about them. On the other hand…the face she makes when I tell her would be hilarious.
Boy this Mac and Cheese and Pepper is delicious.
I think maybe there’s also a little bit of where do I even start “transes all the way” and I wish that gender and sexuality class had been a little more thorough on this topic.
Joyce probably should have taken more gender studies courses
That is confirmation that Joyce does not know Carla is trans. Been curious about that one for literal years, wondering if it had happened offscreen during the timeskip.
I think there’ve been a couple bits at least *heavily* implying that she doesn’t even post-skip (starting with the fact that I’m pretty sure she told her mom she didn’t know anyone who’s trans), but yeah, pretty sure this is the first time it’s been explicit and unavoidable since “Carla gets a single and I don’t know why”.
Wait I thought students from rich families with connections could just pull strings to get singles anyway? I’m not sure how it works in eastern colleges…
I went to an Eastern college, and I don’t think getting a single required anything except more money for the rent.
College I went to, *no one* got single rooms. When you require a portion of your population (often freshmen, at minimum) to live in campus housing, unless you’re able to build new dorms at whim, living accommodations can sometimes be limited by pure supply and demand.
I attended a college undergoing rapid growth at the time, so most dorms were four-to-a-room (some were 5!!!), other than the RA (who got a single).
Yeah, there are definitely schools that have serious housing shortages. I’ve heard of times where dorm lounge rooms had to be converted to residential ones, at least short-term.
That happened at Purdue while I was there in the late ‘90s. They didn’t build more housing until years after I graduated.
That’s still going on here! One room had a YouTube channel 8 dudes 1 dorm
Depends on the School. My school had singles because they were designed into the building and were physically too friggin’ tiny to hold more than one bed.
So the housing department used ’em to make more money off the antisocial rich kids.
I had one for a semester, but that’s because my roommate the semester before failed out. Otherwise, it just wasn’t an option.
I got an open double as a single because I freaked my roomate out too many times. He probably didn’t care for our neighbors either. His desk reading book was Richard Nixon’s biography. I think he left it out because he thought it was a crucifix for me, not so much lol.
It’s probably just pay a little more. There’s at least two other singles on the floor. … in the forbidden zone
That’s the thing that raises so many questions that I keep hoping we circle back around to.
Dang. Forgot to reroll.
Nah that was a one-off absurdist/surreal punchline
Indeed. If anything, it’s a lampshade for the fact that these are real life dormitories with a lay-out that leaves rooms unaccounted for in the comic. If Willis finds an explanation, it will be terribly mundane.
There is nothing strange about the singles at the end of the hallway. We do not ask questions about the singles at the end of the hallway. The answers would be boring. We do not go to the rooms at the end of the hallway. Nobody important lives there.
There is nothing strange about the forbidden zone.
I mean, there’s a lot of ways to get singles – I had a medical one most of my time in college just due to allergies – but the clear implication (especially in how we heard it, from Joyce and as a mystery) is that it was among other things a way for IU to respect Carla’s gender identity (and therefore not anger the Ruttens) while not potentially putting the Very Publicly Out trans girl with a roommate who was cis and may be transphobic (or whose parents are) and get a fuss being made *there*. Hell, given how publicly out she is, the roommate and family could be fine with it and there’d STILL be bigots spewing tranpshobic vitriol.
So yeah, Carla almost certainly has a single so she doesn’t have to room with anyone else so she doesn’t have to put up with transphobia (at least SOME of the policy makers will be genuinely decent people,) and the university doesn’t get backlash from either a roommate or the general public (but the University, as an entity, is most worried about PR), and even now that more real universities are developing more consistent protocols for out trans students living on campus, the fact that Carla is a tech heiress who is very publicly out in a relatively conservative state means her situation IS more politically thorny than average.
The less charitable interpretation is that the university let her live on the women’s side, but still considered her male and didn’t want to have a woman as her roommate.
Sure Carla COULD have a single for any number of reasons, but most of the audience assumes it is because she is trans. Joyce wouldn’t be saying “some reason” if she knew.
She’s literally mentioning saying that to her mom in this strip.
The college my kid is at put a trans man with a trans woman in a room together. They both seem fine with it.
On the one hand, that does neatly sidestep the “is the roommate gonna be transphobic” issue. On the other hand, unless that college normally makes a habit of putting men and women together, that ain’t great. “Trans man” and “man” aren’t different genders any more than “man with no health problems” and “man who has to take testosterone due to testicular cancer” are.
(Now, their gender /experiences/ might be/are probably different, but that’s not the same thing.)
They suspect it was a paperwork mistake but it’s not a problem so they’re not complaining according to my kid. They all just think it’s kind of funny.
now I’m wondering about a guy’s no-show roommate on my freshman floor. They had a female name, and I’d assumed it was a paperwork mistake. But maybe the school was being douchey and they decided not to go because of it.
Doesn’t surprise me at all that Joyce didn’t know. Surprises me more that Dorothy seems to. I don’t think that’s been shown before?
I know that theoretically Carla is super-publicly out thanks to publicity about the “Rutten daughter” and the court case and all, but it’s never who on the floor had made that connection. Other than the handful where it’s been brought up on panel.
There isn’t really a lot of connecting to do – her coming out was a cover story on Newsweek. Presumably there was a name involved. Even if they don’t read Newsweek, it probably was then copied by a zillion other sources and is probably in her parents ‘personal life’ section of their wikipedia.
I mean sure. Anybody who went looking up Carla on wikipedia would find out, but is that really something most college freshmen are going to do with other kids on their floor?
For connection I really meant “connected Carla across the hall with a Newsweek cover they might have seen years ago when they were just kids”
I mean you don’t really have to. A lot of news and stuff just gets absorbed passively, especially when you’re a kid. Walking by your parents watching it on TV, or having to listen to it in their car on the radio. Plus parents talk about this stuff. Not to mention social media as a factor too. It’s really easy to end up like “oh the Rutten girls on my floor. The Rutten girl…Ohhh right”
Additionally this floor is very queer and socially conscious. If carlas parents went to court then she’s probably an important local trans figure in some way.
First, we don’t even know when the Newsweek cover was. Assuming it’s only from when they were just kids is unfounded.
Second, Carla’s only one year older than them. Her court case could only have been a year or two ago. Yes, I think some of them are familiar with it. It’s like how we occasionally get articles about Elon Musk’s or any other public figure’s kids.
Hysteria. It’ll be so unpopular but so funny if this is going some kind of trans Joyce direction ever (trans commenter)
Honestly, the amount of freedom she’d get on being able to ditch all the tradfem indoctrination would be dizzying, and I’m here for it
She can do that regardless.
I mean she is kind of an autobiographical character and Willis does use he/they..
Yeah, it’s conceivable eventually.
With enough story arcs I’m sure we can get Joyce to at least try she/they. I can see it in my mind’s eye.
Maybe the twist isn’t that Joyce is non-binary, maybe the twist will be that Willis was really a woman all along and this comic was her way of coming out.
Duh duh duh duuuuuuuuuuuuh!
When I was in undergrad a friend changed their name and it took me six months to realize it was because they were trans and not just because they were going by a nickname now.
After using my deadname at work last school year, I’ve changed it this year, and I got all prepared to answer students’ questions, but none of them have asked. Most seem to assume I’m a woman (and I’ve kept using “Ms.” as at title as I don’t like “Mx.” or “Mr.” any more than “Ms.”), but once, a few weeks into the year, we were walking to music when a kid was like, “Wait, are you a boy or a girl?” And I said, “Uhhhh… no.” And then it didn’t come up again.
Yeah… this happened to me too, except they’re someone I only saw occasionally, and it took me like 10+ years to realize that they’d even changed their name, let alone why. Last few times I saw them (which at this point were a number of years back, just because I haven’t been throwing potlucks like I used to), I think their FB or email or something used their new, chosen name, but I didn’t even realize that it was a name change and not just them using a different name on FB. And they didn’t correct me, at least as far as I recall. But then I recognized their photo on the staff page of their place of employment, and oh hey, that sure wasn’t the name I was calling them… >.< Whenever I see them again, I will owe them an apology for being oblivious.
“Joyce, we have some things to tell you about your sister.”
“I don’t have a sister.”
“Yeah, about that…”
(I know, Dorothy doesn’t know that either.)
I think only Ethan knows.
There is at least one more person who knows that.
Jordan?
Becky, I think.
Not that I recall.
According to my headcanon, yes.
Jocelyne knows.
Gnngh. Poor Jocelyne.
“You do know at least one trans person. Guess who…” And then just refuse to tell her if she’s right or not.
My money is on her first guess being Danny. Just because it would be funny.
i think she still doesn’t know danny’s name despite him with ‘dating sal as an accomplishment’ lol unless sal insisted that she remember his name lol
I approve of Joyce being incredibly dismissive of Danny.
She should only call him Sal’s boyfriend.
She proceeds to guess every cast member except Carla. Carla’s head explodes.
I’m not sure what her reaction to that would be.
“Should I be happy that I’m passing perfectly, or annoyed that someone isn’t thinking about me?”
Definitely the second.
Carla, leaning against the door and listening, face screwed up in a Scream position
–Dave, “why does she not realize this is all about me?”
Oh this is gonna get hilarious by which I mean JOYCE – INCOMING!
…. so I take it Joyce didn’t get an A in Gender Studies…
Eh, I mean, it was VERY 101 (and also a curriculum written in 2010) so I can see it not going as in-depth as, well. A 101 class with a curriculum written in 2023, to start with.
But also, VERY 101 was what, say, Walky or Joyce needed to grasp the material. So I wouldn’t be shocked if the end of the class DID touch on the idea that the gender binary is made up and also gender isn’t a straight line, but Joyce hasn’t fully Gotten It yet. It takes some people, even generally sympathetic and “with it” people, a while to comprehend Gender Nuance.
I seem to recall that Prof. Leslie mentioned she wished she’d gotten to discuss more genders in that first semester.
Found it.
(Someone feel free to tell me how I’m able to remember DoA comics so much better than, say, world history, or my own life.)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/woodburnhall/
Joyce getting an A in gender studies is canon. And also that she hasn’t finished absorbing what she learned there.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/murdering/
I’m surprised Carla wasn’t the first person Dorothy named.
Dorothy knows that their status is known to Joyce, but won’t out Carla to Joyce, on principle.
How can you “out” someone who’s already very publicly out
To be fair, RL is full of people who assume someone is out but turns out to be only out to their trusted social circle.
Carla’s coming out made the news. It doesn’t get more public than that.
*Is* Carla publicly out? It’s hardly a secret, but I think the only time she’s alluded to it on screen was saying that a dick drawn on her door was a hate crime, unless I’m missing something in the archives (which, tbf, I might be).
Is Carla out publicly about being a transwoman or do people just know her as a girl? Joyce may just assume she’s cis.
Near as we can tell Carla’s transition was literally litigated in a prominent legal battle
I think Carla is out publicly, as a result of her parents’ name recognition and legal cases, but most people who meet her know her as a girl. Joyce thinks she’s cis.
This makes sense, I think you’re right
I would argue that carla is not so much “out” as “obnoxious”, and her ego won’t permit her to allow anyone to not know about her
She talks about herself a lot, but I think the closest she’s come to bringing it up is when talking to Sal about roller derby. https://www.dumbingofage.com/purpleandskates/
During the whiteboard ding-dong bandit storyline, when she discovers a perma-dick on her door she also very openly says (to Ruth i think, but in front of lots of other ppl) “this is a hate crime” before fi ding out the bandit has ding-donged many doors and not just hers. This suggests she’s just generally out.
I guess she assumes anyone could know, but it’s not something she introduces about herself. maybe in Leslie’s class. So not something she introduces about herself, apropos of nothing.
I’m re-evaluating, she does bring up gender stuff sometimes. https://www.dumbingofage.com/shits/
She was on the cover of Newsweek when she came out. It’s public information about her by this point.
True, albeit something tells me Joyce may have not always been allowed a diverse selection of news media, even not attending a high school who’s paper who’s title contained “High Times”.
Oh for sure, but the question was if she was publicly out and the answer is yes.
That’s kind of weird though, since while it’s “publicly out” in a sense, it’s also not something she ever brings up and it’s not something most people her age would have any reason to know about. Even kids allowed a diverse selection of news media don’t often read Newsweek in their pre-teen years and are even less likely to remember it years later.
Nor is it something Carla brings up, despite her apparent desire for attention. She hinted at it to Sal once. That’s about it.
It seems to me most people on their floor know about it. Nobody goes ‘wait, what?’ about her calling drawing a dick on her door a hate crime, Sal knows what her reason is without being told, and if ANYBODY in this dorm keeps up with the news, it’s Dorothy. IIRC, we don’t have any mention of her coming out as a pre-teen, so I don’t see a reason to assume that’s when the news would’ve been. Hell, these days you get periodic news updates on your phone and sometimes computer. It wouldn’t be hard for her peers to know that way. If they get curious if its that daughter, it’s also almost certainly on her parents wikipedia page.
Harrison did comment about how she “used to be just this tall”, which has to push it back a ways.
That’s true, I did forget about that, though I’d also point out it’s about a head smaller so it’s still probably within the past five years or so, before her last growth spurt.
Carla is in this weird middle-ground. You can’t imagine she’d ever be closeted, but at the same time, she’s hardly pulled a Becky and gone “I’M TRANS EVERYONE!” on-screen either.
If someone were to accidentally refer to Carla as trans (in a non-asshole manner, of course), I doubt Carla would mind. But intentionally doing so might be a bridge to far if you don’t have actual confirmation that Carla’s okay with it.
Only Mary would out her maliciously. And Joyce was back in La Porte with Becky and Jocelyn when Mary tried her shit, and Carla got her cold, swift, and absolutely ridiculous revenge (which Joyce might have asked about, had she been around).
And even Mary didn’t actually out her. She used it as an attack on her, but I don’t think she said anything about it to anyone else.
Yeah, it’s more of a Carla Fun Fact.
Honestly, my headcanon is that a lot of her day-to-day attention-seeking behavior is specifically designed to draw attention AWAY from her transgender status, i.e. make sure that she’s known as “that obnoxious bragging roller-skating girl” rather than “that transgender kid”. She tends to get pretty serious and/or uncomfortable when her trans status is actually brought up, even indirectly.
Which isn’t to say her usual obnoxiousness is fake or something, of course, any more than, say, Becky’s is fake! But just as Becky kind of plays it up to the hilt in order to make her identity impossible to ignore, Carla kinda does the opposite.
That’s basically my read too. It hurts less to be hated for being an asshole than to be hated for being trans.
she needs so many hugs
–Dave, alas, the line for hugs for DoA characters is so long
That way they’re so busy disliking her for something she can control, they forget about disliking her for an inherent attribute she can’t.
Annoying isn’t a gender
Don’t erase me like this.
But it can engender irritation.
Carla is CIS, it’s other people who are uncomfortable with who and what she is
Oh please don’t use that prefix as if it were an acronym.
That’s not what that word means…
What
“cis” as latin meaning on the same side of, used as a modifier of the word gender, same as “trans”, meaning on the opposite of. As opposed to used as an acronym meaning “comfortable in skin”, which is used a lot by the gc crowd, to both sound less feral, and to trivialize what we go through. It gets picked up and used in mainstream places often, and I’ve known several people who honestly thought the acronym was what it was, and used it innocently enough.
Oh Joyce, no… nonbinary people are not half-trans :/
Joyce still doesn’t know her brother sister count is off by one
Two, -1 +1.
Carla is sensinf a disturbance some one is not acknowledging her or her perfection.
Sensing. My f key is to small for my thumbs.
“Transes” sounds like something Smeagol would say when running for office.
Or the current speaker of the house….
They’re thieves! They’re thieves! They’re filthy little thieves! Where is it? Where is it? They stole it from us, our precious. Curse them! WE hates them! it’s ours it is, and we wants it! We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us.
It’s annoying how accurate this is to Republican rhetoric.
I’m pretty sure this is exactly how I’m going to hear conservative rhetoric about gender issues from now on. (Thank you.)
Republicans yelling out of the hole in the Congress building up to the sky: “DAMN YOU, TRANSGENDI!!”
Me, jumping on a Green Goblin Glider with my fellow transgenders: “HA HA HA AH HA HA HA H A HA!!!!”
ive seen it used as ‘transes ur gender’ meme lol
She’s learning, but yeah, does feel we’re going with Jocelyn soon, which is nice. Also, guess this confirms she still doesn’t know a lot about Carla’s situation, why she has her own room, etc.
The only thing that has me intrigued is how her reaction will be.
she did say she ‘wanted a sister her whole life’ so after that heart to heart/potential drama is over, they can do some ‘girly’ things like go clothes shopping together or so
Mystery of Carla looking “bigger” about to be solved.
Joyce, your mother tried to kill you and then sold your childhood house and home to give the money to the people who enabled that attempt, she is not an authority on any subject. Yes, having sexual impulses is normal. Carol is just blaming the newest thing Fox told her to blame.
That being said, I swear if we don’t get more Jocelyne this (or next) storyline and instead get more Malaya I will do nothing and continue reading.
I have a feeling that those calls that she ignored previously were not only to warn about the stupidity that Carol did, something tells me that she was trying to get them to contact her to open up to her.
Its things like panel 1 that make me think Joyce is at least half putting on a show for Dorothy, so that Dorothy can feel like a mentor. Joyce knows its fine, like academically. It’s her learned reflexes that are messing with her and she knows it. https://www.dumbingofage.com/effin/
I don’t think she gives any weight to Carol blaming transgender people.
I’d be fine with Malaya never appearing in this comic again. I know she has issues like everyone else, but her attitude is infuriating at best. At worst she needs to be sent back to elementary school on the slim chance they can teach her to respect other people.
or at least learn the word “phony”.
these kinda ppl that are strict about sexual purity and like “my daughters not allowed to date til she’s 30” are the same to go around and ask “where are my grandchildren” lol
Iirc, in another universe, Carol was EXTREMELY “where are m grandchildren”
So, Dorothy is implying it’s Joyce’s brither/sister, but the context would seem to hint Dorothy is who is being referred to.
It’s a little confusing who we’re supposed to think is being talked about, at least to me.
I would assume Carla?
I see it more as Dorothy cringing at Joyce’s vocabulary. She’s got a lot of reading to do. While I’m sure a lot of people have used “trans” as a meme verb, Joyce’s usage of it is definitely not good.
Dorothy doesn’t know about Joyce’s sister (far as we know), so she’s not hinting about her. It’s not necessarily about a specific, unnamed trans person as much as a general thing, and that the named trans people they’re aren’t “half trans.”
The only person who we know knows about Jocelyne is Ethan, who doesn’t seem to have told anyone. It’s POSSIBLE any given character could have discovered Jocelyne’s website under her own name and realized who she is, but we have no evidence any of them have.
And yeah, it’s the idea that nonbinary people are in-between the Two Real Genders and binary transition is therefore More Transitiony that’s a problem.
But also, it’s pretty much certain DOROTHY knows Carla’s trans, because by all indications this was a pretty public thing and Dorothy would absolutely keep up with a local political situation like whatever litigation went down with the Ruttens. I could see Dorothy going “Okay, outing someone without their express consent is bad, but ALSO, Carla assumes most people know which presumably includes Joyce because her transness is public, so…” as part of her thought process in the last panel.
Like, if you met someone who didn’t know Laverne Cox was trans, and they knew Laverne Cox personally, and had plenty of interactions with her where it never came up, and then they said “I don’t know any trans people!” to you a third party, is it outing when it’s on her Wikipedia page? It’s kind of like that, I suspect.
Yeah, it’s a weird state with Carla, partly because even we as the audience don’t know who knows. She’s theoretically out publicly, but that was a big thing when she was a kid and there’s no reason to expect any random college students to know about it.
Everyone knows but Joyce (and probably Becky) is a possibility, but so is no one knowing accept those we’ve actually seen comment on it and probably everywhere in between.
Even if she’s theoretically out, but people in this group generally don’t know and she seems happy that way, I’d say it was bad form to out her.
Brown isn’t a rare last name, though, especially in America. Like, maybe Jocelyne refers to Joyce on her blog, but she may just be talking about her Fundy parents on there. And I don’t think Jocelyne is the type of person to want to give Joyce public attention. Joyce has probably been Jocelyne’s favorite of her siblings, even though she’s worried about her being accepting. I feel like Joyce would be accepting, but maybe not super sensitive about things. Although compared to religious abuse, it’s probably like heaven.
Confession, it took me literally five years to realize my friend was trans. When he mentioned wearing a binder, I just assumed it was a back support thing because he worked out a lot. I thought it was also workout-related when he mentioned having cramps. He’s French on his mom’s side, so when I noticed his ID showed a feminine version of his name I figured it was just a weird European spelling. I didn’t connect the dots until we were having a conversation and he pointed out how something had changed since his pre-transition days and suddenly ohhhh, those things are all related. I never knew him as anything but a man who looked vaguely androgynous, so it never occurred to me that he might not have always identified that way.
One time I was subbing for this 8th grade class, and some students were talking about cramps and how periods suck, and one girl turned to the boy in the group and said, “Wait, why are you complaining about this?” And he was like, “Because I have a uterus. Do you not know I’m trans?”
And then I realized I had deadnamed this kid during attendance, but I hadn’t even noticed because he played it off so cooly… like, I said, “[Deadname]?” And he was like, “It’s pronounced [his name].” Which, like, wasn’t that far off, and as a substitute I was mispronouncing names in attendance all the time (some teachers include pronunciation notes/nicknames or different names in their sub binder, and bless those teachers), so I just was like, “Oh, okay” and moved on… then I heard the conversation and made sure to apologize to him later.
8th grade?! What a king.
For real. Also, I subbed for that class again that school year, and I heard him say to someone else that I was his “favorite substitute,” and I was like T-T. All I did was apologize and offer to change the name on the roster I was given, but the bar is low.
Seriously this upcoming generation is awesome.
Predicting that Joyce will run through a list, Dorothy will try to come up with a way to respond without outing Carla, only for Carla to burst in and proclaim it loudly.
Why does everyone keep talking about “outing” Carla when she’s already out publicly to everyone? Just because Joyce is oblivious doesn’t mean this will be “outing her”.
Because it is a sensitive subject for people; even if Carla isn’t hiding it, directly stating it to Joyce might feel uncomfortable because of Joyce’s upbringing, and how she might react.
Carla isn’t out by her own choice. She never had that choice. She was publicly outed by a magazine. She hardly ever touches upon the subject in public, which is why her being trans was only communicated by hints & allusions in the comic. Which worked really well, because we somehow all know Carla is trans. But she’s not at all eager to discuss it.
Being known as a publicly out transgender figure =/= being known as trans to specific peers and neighbors. If Joyce is unaware of it, regardless of it being public domain knowledge, then telling her about it counts as outing Carla.
Good rule of thumb: don’t out queers behind their back because it’s removing our own agency of choosing who to inform of what details and when and how much.
Come to think of it. We’re all
at the two trans ladies in Joyce’s life having their gender details be unknown to Joyce, but like. Wouldn’t pointing out people’s usage of they pronouns in this context also count as outing them? Joyce wasn’t explicitly aware of booster and Malaya being under the genderqueer and/or trans umbrellas.
(Fwiw, I’m one of them who “transes all the way”, as Joyce so indelicately put. Dorothy doesn’t even know where to start with that, looks like. Does she correct her usage of transition? Does she elaborate that non-binary identities are still fully trans even without “full transition”, whatever that might mean. Lmao, poor Dorothy)
I love our strange little tesselating matryoshka dolls that we operate within.
That’s an interesting question – if someone tells you they use they/them pronouns and you don’t know what that means are they out to you or not? If someone later explains it to you, are they outing that person without their permission, or is it reasonable to assume that that person thought they already were out to you?
FWIW, Joyce’s reaction to learning Booster’s pronouns was to say she’d research it later, which Sarah said meant asking her, and Booster did not object to this, so I guess others cluing her in is probably fine with them.
A few strips later, she learned that Malaya was “like Booster”, although she still wasn’t entirely sure what that actually was.
I had links, but they vanished:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/uses/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/pronouns/
Gonna go with:
yes, they are out to you — they have explained their Identity to you regardless of your ability to comprehend it
no, the third party is not outing them — they have already identified themselves to you, which is strong implicit if not explicit permission for you to have knowledge of their identity regardless of the source
yes, it’s reasonable for them to assume they’re out to you
It’s not directly comparable to Carla’s situation since it’s not really possible to pass as a cis enby, so informing someone of your preferred gender is *definitionally* coming out to them, whereas a trans binary person can theoretically be open about their gender but closeted or quiet about the fact that they needed to transition to it
The question though is “Is Carla publicly out to everyone?”
Sure, anyone can google her and probably find stories about the old court case, but how many in the peer group here actually have?
If Joyce is the only one oblivious, that’s one thing. If most of the floor doesn’t know and it’s only the few we’ve seen specifically comment on it who do, that’s something else.
And we as the audience don’t know which it is.
I wonder if Carla is the same, not knowing who knows. I went through that on a smaller scale when I was coming out as a teenager, and my parents decided it was fine for them to tell some members of my family. And then I didn’t know who knew for a while. When I “came out” to my half-sister, it was in this slightly confusing way where I assumed she already knew.
I developed this “I don’t care who knows” attitude because it wasn’t something I felt I had control over. And *then* my mom encouraged me to not be super out at school (because of her concerns of me being bullied for it), which I absolutely ignored by second semester junior year.
I get like this at work, myself. I’m officially out to like HR and two managers who are both young enough to get it and won’t tell anyone until I’m ready, and two or three other people who either don’t care because its none of their business, or, in one case, won’t say anything because she desperately wants everyone to be happy, and is only upset that I’m still not ready to be out to everyone so she has to use my necronym. But seeing as I usually have a face full of makeup and can’t hide my boobs if I wanted to without putting on a binder, I’m convinced everyone else knows and are just not saying anything for gods know what reason.
Prediction: Joyce is going to successfully guess Zaph despite having met him like once. Dorothy will be completely baffled, having never (on screen) met him.
Does Dorothy know about Joshua/Jocelyne? Ethan is aware, I know, but who else might he have told? And if he DID tell someone and it eventually became known to Dorothy, wouldn’t you think that somewhere along the line someone would have either cluelessly told Joyce, or she’d have heard other people talking about it?
As far as we know, Ethan is the only one. Nobody else here has had any real contact with her, as far as we know.
maybe it’s possible that jocelyne reached out to dorothy after not being able to get in touch with joyce?
How would she have gottenDorothy’s number? And it would be more likely Jocelyne would reach out to Becky anyway, or Ethan if Becky was unreachable too.
Pretty sure Dorothy’s last-panel expression is re: Carla.
i mean, you don’t need a phone number to get in contact with each other, joyce befriended and talked to Sarah’s sister on fb before they met irl
wait, does Dorothy know Joyce knows Zaph?
Joyce doesn’t really talk to Zaph, though, right? And Joyce doesn’t pay attention that well. Hence the fact that she didn’t realize she knows CARLA.
I’m pretty sure that to Joyce, Carla’s still just the tall girl who has her own room for some reason and is very nice (made her good shower shoes). I don’t think it ever even occurred to Joyce to think anything else, and certainly no one’s told her.
Someone’s probably made a few implied remarks that go over her head. Mary knew and would have no problem outing Carla to everyone, but Joyce never considered Mary a friend, but a “b-word”.
i think lucy knows zaph but i don’t think joyce has ever interacted with him unless they were all in a group the first week jen was transferring to her new dorm space
they were. https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/joyce+zaph I checked before making the joke.
Who the hell is zaph?
Zaph’s just zis guy, you know?
(Yes, I’m pretty sure I’ve done that joke before, but it was such a perfect set-up.)
(And for those who don’t know, it’s a Hitchhiker’s reference.)
Ooooh, not where I thought this was going but I like it!
Well irony of ironies!
Sometimes it is like they are trying to explain emotions to a robot or the idea of pets to an extraterrestrial.
Joyce, for heaven’s sake girl.
Sometimes I feel like she makes it so hard on purpose.
i’m surprised trans ppl wouldn’t come up in leslie’s syllabus unless it’s too complicated to go into for a first semester year, versus it not being ‘allowed’ , even if she’s publicly able to tell her class she’s a lesbian but being trans /existing as such is just ‘controversial’ know despite sex changes existing since the 50s
I believe Leslie expressed regret that there wasn’t time to cover that aspect of gender studies. It was a very chaotic semester what with Robin and also the kidnapping.
Cut her some slack, she had a sheltered, and twisted, education because of her mother and fundamentalism. She isn’t trying to be disrespectful, or insensitive she just doesn’t understand.
ohhhh i cant not fuck her
“Joyce. No.”
They ain’t fully transed yet. They are transitioning. (I regret nothing)
genderfluid ppl would prolly be confusing for joyce, or she’d end up overcompensating trying to be supportive like, “should i switch pronouns for you every 5 mins or are you going to be a girl the rest of today and a boy tomorrow?” lol, which might be fine with a closer friend but other than visibly dressing up to present idk if ppl would bother correcting ppl everyday if it’s just someone they barely interact with for liek 5 mins
My wife is gender fluid, and /sometimes/ she’s hour to hour, sometimes it’s day to day, sometimes he’s weeks into changing
So on one hand not being able to recognize when someone is transgender feels like a pretty benevolent form of ignorance.
After all, it implies the transition did its job.
On the other hand, it could also mean Joyce’s mental image of what transgender people look like is messed up. Like Sailor Bubba.
I do feel for Joyce’s “that counts? ” question. The metaphorical drag queen / transgender Venn Diagram still confuses me if I think about it for too long.
“The transition did its job” really depends on what the person wants from their transition. If I every have a medical aspect to my transition, like top surgery, part of my hope would be to add to the ambiguity/the confusion with which some people perceive me. It’s not always (often) safe to be visibly trans, but when it is, I really want that to be the vibe I’m giving off.
But, if you can’t tell if something is trans and you just refer to them with the pronouns you’re told, and you respond graciously to any correction, then you’re not doing too bad in my book.
well, non binary falls under the same ‘umbrella’ but idk if joyce would know that it counts as identifying as trans , or for someone to be “post op” or so, like how some guys say they’d only date/hookup with trans women after they “remove their penis” versus not caring either way, but other than booster going “I use they/them” i don’t know think anyone’s outright told joyce “I’m a trans girl/I identify as a trans male” or so
tbh I’m trans and I think Joyce is doing a pretty good job. Like, she doesn’t quite get it, but she’s taking what she learns in stride really well, and I feel like if Dorothy just said ‘they’re not part way trans, they are all the way nonbinary’ she would get it.
different avatar please
That’s the great thing about listening to people and believing them when they tell you who they are: You don’t have to get it. I think a lot of trans people don’t introduce themselves as trans, they introduce themselves as their gender. how they got (not exactly the right word but you get what I mean) there is irrelevant. So Joyce hears “Hi I am Alice and I am a woman” and thinks “OK, Alice is a woman, good to know”.
Honestly, the idea that you need to spend energy trying to figure out who is trans and who isn’t just seems silly to me. If they want you to know they can tell you.
yeah. even using they/them doesn’t in itself mean Booster or Malaya are trans and/or nonbinary anyway (other details do, like Malaya saying they don’t think they’re a girl), and even if it’s for supposedly supportive reasons you shouldn’t be trying to sus out who is trans. people are trans if they tell you so and that’s all you need to know
“It’s the transgenders that’ve done this to you.”
Transes Bells, Transes Bells, Transes All The Way… When Joyce has sexual impulses tho, they’re quite wild.
I was expecting “it’s transes time in the city”
Not Carla? Only Carla’s parents seem to be kind of… very very supportive, if you know what I mean.
carla and joyce aren’t rly that close, and while there was a lawsuit that implied that it was due to her identity, joyce probably isn’t the type of ppl to google others’ name
unless carla straight up told her while being ‘entranced’ by fuckface, whether joyce understood her language or not if she didn’t directly say the word trans https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/storytimeintensifies/
Only Carla is very much out and proud, isn’t she?
A lot of us just exist. We don’t go out of our way to inform others of our identities, but might discuss them if they come up in discussion. Assuming we feel it is safe to do so.
If there’s anyone she wouldn’t want to talk about this stuff with, a repressed religious (ex)fundie is high on that list.
She was pretty keen on talking about it with Mary. If “I am delighted to know that my very existence upsets you” counts as talking about it.
in that context though, you can’t take her words at face value. that’s something she said to a hostile party, it’s not necessarily reflective of her actual feelings. i’m never gonna honestly disclose my feelings and potential weaknesses to a transphobe, i’ll put on a brave face, perform a sufficient Fuck You, and deal with the feelings later
yep, Mary started crap with her, I’m guessing having seen the Forbes article, or hearing about it elsewhere, and was using that knowledge as a weapon. Carla was disarming Mary; taking away her power, showing her that she didn’t have some imagined upper hand, and mocking her assumptions regarding either of their places in the grand scheme of things
Mary’s a blackmailer and a curtain twitcher. She’s definitely the type who’d search out all their neighbors online, looking for something to hold over them.
She’s very much out as a girl, but she’s rarely done more than allude to be trans and I can’t think of a time she brought it up out of the blue. She hinted at it to Sal early on, when she didn’t know if Sal knew. She had a fairly in depth talk with Malaya about it, when Malaya was questioning her own.
It’s never been part of her “I’m Carla! Pay attention to me!” shtick though.
Hooboy, and what would Joyce think of someone like me…I’m demisexual, so not trans at all, but I do fall under the full LGBTQ spectrum, on the far end. To confuse her even more, it’s also possible for a demisexual to be gay (I’m not, but I know gay/lesbian/bi folks who’re demi, ace, and grace, etc etc.)
Dina is demisexual and pan I believe? Though those labels haven’t exactly been said out loud, and Joyce likely doesn’t know about any of it.
Joyce is gonna have lots of questions about how one knows someone is trans, if they don’t tell her they’re trans.
https://i.makeagif.com/media/8-12-2015/pd7vit.gif at least she knows better than to go the goku route
As a transgender, I’m delighted with this whole conversation so far lol
Introduce yourself to Joyce!
i guess carla isn’t exactly at the forefront of her mind but i imagine this will lead into talking to joycelne again (not sure if dorothy knows tho unless she somehow has an intution about it before becky would)
Dorothy does not know about Jocelyne; Ethan does, but he hasn’t told Joyce, or anyone as far as I’m aware.
yeah ethan prolly isn’t in the best state of mind to talk to joyce about anything or ‘subtly hint’ that she should catch up with her sibling tho like i said in another comment, it’s possible that jocelyne her self reached out to dorothy as well
Wow. Somehow Willis’ made Joyce’s mother even worse.
time to send her a hundred posters in her new apartment of jesus wearing trans robes lol
I mean, I doubt the Holy Spirit had any Y-chromosomes to give, so that checks out.
Jesus H. Christ: the ‘H’ stands for ‘Haploid’
–Dave, how to get Christians to never look at Him the same way again
also i love the detail of dorothy’s fork having a shadow on her chin
I looked up who Zeph is real quick and I feel okay not remembering one of Lucy’s hall-mates.
…don’t feel great about typoing Zaph.
I wonder!
Joyce doen’t know at all that Carla is trans…
or has she never thought about it?
If Joyce really wants to figure out who’s queer around her, all she’s gotta do is ask people questions about Kingdom Hearts. Their answers will tell her everything she needs to know.
oh god dont tell people this power this is MORE EFFICIENT THAN GAYDAR
Somewhere, carla is screaming (i am too lol)AND it’s very cute that joyce doesnt realize she knows trans ppl
*munches sadly*
I wonder, are there a still significant amount of Non-Binary people who prefer to not be referenced as trans people (thinking they might be “appropriating” a term from a “more oppressed” group when they can still easily “pass, for example), or are most of them fully embracing the term?
It’s especially common among AMAB nonbinary people who’ve been treated as interlopers. I should know, I used to be one of those before I ultimately moved on to using she/her pronouns.
It just seems so much like transfeminine folks get the brunt of the “interloper” thing. But it’s like, I have rarely seen trans men be considered as invaders of male safe spaces or w
Well no, because of we still live under a patriarchy.
Cis men are not threatened or oppressed by women. Public space belongs to cis men by default. So male/female experiences and social status and therefore, the respective transition stories of AFAB/AMAB folks are simply not symmetrical
Yeah, but the whole “women’s safety” line is protectionist malarkey, to be honest. Perpetuated hook, line, and sinker by the same patriarchy.
Not all cis men have the world as their space, either. Black cis men certainly don’t. Gay cis men rarely do. And each non SAWCASM man/AMAB person gets hit with the “butwhataboutthewomenandchildren”. Even cis lesbians got hit with this malarkey way back when.
“women’s safety” might be protectionist malarkey, but it’s still widely deployed and effective rhetoric. doesn’t matter if it’s bullshit if it gets a body count.
“not all cis men have the world as their space, either” is true as well, but it doesn’t invalidate the fact that trans women / trans-feminine people in particular face a unique combination of transphobia and misogyny, to the point that the phenomenon has been named “transmisogyny”. it’s intersectionality, the hostility directed at someone being both trans and seen as “actually a man” combine to form a distinct type of oppression that’s different from a simple sum of the two. We’re both threats to women, and objects of disgust to men. This whole combining-to-form-unique-results thing is definitely also the case for trans men as well, being seen as “actually a woman” leads to all sorts of gross infantilization by TERFs for example (and probably other unique things i’m not aware of). the reason transmisogyny in particular is an important named phenomenon is because that particular strain leads to such an overwhelming amount of anti-trans violence. And even then, honestly talking about transmisogyny in a vacuum is a bit reductive too, because we can see that the violence directed at trans women is most intensely directed at black and indigenous trans women in particular, transmisogyny is racialized as well. (this is why those “intersectionality calculators” are bullshit, the whole point of intersectionality is that you can’t just tally up what ways you’re oppressed and what ways you’re privileged, but rather that different aspects of how one is seen by society combine in complex ways)
if we look at the two categories “cis men” and “all women” in a vacuum, we can say that there’s a clear, unilateral difference of power (“cis men are not threatened or oppressed by women”). if we use intersectionality and think about people as a whole, we can see this is dangerously false, within the framework of the patriarchy itself we have white women positioned as fragile objects to be controlled and protected by white men, and white women can and do exploit this to potentially deadly ends against black men in particular (although, the broader silencing power of “white woman tears” is known to pretty much all people of color, and even when deployed against women of color there’s often a weird gendered component, where the target is framed as less feminine / more masculine for their perceived aggression).
i’m not an expert in these things, so i won’t pretend to explain all of what intersectionality is, but it does allow you to both acknowledge “things are more complicated than any single relation between two identity categories” without throwing up our hands and saying it’s all a wash.
i’m not sure what you’re trying to say but you were responding to a transfem saying she had interloper syndrome at first and responded, “I have rarely seen trans men be considered as invaders of male safe spaces or w”
so the context of my reply wasn’t to say that like, all cis men are equally privileged, just that it feels weird to suggest that there is such a thing as a “safe male space” wrt to trans men/mascs. not that trans-exclusionary female spaces are justifiable, but i understand june gloom’s feeling and have heard similar sentiments from other trans women/fems.
and i should add, have felt an inkling of that myself in contexts where as a gender-
amab individual i was ostensibly being welcome into cishet-male-free spaces. though it’s kind of different since i’m not trans so, i haven’t experienced what june gloom describes firsthand
As an AFAB enby, I know I get bugged (and generally nope out, if I was otherwise onboard) when spaces that say they’re for “woman and nonbinary people” really mean “for women (including trans women! if they pass!) and AFAB nonbinary people who we can treat as women.” It’s messed up to the people being excluded, and I know I hate being treated as “woman (limited edition)” or whatever.
We do get a whole shit-ton of guff from cis gay men in gay-male-dominant spaces. Like, it’s not well known, but that’s because there aren’t a lot of us- but people will go absolutely buck rabid at the idea we should be at, like, a gay sauna or a leatherman competition or something.
Er, aren’t a lot of *those spaces*. I don’t know how that came out as “us”.
FYI: the white stripe in the flag is literally for folks who aren’t binary trans.
Bzz bzz, if you’ve missed it i’ve been a busy little dirty bee yesterday
Click my pseud, but do so surreptitiously. That shit is NSFW AF~
tfw you gotta bite your tongue so hard ’cause it’s not yours to tell
This explains why Joyce had that comment in the laundry storyline about Carla “looking bigger” – she was on HRT and developing.
Maybe added progesterone?
Surgery is also an option. Most trans women who go through augmentation don’t always go huge.
progesterone can be magic. another thing that can be magic: trying estradiol through a different route than oral (such as patches or injections). my big trans girl pet peeve is just, how fucking shitty oral estradiol is, if you’re reading this and it’s working for you, stick with what works, but if you’re having trouble hitting consistent levels / not happy with how your transition is going, it might be worth talking to your doctor about a different route. I gave up on patches because they’re a sensory nightmare for me, and I just do a weekly injection.
I second this. I started on patches, they worked ok, then started taking ozempic to get my weight low enough for surgery, and something went awry. now I’m on injections, which are working fantastic, my levels have never been this stable, but I really wish there was a way to do injections without using needles
injections without needles is a holy grail that will make billions and win nobel type prizes if it ever gets figured out ……
Broke: This interaction ends with Joyce learning Carla is Trans
Woke: This interaction leads to Joyce finding out they have a Trans Sibling because she’s been referenced earlier in this chapter.
Bespoke: this interaction leads to Joyce saying “nobody ever TOLD me that was an option!!”
–Dave, and realizing wait, there’s a way she could date Ethan again
Aw, it’s okay, Joyce. She doesn’t know who you are, either. 🤫
Not so. She knows about her jugs.
Oh, lordy, I had forgotten, got to laugh about that one all over again!
Uh huh. And she knows about the kidnapping, which in her headcanon was all about her, too. She was the victim, the hero, probably the perp too. And some other people were present.
Can’t wait to start self-describing as “Transed all the way”
anti-trans people are the biggest perverts, they’ve utterly fetishized the concept and aren’t able to process it as a normal thing to be. It’s like that african “they eat-a the poo-poo” anti-gay preacher. He’s trying to make gay people look disgusting but HE’S the one looking up scat porn on the internet and talking about it in a CHURCH, filthy degenerate.
It’s true. There are soooooo many dick bulges in that one insane anti-trans webcomic I won’t name. So many.
Trans people: we live among you! We’re like the aliens in They Live, except we don’t run anything and any subliminal messages are hallucinated by transphobes.
trans earthling here, can confirm :p
Hoping again we’re moving toward a Jocelyn storyline
Somewhere, off panel, Carla sneezes.
The one time it really CAN be all about Carla and the opportunity is missed. Just wait for the sound of skating.
Dorothy’s about to snap and have Joyce committed for about 2 or 3 weeks to get deprogrammed……
It’s not deprogramming. Joyce just doesn’t know about these things, but she’s trying, she being open-mindedn and she’s willing to learn. And that’s the important thing.
In fairness to Joyce, I didn’t know Carla was trans until the part where Mary put glue in her new skate wheels.
Joyce knew the pronouns but there’s reasons to use they/them other than that Dorothy. This is a pretty shitty explanation actually.
Sometimes you just need to take a deep breath before answering.
God I want Jocelyn to come out to Joyce so BADLY.
Oh boy idk about booster, lets try that again.
eeeeeh?
Omg really twice in a row?
This is acceptable. :3
my dad literally used the phrase “a transgender” today and i just laughed at him in surprise without thinking
“It isn’t my place to say who, but yes. You do. Please don’t take that as a directive to go figure out who it is.”
ahh, the ever present challenge of “is this person OUT out?” I mean i know Carla likes being talked about but is that the line ?
LMAO as i was typing this i saw someone above mention Jocelyn and i ????? page is now even more amazing. I hope she comes out to Joyce one day. Having a big sister is amazing
People are not “more trans” if they do more surgeries.
My 60yo neighbor is trans, and hardly anyone knows. He didn’t do HRT or surgeries or even change his name among friends. It does not make him less trans than my friend who’s had 10 surgeries to get everything right (and even more right after things went wrong). This friend is also not more trans than me, who got the passing i want but decided not to get any more surgeries. We are all equally trans in different ways!