Page 59. Thoughts and feelings.
Thanks to those of you who might have attended my talk at the Carnegie-Stout Public Library this weekend! I’m writing this from the past, but I’m sure it went great!
O Human Star
by Blue Delliquanti
MORE OF BLUE’S STUFF
you don’t say
Oooh my. Poor Sulla.
you’d be surprised sulla
poor baby though :C this must be so confusing
It’s beautiful that Sulla feels safe discussing this with him.
Oh Sulla baby- I’m glad she’s comfortable telling him, I bet he will be incredibly supportive when he realises, especially considering present-Sulla has a body that represents who she really is.
That doesn’t mean that it was an immediate solution. Brendan should be pretty cool with this though, I hope, oh I hope. I’d like to see an object lesson here in how best to deal with your childs transition, that would be lovely, so many people need to learn…
The subtlety is bloody beautiful, Blue. You did an amazing job.
Blue I’m crying so much right now, this is one of the finest pieces of graphic literature I’ve ever read. It was effortlessly intelligible and so beautifully meaningful with the same quiet, charged, all or nothing tension of reality. It’s rare the author who can build their illusion in such an easy convincing way. Maybe I’m just personally affected but this is the kind of page Chekhov would write. Thank you
this is fascinating. For Brendan, Sulla coming out could be upsetting not because he has to let go of his idea of who she is, but because he also has to let go of his idea of who Al was.
I’m 22. I’ve wrestled with gendered feelings since puberty.
Frankly, I’ve never had someone I felt safe talking about these things with, the way they’re talking here. And noone online has ever been helpful–they’re always firmly in the “ra-ra trans” camp. To the point of absurdity. I can unabashedly say I’ve been looking forward to this exchange for a while, because I relate a lot with Al, but this idea that there’s some thing or thought in your brain that means you’re the other gender, immediately? That you’re an “egg”? I hate that. Sexuality, identity–I have to believe it isn’t cut-and-dry.
Ugh, that’s not even the point. The point is, every person’s story helps you tell your own, and I’m eager to hear the rest of this one. Although, I’m much more excited to see the inevitable Sulla/Al exchange; talk about a conversation! Probably an argument, if I had to guess.
Oh, and I’m a big fan.
I’m similar in being very confused and having no one to. For a long time I was trying to work out why I (someone born female) didn’t like any of the girl things I was supposed to like. They made my skin crawl. What I decided in the end was that gender is largely performative. Anyone could like anything, and while society can tell us what’s common and accepted for makes and females to like, that generalisation isn’t going to cover anyone. Once I got past wondering if I was a girl or a boy, I got to the more interesting question: I’m a woman (I meant I was female, but I didn’t have the vocab yet) but what *kind* of woman am I? I could be a really dudely woman if I wanted to be! It got much easier after that. The nuance of gender means that liking boy stuff doesn’t automatically mean you’re a boy – it could just mean you’ve got an hobby.
I have to say I more or less agree with everything you’ve just said. Spot on and thank you! Gender is a set of social assumptions, understandings and presumed roles, into which very few of us fit neatly. It honestly causes a lot more trouble than it’s probably worth.
If you’d ever like someone to speak with more peaceably about gender identity as a fluid concept and how it relates to you, without pushing their own agenda, please let me know by replying to this message – I’d be happy to provide that for you as best I can because it’s hugely unfair that you’ve not found any other avenues for the same.
Gender is weird, and assuming there’s every a single right answer or universal experience for trans/gender noncomforming people is always wrong.
Though, speaking personally, it can sometimes be good to find places where people take pride in it. Because the reflex i’ve gotten from just society in general tells me i ought to be ashamed of it, and that ain’t healthy. But surely it’s not the only way to handle it.
Gender isn’t a binary, and it isn’t even a spectrum. It’s a thousand different spectra (or an n-dimensional space) that the very unique you that you are can exist and move about within absolutely anywhere.
Society says that there are a couple nexus points in that big, jumbly, chaotic gender space that it labels “man” and “woman”, but just like EVERY aspect of language, those are merely approximations, not some sort of universal truth. Reproductive anatomy? Incredibly diverse. Sex chromosomes? Totally diverse. Sexuality? Diverse. Mannerisms, style, speech patterns, body language, interests, aptitudes? Absolutely, utterly, unequivocally diverse. The only thing that is special about those two labeled spots is that lots of people understand them, so life can be easier if you happen to be close to one of them.
But don’t start your journey with labels, because the job of a label is to exclude things. That’s super useful for language, but not for knowing yourself. Make your life a journey of exploring and discovering who you are and where you fit in that big cloud of gender spectra, and as you start to identify the places where you fit, THEN you can start answering questions about how you want to manifest yourself in the world at large, with your body, pronouns, social interactions, sexual interactions, etc. And if that involves some sort of a transition, make it a transition from discomfort/hiding/fear to comfort/shining/pride, from where you were told to be to where you actually belong… not just from one label to another (even if you happen to land close to one).
Oh my, fascinating!
Also, a site that I follow shared this link and I thought, ‘OHS called it!’
https://spectrum.ieee.org/static/special-report-can-we-copy-the-brain
I’d also recommend the set of short stories “Axiomatic” by Greg Egan, especially “Learning To Be Me”, for explorations along the same themes. Just because the copy of a mind starts from the same branching-off point, how can we know whether it’ll follow the same future course?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Axiomatic-Greg-Egan/dp/0575081740
Ooh, I’ve in fact been meaning to explore Egan’s sci-fi, and this looks like the perfect jumping off point. Many thanks!
Awesome! Let us know what you think of it :D
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I cannot resist to answer this two-year-old-comment by approving vividly, to anyone who would read this, this recommendation of Egan’s short stories and *particularly* Learning To Be Me. It has some similarities in themes with OHS and I always found it fascinating.
Along with the strong LGBTQ themes of this webcomic, all these questions about identity and mind copies were one of the main things that drew me into OHS, so it is nice to read a reference to Egan here!
Oh, dear. So many hugs for you.
I think there’s a split second where Brendo is terrified of what Sulla might remember, so anything that isn’t possible romantic thoughts is probably relief. ‘Oh, you’re just trans humanist in every way, whew.’
I read Elizabeth Lynn’s scifi books back in the 1980s (my favorite is “A Different Light”). She created a world where gender didn’t matter. You fell in love with someone based on their character, not on their gender or looks. She wrote well before trans and other terms were common knowledge, so she was groundbreaking.
Who says boys can’t feel these things? Fuck them and their narrow-minded ways.