With all due respect to those who choose not or cannot have surgery, Sulla doesn’t think of her body as female. She had it changed when she was 13 (Brendan mentions this to Al after we first are introduced to her) so she obviously considered her body to be male even though her gender has probably always been female (hinted at by her interest in the Oz story and other little things like her excitement over having hair and her expressions). I do understand and have super respect that many trans people cannot or choose not to have surgery (or even hormones) but are still very much their genders. It takes so much more than genitals, skeletal features, and even hormones to make you a man or a woman. Hopefully, one day most of society understands and respects this. <3

(and taken 10 off brendan’s apparently)

For the record, Ty is also fine! Their whole gender deal can be summed up as “in addition to” rather than “instead of.” :)

Crap, I should have said Titus, not Ty. It… It’s been a while since I read through the archives… Sorry.

“The whole point of being – at least while pre-medical transition – transgender is that your body’s sex doesn’t match your body’s gender”

for some people but not for everyone. (even beyond the fact that sex is a construct, the way gender is)

my transness isn’t about my sex, it’s about my internal experience day-to-day, the pronouns and name people use for me, and the way I relate to the world around me. my bodily dysphoria exists, but it doesn’t define my transness- the fact that my gender doesn’t match my assigned gender defines it.

I didn’t mean to come off as condescending. and i don’t use my understanding of trans bodies to argue with people who want to change theirs- i *am* changing mine.

but for me, hearing “your body is female” is both dysphoria-inducing and incorrect, and hearing that description of Sulla when we haven’t actually heard *her* refer to her body seems pretty deeply unnecessary. also, fwiw, we don’t know what changes sulla has gone through within the backstory of the comic.

as a revision, how about: let’s not gender someone’s body without actually knowing how they understand their own body? because it could very well be misgendering. we just don’t know that yet. and we don’t have to do it.

Different strokes for different (trans) folks — I’m uncomfortable with the claim that I have a “female” body, or that transitioning would make my body “male”. My body is mine; my gender is mine; my body’s gender is my gender; it’s just cis society that happens to disagree.

I understand where you’re coming from, but we dunno yet how Sulla feels.

I kinda gotta disagree with you there. Sulla’s body was designed to follow a male blueprint since she’s based on Al. Yes she’s a girl, but that doesn’t change her physical body. Much like how I’m a boy, but that doesn’t change my physical body either. The whole point of being – at least while pre-medical transition – transgender is that your body’s sex doesn’t match your body’s gender. And personally, hearing that “your body is male if you’re a boy” sounds more condescending than it does supportive. My body was not always male, that’s why I’m on testosterone. But God I wish it were.

Does anyone think how disturbing that actually is to Brendan? He rejected that expression so forcefully before. That smile in the second panel he’s returning to Sulla seems very subtly off and very forced.

This whole recent arc has really disturbed me lately, tho I’m also extremely interested to see where it goes. Just raising my clone of my ex-boyfriend as my child, nbd. No expectations or emotional baggage here, nope. The extreme secrecy Brendan is treating this with and his isolation of Sulla must have been so extreme, it’s extremely creepy and has a lot of power dynamics to it that could have gone pretty, uh, sketchy. But I still want so badly to see where this goes.

Also looking forward to getting back to Ty realizing they’ve been SUCH a foot-in-mouth jerk to Sulla and going after her to apologize.