This has been a very informative thread. And I want to thank @Aunt Carol for the recommendation of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. I recommend others read it as an example of what Gender Queer might have been if it were written by someone more talented, intelligent, and introspective, who had been born about 30 years earlier and been an adult by the time poonerism became mainstream. I won't post a PDF copy here but it is relatively easy to find.
I assume most of Churchland's book has nothing to do with "genderqueerness" and Maia is just cherry-picking any part that seems to defend all the opinions she had already held before reading it, assuming she understands it at all.
It crossed my mind that I probably should've properly posted what I was talking about. A lot of people here have already read the book, and I sometimes forget that others are likely following along with these summaries to in lieu of going out of their way to suffer through the comic themselves.
If you're interested, here are the excerpts of Churchland from TPB3:
"Normally, when a sperm fertilizes an egg, the resulting human conceptus has 23 pairs of chromosomes [..] either XX (genetic female) or XY (genetic male)"
- Churchland, page 132.
"However, 1 in 650 born with XXY (Klinefelter syndrome), 1 in 1000 born with XYY, 1 in 5000 born with solo X (Turner syndrome), 1 in 20,000 born with XXYY"
- Churchland, page 138 and US National library of medicine, genetics home reference.
"In the early stages of development, the sex organs (gonads) of the fetus are neutral, but during the second month of fetal development, genes on the Y chromosome produce proteins that transform the neutral gonads into male testes. Absent this action, the gonads grow into ovaries [...] Testosterone produced by the fetal testes is released into the bloodstream and enters the growing brain."
- Churchland, 132
"Small but important correction: Once it passes from the blood into the brain, some testosterone is transformed by an enzyme into a more potant androgen, dihydrotestosterone, and some of that is changed into estradiol, which goes on to masculine the brain."
- churchland 134.
"paradoxical though it may seem, estradiol, a female hormone, is crucial to the masculinizing development. Biology is funny that way. "
- Churchland 134
"finally, the masculinizing of the gonads (making testes, penis, and prostate) occurs before the masculinizing of the brain."
-Churchland, 136
"Sometimes the masculanizing of the brain does not follow the typical path and may be incomplete in various ways. You could have a male genetelia and female brain."
- Churchland 137
"Once we know something about the many factors, genetic and otherwise, that can alter the degree to which a brain is masculanized, it is a little easier to grasp a biological explanation for how a person might feel a disconnect between his or her gonads and his or her gender identity."
-Churchland, 140
I think it's the whole "male brain, female body" thing that's setting off my bullshit detection. While men and woman aren't neurologically identical, I've heard the whole wrong-gender-brain thing trannies love to bandy about is on thin scientific ice. That, and the clear motive Churchland seems to have in making science serve her ends rather than vice versa really makes me squint, but I lack the the depth of understanding I'd need for a proper rebuttal here.
To be fair, though, I don't think Aunt's Shari's concern, although a valid feminist critique of the non-binary trend in general, really applies to Maia. It's not so much that society's devaluing of women got into her head - in general I find Maia spergishly oblivious of what society thinks of anything. Again, I think her problem with being a woman is A. fear of adulthood and B. hatred of her physical body.
100%, I was mostly just trying to drive home that Maia had utterly failed to address Shari's points regardless if they were right or not. By and by large, I agree with you, Maia's primary obstacle in life is just her desire to escape the inevitable, with a hearty helping of pornbrain, mental illness, and entitlement to the side.
Come to think of it... it kinda reminds me of Audrey Hale's manifesto (the pooner shooter).
Despite the obscene references to sex and all, there's also a fixation with describing herself as a "boy". Not a man, really specifically a "boy".
I wonder if it's really common in pooners, or perhaps a characteristic of a certain subgroup of them.
You're not the first person to point that out, and yeah, I can see it. They're both autistic, unintelligent, and struggle with rational thinking in all its forms. Audrey lives way farther down the scale of crazy, obviously, and seems to have been more of a female HSTS? I haven't gone through the whole poonifesto, but it seems she was legit interested in other woman in a way Maia is not.
Maia can also actually draw, on those rare occasions she gives a shit. She's nothing special, and far less capable than her education and experience would imply, but it's worth remembering the stuffed-doll people and lazy perspectives so prominent in genderqueer are on purpose. Maia chose to draw them like that, despite being capable of doing better, and then handed the coloring off to her little sister instead of doing it herself.
Audrey, for all her batshit evil fuckery, was at least selling art made at the very peak of what her talent allowed.
I'm glad this thread exists and that so many others agree on how fucked up this girl is. I am 100% convinced she's not receiving more pushback from the mainstream because no one wants to use her fucking extra-retarded pronouns, and not doing it means opening themselves to wah wah transphobia crying.
I started this thread partly as a result of getting cranky over how many of my family members seemed to think Genderqueer was a curious but ultimately positive story of a young woman coming to terms with herself and learning to be happy, rather than an spoiled autist who daydreams of growing a magic dick and forcing the entire world to bend to her petty, deluded whims.
I didn't really expect all that much from someone who identifies as gender queer, but I was still surprised by the lack of anything even resembling character development/growth. For all her endless navel-gazing, her self-awareness is nonexistent and her character never truly develops beyond her discovery of her uwu special gender identity. She remains as oblivious about herself and the world around her as she was in the beginning; she just learns to be content with her obliviousness.
The more I go through her works, the more she reads as a coward, fleeing any self doubt, hiding from any pain, forcing others to wrap her in security blankets and soothe her with pretty words when the demons in her own mind grow too large to flee. The way she tries so hard to pose as a smart, inquisitive intellectual just highlights how shallow she really is.
Even her gender special-ness was just something Jaina Bee came up with first and introduced her to. Bitch is so uncreative, even the core aspects of her identity are just copies of other people's trends.
I do wonder if Maia's gotten better about her hygiene now, I think that's the most important thing about her growth I care about at this point since that was a huge issue with her growing up. I'm assuming she got better at it since it hasn't been brought up again, but who knows. She could've regressed after moving out.
I'd say she's still rank, if only because doing so would require a level of humility and care for other people's feelings she doesn't seem to have.
Only a couple of extras this go round, in part because this one is just so big. It's basically Maia's breakup letter with all things Harry Potter, and gives away that this semi-competent YA series was a genuinely religious experience for her. Highlights include thinking she'd get a Hogwarts letter IRL, trying to learn "what does it mean to treat a text as sacred" through the lens of children's fantasy novels, alongside some hilarious tweets from the queen of Terfs herself.
I tried to get all of them in order, but the archive is probably a bit easier to read. Maia has seriously leaned into the habit of TOO MANY WORDS.
I can also now finally confirm Maia *did* have access to the internet as a teen, thanks to an old archive from her now deleted Deviantart.
I thought it was weird she just kind of popped into the internet scene as a fully fledged nerd girl (tm), and having much more access than she let on to pre-2010 online culture would explain an awful lot.
Back to the comic, we're in the home stretch, and while I don't know if I'll be able to finish it all in one go before bedtime, but it'll be close.
Maia badgers her family spare with her endless corrections over pronouns, even managing to even get a rise out of her mother, which is where that delightful "Why are you doing this to us" came from in my last post.
Sorry hippy mom, but that's what you get for letting Gay club and the internet raise your kid.
The gender euphoria is cut short once again, as Maia is alerted to the returning terror of her latest pap smear exam!
A pap exam she's already two years overdue for, thanks to her attempts to avoid it.
She's already wigging out before she gets there, to the point of trying to regulate her breathing.
But not wigging out so hard she can't take the time to inform the doctor of her very important pronouns!
Damn, a doctor like that just flat out saying "U need pills bro", speaks to how completely Maia must've flipped out. Look at that face in the last panel, that is the face of a woman who has realized her normal, drama free shift is ruined, and she's got an obligation to deal with the source until it goes away.
Being the slick San Fran professional she is, she immediately turns around and writes up Maia's appointment and prescription for her before Maia has even fully finished crying it out.
Maia is nice enough to inform the audience of her exact prescription: 5mg of Oxycodone and 1mg of Lorazepam, per doctor's orders.
Again, I lack the science background to say if that's a lot or a little, but I do know Oxy has a reputation for being some pretty serious shit, especially if you're a first time user.
Whatever it is, the combo is enough to mess up Maia's recollection of the event, and even with that, she still puked in the sink as soon as she got home.
She also fell asleep, but that seems like a much more normal reaction to the aftermath of high stress and downers.
If nothing else was a wake up call to the people around her that Maia was not a functional as a person, this should've been. Getting so worked up your doctors would prefer to dope you and be done with it like an unruly cat is not healthy. It's arguably a full blown phobia at this point, but they're past the period where she can be corralled. She's well into her mid-twenties, now, and fully convinced her issues can be solved with the power of Spivak pronouns and gender.
Hippy parents or maybe Pheobe would probably have to threaten her with eviction or something to force her into seeing a shrink, and they're all either too weaksauce or ideologically captured to even try.
In 2017, Maia goes to a trans rights march and is appalled to realize it was also a big gay costume party, one where she had come dressed as a total straight.
Inspired to change her wardrobe, Maia contemplates her ideal style dress.
Her answer: effeminate male.
Armed with a desire to be pretty, Maia defines herself by buying all the gayest clothing a heterosexual fujoshi could ever want. Making a point to imagine all her male crushes in them before purchasing, just to let the audience know that one time cosplaying as Johnny Weir wasn't some one off thing.
A bit of an aside, but just how cluttered is this person's house? She seems to have these moments where she just ups and goes on shopping sprees for a whole slew of fandom drek and tacky clothing, while also collecting random, shiny garbage off the street. I'm getting visions of a room filled with used clothes, stuffed animals, and art supplies, topped in a fine sprinkling of literal trash.
Back on topic, Maia is delighted with her stuffed owl backpack and fugly T-shirts, dedicating an entire page to how they made her feel "Queer."
IMO this is just a new excuse to be her old fujoshi self, but with even less shame.
The vignettes are getting shorter and the jumps between one becoming more abrupt as we finish up the work, Maia gets a new relative courtesy of her male cousin, and celebrates a new, young life by thinking about all the cool, gender neutral terms he'll have to call her by once he's old enough to speak.
It's fall 2017, and some moron has allowed Maia access to children.
They're highschoolers, and only in a day-long workshop, but I'd sooner trust an real fourteen year old than I would Maia.
Not just to teach, either, but for anything. Just give the kid a job, With the car keys? Yeah with the car keys, what are you talking about? It'll be fine.
More seriously, this page, right here, is the reason I've been so hard on Maia and her art, and would've been harsher had I known right from the start that she was capable of more.
Maia isn't just some dweeb on Deviantart (or wherever people post their art now for clout), she's not an enthusiast scrawling out her favorite characters on a feed, she is a published, accredited professional. She is supposed to know what she's Goddamned doing, and here she is, utterly ignorant, trying to teach this shit to kids.
That little sample she puts in is also wrong. Space does not affect time in comics, storytelling does.
A four panel comic where a man sits through four seasons worth of weather would read as taking much more time than a four panel comic where the same man uses each frame to walk to his house.
It would be a bare bones, but thanks to the power of context clues, there's no doubt a reader would interpret comic #1 as taking place over a much longer duration than comic #2.
Because at the end of the day, how much space any given action takes up should only be just enough for the reader to understand what's going on and why. What Maia's trying to teach here would lead to nothing but painfully dull works with a no sense of conservation (of storytelling) or tempo, and is frankly a little above what she should be teaching in an intro course anyway.
She's inept, years of schooling, a masters degree in comics, and she's utterly, utterly inept. Her grasp of her own specialty is so poor she can't even teach the basics motherfucker what about panel flow and composition you utter ass where is the introduction to the fourth wall as a "camera" or how important it is to keep events in focus without just jumping from scene to scene because otherwise the reader will get lost and-
*ahem*
After a wonderful time being telling highschoolers things that are wrong, Maia wishes she had the balls to confuse them even further by teaching them her pronouns.
At the time this comic was written, she wasn't using them in front of kids, but makes it pretty clear she's just working up the nerve.
And with that, the comic ends. there's an extra, insincere thank you to hippy parents, who were never named and so absent as meaningful characters it's hard to remember they're based on real people at all.
So there you go, an absolute joke of a memoir, a recounting of a girl who grew into a woman and hated herself for it. An autistic, maladjusted hypocrite who spend decades years learning nothing and being celebrated for it. When you look at this comic, and remember that it's been translated into multiple languages, lives in libraries across the nation, and has even had portions of it shown as an exhibit in a museum, it can hard not to feel just a little bit bitter. She's got her dream job, news articles crowning her "the problematic author", and elevated status as a small time duchess in the Tumblr social hierarchy.
The thing is though, all this Maia's problems - her real ones, never really went away. Even supposing the times don't change (they will), and the principles of Wokism and DEI keep her buoyed up forever, Maia will continue to suffer, because at the end of the day, her true enemy lives inside her head, and no amount of tit chops and denial will fix the endless anxiety that comes just from being herself. Living as Maia Kobabe is a miserable thing, and at the end of the day, for all her wealth and privilege, she's pathetic in a way that endears not so much pity as a sort of cold disdain.
Well, I guess that's a wrap. It took a lot longer than I thought, but thanks for sticking with it, I hope you got at least one good laugh before it was through.
So I read this, fully at a stretch and I dont want to rant too much about it. This just comes across as very "Im not like other girls" to me. This is so basic bitch and girly that its not even edgy in the way women write about suicidality self harm and shit. If you read things like Nana or something similar, the way women depict depression and discomfort is very very different and a lot more dark in general. This is just so tame, Im so quirky I dont like being a woman, I just want a penis and gay sex and androgyny and music and nature hippie bullshit. I blame the parents cause she depicted her parents being 60s hippies so I assume theyre part of the reason of fostering this nonsense. Also the "Im good at drawing" bit is just funny, the comic is structured like a tumblr blog, theres no use for the images like in a traditional comic, its just narration accompanied by imagery. Also Also Gaiman is there as expected, I dont know what is it with millennial teenage girls and Gaiman.
Neil Gaiman had a tumblr account, and was active online for a long time before that. He's cultivated a following of 'quirky' and 'witchy' girls for a long time, and is canny enough to sneak past most cancellation attempts. Before he got accused of sexual assault, that is
Neil Gaiman had a tumblr account, and was active online for a long time before that. He's cultivated a following of 'quirky' and 'witchy' girls for a long time, and is canny enough to sneak past most cancellation attempts. Before he got accused of sexual assault, that is
No I dont mean that. You can be an author on Tumblr like GRRM or somebody and not have women fawning over you like some cult of personality. Its something about his writing style I feel. Im a graduate in British Invasion studies section of the American Media department, I know more about Gaiman than most of these tumblrinas ever would. His writing style is just crap but it has that surface level feminine appeal. Grant Morrison does the same for men, all of his works are shit but they seem to have a lot of masculine appeal on a surface level cause they have a lot of punk edge while Gaiman dabbles in a lot of psychological androgyny which Ive seen a lot of women drawn towards. Both kinds seem to appeal to people who are into drugs and can only think about "deep" shit like a stoned hippie. The British writers and their impact on the Millennial Generation has been a disaster for the human race. I couldnt read the Sandman or How Do You Talk To Girls or whatever else Gaiman has done, except maybe Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader and probably Black Orchid cause Dave McKean did the art, just so much faggotry and "isnt this so deep" which ends up meaning fuck all but can appeal to people who engage in pseudointellectualism and emotional masturbation. It makes a person feel intelligent for understanding it till you realize that it doesnt make a lick of logical sense.
Even her gender special-ness was just something Jaina Bee came up with first and introduced her to. Bitch is so uncreative, even the core aspects of her identity are just copies of other people's trends.
It's interesting to think about what would have happened if Maia had confessed her fears of adulthood womanhood to someone close to her who took the time to really discuss things. It sounded like her family leaned on the old "wait and see" "the teen years are hard" "it'll make sense when you're older" platitudes, and her friends were same-age dumbasses without experience to give advice, who were excited to sign on to their friend hopping on a trend.
You make a very good point that Maia is doing her best to downplay how much online fandom culture influenced her. N-no, she was an innocent in those days, she saw the Internet once but it was too slow! Even if you're not learning about Discourse from fandom (and she explicitly was; it just had to be rolled in the cheese slice of Harry Potter), it's a culture that affects everything from speech patterns to opinions to genderism.
But imagine if Maia had had a vaguely butch older cousin or something, a "gender non-conforming" artistic mentor outside of school, who was there to keep saying "yeah, that's rough, and I felt the same; it took a while to get used to how my body changed, but now I'm me and to hell with everyone else. you wanna dress like Prince, cool, let's practice sewing decorative piping, who says you have to be a boy to be effeminiate that makes no sense, did anyone ever actually tell you that? what do you think would happen if a woman dressed in a feminine way? you need to ask yourself questions. now take a shower."
Nah, her secretly-online self would still probably glom onto the first Tumblr About Me page that showed her how she could get increased social credit and never have to mature or self-reflect again.
Maia is nice enough to inform the audience of her exact prescription: 5mg of Oxycodone and 1mg of Lorazepam, per doctor's orders.
Again, I lack the science background to say if that's a lot or a little, but I do know Oxy has a reputation for being some pretty serious shit, especially if you're a first time user.
It's nothing amazing, but man, Maia ought to record a class in freakin' out at the doctors' office, for the edification of every woman who has to have a colposcopy or an IUD placed with only the ibuprofen she took at home.
For oxycodone that's the standard dose you'd give someone for moderate pain, and probably what she got for her mastectomy. Oxycodone and hydrocodone are equianalgesic. It is interesting that they ordered an opiate and a benzo, for someone who's naive to both, but I think you're right that Maia just made it obvious that she needed to be baby-snowed.
...That poor OBGYN probably thought Maia was reacting like this because she'd been molested. Nope, just a 'tard!
The thing is though, all this Maia's problems - her real ones, never really went away. Even supposing the times don't change (they will), and the principles of Wokism and DEI keep her buoyed up forever, Maia will continue to suffer, because at the end of the day, her true enemy lives inside her head, and no amount of tit chops and denial will fix the endless anxiety that comes just from being herself.
If I were writing a thinkpiece to get the "anti-woke" people to shut up about the strap-on and see the actual problems in this book, I'd call it "Genderqueer: A Celebration of Stagnation."
His writing style is just crap but it has that surface level feminine appeal. Grant Morrison does the same for men, all of his works are shit but they seem to have a lot of masculine appeal on a surface level cause they have a lot of punk edge while Gaiman dabbles in a lot of psychological androgyny which Ive seen a lot of women drawn towards. Both kinds seem to appeal to people who are into drugs and can only think about "deep" shit like a stoned hippie.
Not just on a goffik level, Gaiman is a close parallel to Tim Burton. Palatable, mainstream edgy, and when someone says he's their favorite you know what to expect.
I did like Good Omens (the book) but I think Gaiman was the Hamburger Helper for Pratchett, and they were both doing their very best Douglas Adams impression.
Not just on a goffik level, Gaiman is a close parallel to Tim Burton. Palatable, mainstream edgy, and when someone says he's their favorite you know what to expect.
I did like Good Omens (the book) but I think Gaiman was the Hamburger Helper for Pratchett, and they were both doing their very best Douglas Adams impression.
I was about to bring that up but realized Burton is A American and B its all about aesthetics to him. Its all an aesthetic flourish, its not a philosophy its an artistic style. Gaiman is very much obsessively absorbed into the edgy philosophy of meaningless bullshit. Burton tends to have or rather had the same cult of teenage girl personality around him but those girls like Burton cause of the aesthetic and his roguish characters, very much Im not like other girls energy. They think he thinks like they do but he actually doesnt because hes an adult man. Gaiman does think like they do. Let me put it this way, Burton is like Hayao Miyazaki, his work is rarely a transgressive political statement and he doesnt take it that seriously. Gaiman is like the Unabomber, he takes everything he does very seriously, obsessively so. I dont like Pratchett as well though considering his close proximity to Gaiman.
On an unrelated sidenote, this book has that feeling Ive been trying to describe to people. Its so childish psychologically but has a lot of distinctly adult material. Ive seen so many people and things in the past 5 years who are psychologically developmentally stunted but involve themselves in a lot of adult material with no full awareness of anything. I dont know what to call this style, its very juvenile and lame, very postmodern and surface level but is expected to be taken seriously. The Lion King has more depth nuance and exploration of human nature than this book or anything like it despite having no adult material or discussions of adult topics. I can sperg out about so many details in this book which just make me so confused but I dont want to, it will be many thousands of words.
On an unrelated sidenote, this book has that feeling Ive been trying to describe to people. Its so childish psychologically but has a lot of distinctly adult material. Ive seen so many people and things in the past 5 years who are psychologically developmentally stunted but involve themselves in a lot of adult material with no full awareness of anything.
I think I've seen that, yeah. Kind of a cargo cult approach to sophistication; "smart grown-ups write about sex, so I'm writing about sex and you will see I am smart too." Oh Joy Sex Toy maybe? Taking a fetish and writing about it at a 3rd-grade reading level, with bland and friendly art like you'd get in a comic book about not smoking, and no personal insight beyond "I like this and I told my partner and now we do it together."
I can't think of any other autobiographies of people who were clueless about their mental processes, yet also as revealing of them as Maia. If this were fiction, there's the genre of teen novels where the narrator thinks they're super smart and edgy and the reader, much older, can easily read between the lines--I'm thinking of the Adrian Mole diaries, but I'm sure there are more. It's strange that a real person would put this to page and mean it, but not think about it.
I think I've seen that, yeah. Kind of a cargo cult approach to sophistication; "smart grown-ups write about sex, so I'm writing about sex and you will see I am smart too." Oh Joy Sex Toy maybe? Taking a fetish and writing about it at a 3rd-grade reading level, with bland and friendly art like you'd get in a comic book about not smoking, and no personal insight beyond "I like this and I told my partner and now we do it together."
I can't think of any other autobiographies of people who were clueless about their mental processes, yet also as revealing of them as Maia. If this were fiction, there's the genre of teen novels where the narrator thinks they're super smart and edgy and the reader, much older, can easily read between the lines--I'm thinking of the Adrian Mole diaries, but I'm sure there are more. It's strange that a real person would put this to page and mean it, but not think about it.
Thats a good example. I was referring more to people who revel in excessive violence but are against things like Postal because the violence "wasn't used properly/crossed a line". People who think Heart of Darkness is less accurate to the human experience than Black Panther. It also manifests as phenomenon like discourse from people on twitter who have fetish porn on main and are obsessed with sex/sexuality yet complain about attraction to attractive of age women being pedophilic. In fact this book gave me the creeps a lot because Maia here talks a lot about sex stuff involving adolescents despite lacking an adult perspective on sex/sexuality. Shes like 30 something but talks about teenagers like theyre adults engaging in sexual fantasies and at the same time talks about how as a 21 year old she was excited at the prospect of getting underwear with dinosaur pictures like a 5 year old. Its certainly some form of arrested development, possibly mental illness but I dont know what illness it might be. Physically 30 mentally 12 type thing.
"Broke me through my dyslexia" no, that's not how it fucking works. Dyslexia is for life, you just have to develop learning skills to push through it to cross-reference the difference between various words just in case they pop up in the same paragraph together on top of recalling how certain words are spelled and laid out grammatically. And even so, you may occasionally slip up and interpret the writing differently until you realize it and have to go back to reread it again. Dyslexia also does not equal illiteracy.
Maia was definitely fluffing things up for her bio by skirting around being "dyslexic" when her actual issue is she just does not have reading comprehension and needs someone to relay things to her, which her mother apparently wasn't doing in her nighttime reading. If her hippie parents had actually given a damn to teach her how magical it is to be literate, they'd have caught this and gotten her help as a kid instead of her waiting until nearly puberty to start becoming "a reader".
I've mentioned it before, but legit, her illiteracy explains the why and how this stupid graphic novel played out. She clearly had no editor breathing over her shoulder in pointing out the confusing timeline and lack of positive messages for the reader. An editor would've also told her to not blow up her own thesis by revealing to the world she's an autoandrophile from reading nothing but badly-written yaoi and that's why she imagines having a penis.
What a maroon. Are we sure she's actually made money off of this to buy all the glitter bathbombs she could ever want?
It's basically Maia's breakup letter with all things Harry Potter, and gives away that this semi-competent YA series was a genuinely religious experience for her.
In page 7 of the epilogue, how nice of her to draw those beautiful frames for Rowling's quotes.
Also, some remarkable data massaging social sciences can only envy: "14 of Rowling's 20 most recent tweets (70%!!!!!) are anti-troon". So, she's, like, had one short conversation?
Then: "she's gotten so much worse"
-- removed her support from a troon rape den masquerading as a women's shelter, founded her own troon-free women's shelter. Tsk tsk, terrible indeed.
Then (paraphrased): "I'd love to send Rowling more rape and death threats, but it feeds her sense of victimhood; don't". She doesn't say those are fake threats, she doesn't say there are a few bad apples among the troons.
(Reminds me of a videogame in which the player character called a murder victim paranoid after the fact; sure enough, the player character, secretly from the player, was the murderer.)
I'm with Maia here. She was a virgin and a teen (?). I didn't get speculated until I after got the operation at 30+, and even then it fucking hurt, and there's no way to guard against the pain, it's not a place that regularly, or even from time to time, experiences sensation not to mention pain. I don't think it's retarded of a virgin girl to scream and cry, and it especially doesn't prove she, or any other girl who has an adverse reaction, is really a man.
If her hippie parents had actually given a damn to teach her how magical it is to be literate, they'd have caught this and gotten her help as a kid instead of her waiting until nearly puberty to start becoming "a reader".
...
I've mentioned it before, but legit, her illiteracy explains the why and how this stupid graphic novel played out.
I think what's wrong with her is lack of phonics. There are essentially two ways to learn to read (I'll cautiously specify: in a "Western" language, Chinese character culture may be different): phonics , where the reader powers through any text and transforms words into sounds, and "whole-word reading", where the reader guesses what a word means or how a sentence ends from letter shapes and context (such as pictures in children's books).
Whole word is forced on some children, and those who "tee hee just pick up" reading on their own also use whole word. Parents think it's cute and the children are "gifted" but they aren't, they find it hard to read new material, especially nonfiction (which sets them back in sciences). Instead, if multimedia is scarce, such children stick to a few "loved" books, which parents mistake for love of reading.
And this is why Maia's book is a picture book.
---
I like some things Pratchett wrote but I don't enjoy his books, they're effectively overgrown parables that you're supposed to read with a mild chuckle, written to serve one important scene. Leiji Matsumoto could do more in 5 pages, with bonus facts about space, and a waifu. As for Gaiman, I can see how Neverwhere is an attractive concept for goffick girls (dump the shitty muggles and live in a fantasy world!!!), but I didn't like the characters or the poor excuse for a plot.
I'm with Maia here. She was a virgin and a teen (?). I didn't get speculated until I after got the operation at 30+, and even then it fucking hurt, and there's no way to guard against the pain, it's not a place that regularly, or even from time to time, experiences sensation not to mention pain. I don't think it's retarded of a virgin girl to scream and cry, and it especially doesn't prove she, or any other girl who has an adverse reaction, is really a man.
She had had sex before and she dreaded the pap smear cause of "dysphoria" which indicates to me that she was so stupid that she was willing to jeopardize her health for the sake of "dysphoria". Womens sexual health is no joke, its a lot more complicated messy and has more disastrous consequences than mens sexual health.
Even her gender special-ness was just something Jaina Bee came up with first and introduced her to. Bitch is so uncreative, even the core aspects of her identity are just copies of other people's trends.
It's fascinating how she manages to have no discernible personality and yet somehow manages to turn this lack of personality into what she thinks qualifies as "identity". I mean, "gender queer" (along with other related nonsense) is the ultimate absence of an actual, developed identity/sense of self, so it makes sense she found it appealing and relatable. And because she lacks any real capacity for self-reflection, she of course mistakes her own lack of character for proof of her special uniqueness.
By the way, have you seen this comic where she bravely "breaks down the binary" in a folk dance class, but only after having a "gender-induced crisis"? Just like literally all of the problems she (sort of) deals with in Gender Queer, this crisis is also entirely self-induced.
By the way, have you seen this comic where she bravely "breaks down the binary" in a folk dance class, but only after having a "gender-induced crisis"? Just like literally all of the problems she (sort of) deals with in Gender Queer, this crisis is also entirely self-induced.
"Gender" in folk dancing classes is like shirts and skins for pickup basketball, not some life declaration. You just need to know who's doing which role so the whole dance keeps working.
There tends to be a sex mismatch in recreational dance groups, so this isn't even unusual. At schools sometimes they have a set of vests or sashes so you can tell "men" and "women" apart in the whirl.
Once again, this wouldn't be a problem if Maia didn't make it one. If she just self-selected for the boy part, old dude would assume (as he probably did anyway) that she was a lesbian.
Interesting that in square dancing, where each sex has an important part and there is no "genderless" role besides the caller, "genderqueer" translates to "male" for Maia. "Not-female."
"Gender" in folk dancing classes is like shirts and skins for pickup basketball, not some life declaration. You just need to know who's doing which role so the whole dance keeps working.
There tends to be a sex mismatch in recreational dance groups, so this isn't even unusual. At schools sometimes they have a set of vests or sashes so you can tell "men" and "women" apart in the whirl.
Once again, this wouldn't be a problem if Maia didn't make it one. If she just self-selected for the boy part, old dude would assume (as he probably did anyway) that she was a lesbian.
Interesting that in square dancing, where each sex has an important part and there is no "genderless" role besides the caller, "genderqueer" translates to "male" for Maia. "Not-female."
When you are used to overthinking and being offended by any mention of gender...
It's seriously so wierd how she seems to think that others should read her mind, give her what she wants with minimal effort from her and see her exactly like she wants you to see her. To degree I get it, everyone does it sometimes. It's easy to get so wrapped inside your own head and your problems that you kinda forget it's not the entire world. Having moments like that is normal but just never pulling your head out your ass... It's like she is a very timid Karen (the original meaning) but somehow more annoying to read about.
@Inatrous, fantastic writeup. I remember stumbling across this comic and finding it to be a pretty bizarre autobiographical account. Personally, I found the sum of the author's behaviours and her complete psychological portrait more unsettling than the fake fellatio that made the book so infamous (although, it being promoted to kids is still disturbing, but that's a whole another topic). Your commentary made for a fun and thoughtful read. If you ever feel like doing a write-up on a different self-hating mentally disturbed individual who was also heavily involved in the fandom sphere and hates being a woman, there's Noelle Stevenson - the author of Lumberjanes, Nimona and the She-ra reboot.
There are two autobiographies of interest - the pre-poonout (spoiler) memoir "The fire never goes out" and her still active autobiographical webcomic "I'm fine I'm fine just understand" (and, yes, it's as bad as the name makes it sound).
Both are rather (macabrely) interesting reads, but as far as doing a write-up, the former one would be easier since it's a finished work. I, however, find the webcomic a bit more disturbingly fascinating since it reads like a prolonged cope session of someone who's trying to convince the audience (and herself) that she totally didn't make a huge mistake. I briefly considered doing a bit of a write-up myself, but I both feel that I don't have the patience or the writing skills for a full dissection, and that being deeply submerged in such ruminations for a prolonged period would feel rather depressing.
Maia and Noelle are two peas in a pod, though they had different lives that converged into the same ending, essentially. Although funnily enough, Noelle seemed to fall upwards into some kind of success (nepotism, most likely) only for everything to come crashing down around her, kinda similar to Ellen Page.
At least Maia doesn't have to worry about coping over her wife's infidelity since she's never going to marry at this point.
Once again, this wouldn't be a problem if Maia didn't make it one. If she just self-selected for the boy part, old dude would assume (as he probably did anyway) that she was a lesbian.
It's amazing how every time she has to make a decision, she turns it into a nearly unsurmountable problem, including the super important decision about her pronouns - that took at least several dozen pages (or felt like it).
I understand some people are just naturally anxious about everything, but if you have a "gender crisis" simply because you want to ask to dance slightly different steps, maybe it's time to reassess the state of your mental health. Or have a professional do it, ideally.
Interesting that in square dancing, where each sex has an important part and there is no "genderless" role besides the caller, "genderqueer" translates to "male" for Maia. "Not-female."
The thing is that usually male is the default, grammatically from ancient times, and in modern things like medical testing and safety design and T-shirt tailoring. People can recognize this and work to mitigate it for themselves, work to improve it for the future--or they can get a dumb haircut and start whining.
But that goes back to trying to solve societal problems by telling everyone they have to treat youpersonally special forever, or "identifying out of oppression" as the kids say.
