Hair Trigger

I've mentioned before that I'm one of the few people who actively prefers going to the dentist than the barber's.  The reasons are varied, but they basically boil down to: getting my hair cut is a series of multiple micro-aggressions.  There's the constant hair-pulling, the moisture, the electric cord touching, the vibration of the razor, no glasses, no communication, and the cut hair gets everywhere, no matter how much I try to prevent it, even going so far as to clench my shirt up.  And it itches like mad until I shower up, which I'm reluctant to do.

Compared to that, the occasional stabbing pains from inside my teeth is pleasant in comparison.

However, even compensating for that, some people may still view going to the dentist a traumatic experience they'd rather soon forget.  Therefore, I've developed some little tricks to make your dental visit a more pleasant one:

1. Wear sunglasses to protect against the glare on your eyes.
2. Have a heavy book to press against your stomach.
3. Close your mouth when the dentist isn't looking inside your mouth.
4. Wear a shirt with a collar to protect against the cold chain of the protective bib.
5. If possible, have music to drown out the buzzing noise.  (I'm deaf, so this doesn't really affect me)

What brought this up was seeing this image on Tumblr.  It hurts just to look at it.  It's on par with the kid with butterfly wings and the caption, “Parents, don't be your child's first bully.”  It hurts, but for a different reason.

“art by @BottlngSunshine

Is it about butchering Black girls’ hair to keep white people comfortable? Is it about a woman visiting the same violence on her daughter as was done to her by her mother a generation prior? Is this girl just too… “different” to go into the world unaltered? Does she need to be toned down so she can succeed? Does she need to be defenseless before she is deemed safe by powerful people who would do her harm if given half a reason? Is one of those people holding those scissors?”

And the hashtag:

#ART BY OP #POSSIBLY VERY TRIGGERING #IT IS FOR ME #MY MOM USED MY HAIR TO CONTROL ME #EVEN INTO MY LATE TEENS #I RARELY GO TO THE HAIRDRESSER #AND IT'S A TRIAL EVERY TIME #BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH I AM (THEORETICALLY) IN CONTROL NOW #THERE'S STILL SO MANY NEGATIVE FEELINGS #ASSOCIATED WITH HAVING MY HAIR CUT VIA TEEJAY-KAYE

SOURCE ODE-ON-A-GRECIAN-BUTT

I also enjoyed seeing the mirror showing what was going on in my mouth, and missed that visual stimulus when they no longer used it.  The main thing that prevented me from panicking (apart from knowing what was going on) was the annual appointment where I would have to wear a weighed vest for the dental x-rays. 

In grade school, I was ferried about not by Bus, but by taxi.  And during these trips, I would invite anybody to rest their schoolbags on my lap.  Which they willingly did.  It must have been a sight, me being buried underneath these heavy loads, but I couldn't be happier.  And I carried that same sentiment when I could not longer go via Volkswagen and had to take public transportation to high school.

To compensate for the loss, I started carrying my heavy backpack on my lap, both to and from school.  I found it easier to lug these school books around than keep them in my locker, which had an easily bypassable lock, and apart from my school stuff, never kept any valuables inside.

I used to end the school days by racing out the door the instant the bell rang in a mad dash to catch the early bus before it left, which would usually come around the exact same minute, around when the light would be turning red.  Otherwise, I’d be crammed in with dozens of other students all waiting for the same ride.  And being around rowdy teenagers with little impulse control was an assault on my senses, which only further heightened my anxiety.

It was always a challenge to find a seat, since they would be quickly filled up.  It wasn’t unusual for me arriving home to enter the doorway screaming, wanting nothing more than to vent the frustrations of the day.  I saw no reason to stay behind and engage in after-school activities.  I'd already endured the trials of having to get through a whole day.  Why would I want to prolong that experience any longer?

I never really wanted to grow up and face the responsibilities that being an adult entailed.  Getting facial hair was the closest thing to experiencing dysphoria in the same way that some women dislike having breasts.  I could no longer rub my hands over my smooth face.  It was that experience (and preferring the company of women to men) that led me to wonder if I might be Trans.  I wouldn’t mind being androgynous, but I never actively sought ways to permanently remove my facial hair.  I was worried about having to face too much pain.  I was afraid of shaving out of fear of cutting myself, and having a bad experience with shaving cream getting in my mouth as a kid.  I spent my high school and college years trimming my facial hair with scissors, hacking away until it was slightly shorter.  I didn’t even like calling my facial hair a beard, since I’d have to acknowledge that I was growing up, and I didn’t want to.

Even handling an electric razor years later was an uphill struggle, since the vibration made me uneasy.  Constant reassurances that the razor wouldn’t break my skin didn’t assuage my anxiety.

I got easily upset in work environments where the desk layout were radically different from mine, where the keyboards were precariously placed on flimsy plastic sliding woodframes that could fall apart from the slightest applied pressure.  I needed constant stability world where there was none, and the world wasn’t willing to accommodate those needs.

For a long time, I thought that unlike other Autistics, I didn’t have any visible stims such as waving my hands in public.  (I tend to do that when handling hot plates or in the privacy of the bathroom in order to dry my hands faster, which never get sufficiently dry enough even after applying a towel)  It was only recently that it occurred to me that my persistent need of wanting to sit near the table - constantly pressing my stomach against the edge of the table and wanting to lie down on the floor - THAT was my stim.

It’s why I got so upset when my parents got a dog for my sibling.  They got it as a gift and thought I would warm up to it.  But I never did.  I saw it as an usurper of my floor space, constantly giving me unwanted attention when I didn’t need it.  I didn’t like the idea of having to spend time with something that would never increase in intellect, remaining a perpetual child.

By the time my objections were made, it was already too late to give it away.  I spent my formative years in abject terror of having something unpleasant greet me whenever I came home, a constant reminder of a bad experience of dogs biting me while collecting payment for my newspaper route.  And it was a Yorkshire Terrier, a small animal that wouldn’t shed, giving an allergic reaction.  There was just something about those eternally black dilated eyes that unsettled me, much like how comic snobs look down on Manga characters with glinty expressive eyes.

(Of course back then, I was also cautiously nervous of Anime characters, because their eyes conveyed too much emotion.)

My thoughts which were once optimistic increasingly turned to darker areas not before traversed.  I devised several ways in trying to get rid of the animal.  I deliberately left the gate open so it’d run away.  I had it gorge itself on kibble, threatening to burst its stomach.  That got me a lecture, asking me to think about what it’d be like to imagine what it’d be like to induce vomiting / having my stomach forcibly pumped, to which I replied I’d gladly endure such pains if it meant getting rid of the creature.  Once, while my family was going away on vacation and the dog was being taken care of by someone else, on our day of departure, I fed it some rat poison I’d found lying in the school floors.  I assumed that it would die, far away from any assumed blame.  So when I returned and saw it was very much alive, I felt like I was in the presence of a demon.

Back then, I engaged in shoplifting, because I felt I deserved to be punished.  I had the feeling that I was a danger, since my thoughts and feelings were so out of tune compared to everybody else, and needed to be stopped before it was too late.  Upon being caught (I didn’t try to hide my theft very well), the mall cop asked if I liked boys.  This was a confusing question for me to answer, since while I’d looked at plenty of straight and lesbian Hentai, I’d also experimented and branched out on Yaoi, finding the feminine boys to be cute.  But actual human people?  No, I didn’t.  

Looking back, I'm left wondering if that's the kind of thing law enforcement is supposed to ask.

When my mother found out after I’d basically confessed to doing shoplifting, she had me go back to the stores I’d shoplifted from and personally pay for the items I’d filched and issue a public apology to the managers.  While this was a suitable punishment fitting the crime, I still didn’t feel this was punishment enough for me.  After all, I was still free to do whatever damage I was capable of.

It was a mystery as to why I was so sensitive to these minuscule details that didn’t seem to bother anybody else.  I made complaints about not wanting to be touched by fur that would have uncomfortable sensations.  I was given patches of varying fur samples to try to desensitize myself, but I didn’t like having to overthink these things.  I wanted to have these tasks done automatically and not have to focus on breathing, which I always did to excessive extremes, wanting to get the breathing in and out over with.  I wanted instant relaxation, and breathing simply wasn’t doing it.  Everybody put my actions down to hormones and teenage rebellion.

And then, my psychologist found the description for Asperger’s while looking for another client, and thought that the symptoms sounded a lot like me.  A test of 10 questions consisting of theoretical scenarios was devised to determine my reactions, choosing from multiple choices, and my answers were textbook responses.  My symptoms weren't easily noticeable, since I tended to look people in the mouth when they talked, and they never noticed.  I had an oral interpreter intervene on my behalf to clearly explain things for me.  I'd basically fallen through the cracks in the system for a long time before somebody finally noticed.

After that, my parents who’d been frustrated with my behavior finally had an explanation and better understanding of my thought process, and sought ways to accommodate my needs.  They couldn’t get rid of the dog entirely, but ways were devised to make the continued living experience not as unpleasant.  I compensated by having a raised cushion to block the dog’s resting spot away from my peripheral eyes while watching TV.

So when the dog finally passed away from old age, I wasn’t sure how to react.  I’d lived in abject fear and hatred, constantly pounding my foot to the floor to scare it away.  Every time I opened the door, it would greet me, and remind me of its presence.  All I wanted was to be left alone, and it never learned that much.

Ironically enough, if we’d gotten a cat, I probably wouldn’t have been bothered as much.  I didn’t want constant blind affection.  I wanted subjective affection, but only on my own terms.  My personality would be more on par with a cat’s being more introverted than extroverted.  And yet, my sibling would wind up owning several cats, while I wound up with none.

I was perfectly willing to let myself stay miserable rather than ever let myself admit that I could ever find welcome company with a dog.  It’s why I greatly empathize with women who’ve been assaulted and have to face their attackers at work/school/home who’ve gotten off scot-free.

Embarrassment Redux

I would like to make an amendment to my previous blog post about feeling embarrassed.  At the time, I only had difficulty in expressing my frame of reference for embarrassment.  It wasn’t that I didn’t feel embarrassment, since there were certain acts I was loathe to do in view of full public, but didn’t consider those worthy of being my most embarrassing moments.

Just recently, I experienced an incident that had me re-evaluating my previous description.  I limited embarrassment as being a social construct, the visible type to blush furiously when unfairly placed in social situations, such as being forced in admitting to having a crush in a teasing public.  But there were other manifestations that I hadn’t considered.

On this particular day, I was on my way out after doing some volunteer preparations when I entered the Metro and saw the station terminal was delayed.  Since there was a larger crowd than usual, I decided to check out the bus schedule to the next station.  That involved leaving the terminal and going back upstairs to see the timesheets, which showed that they’d be coming in about 20 minutes or so, and I’d just missed the last one by 2 minutes.

I attempted to go back and see if the Metro was running late, but my card refused to go past the main gate, having already having used it very recently, and not passing the honor system.  I briefly said a few words to the Ticket Counter to try to explain my predicament, outlining the details above.  He said a few words that I didn’t understand.  I stood expressionless, nodded and then turned back towards the bus stop.  Only, I decided not to wait for the bus, but walk to the next station instead.

As I was trekking, I became acutely aware of how heavy my backpack was, having brought some library books that were due.  I was accustomed to carrying heavy loads, since I enjoy the weight while it’s resting on my lap as I sit on the bus, but it makes for unpleasant travel companions during long walking hours.  Which is why I take public transportation in the first place.

I ruminated about my current predicament, going over the previous events in my mind.  Sure, I could’ve made things simpler if I’d just waited, but that would’ve made things uncomfortable waiting in a crowded station with no way of knowing when the next subway would come or if the delay would be longer than expected.  Sure I could’ve waited for the bus, but it didn’t feel right to be standing around doing nothing.  There was also the possibility of catching another bus going my way.  I could’ve simply explained my situation more clearly to the man behind the ticket counter, but that would’ve been too - 

oh.

At that moment, I realized that embarrassment wasn’t limited to just being uncomfortable in group conversations.  I didn’t register it as embarrassment because that’s my default state.  When things get too difficult for me to explain, I find it easier to do it on my own.

The ironic part is that this happened right after I’d helped out with my volunteer organization for hard of hearing people to seek out services.  And right next to the library that day, there was a booth for Deaf and Disability Arts Practices.  I had an extraordinary amount of trouble asking the people there if a pamphlet available there was free or not, despite doing my best to gesture emphatically and raising my mask up to be better lipread.  Even though these were people who should’ve been easily able to convey their agenda forward, communicating in a noisy environment was still an unsurmountable obstacle.

If you want to see yourself in a good light, you’ll avoid situations that’ll leave you looking bad.  It’s also why so many elderly people are reluctant to admit their hearing which they’ve grown dependent on is starting to become less reliable than usual.  As a result, there’ll be increased instances of flare-ups due to miscommunications and misunderstandings, keeping your distance from people you were once close to.  Loneliness is one of the easiest causes of dementia, and deafness just enhances it.

There’ve been times when I’ve gotten frustrated over someone’s inability to understand me, despite my thinking that I was speaking clearly enough, a growing annoyance of having to repeat myself, the recipient unwilling to believe my words.

Though I’ve certainly never gone as far as to vehemently deny the existence of certain family members.

Ignoring your relatives so you'll remain on speaking terms.

How Embarrassing...?

One of the first writing assignments I was ever given in High School was to write about my most embarrassing moment.  I just wrote down something along the likes of, “Having to write this stupid infantile meaningless (etc.)... essay.”  It was a litany of double-spaced synonyms stretching down the page, and after handing it in, I was told to redo it properly.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write up something personally embarrassing to me.  It was that I couldn’t remember one.  To me, being unable to think up anything was embarrassing in itself.

I couldn’t remember anything that could be considered embarrassing, so I made something up that could be considered embarrassing to other people. That essay was accepted and praised for being more honest.  But I can’t recall a word I wrote.

I’ve never been accustomed to feeling embarrassed.  Being self-conscious about being seen doing something in public, sure.  Being uncomfortable about reading / watching something that makes me emotionally insecure, sure.  But, not typical things that would normally embarrass other people.  I didn’t mind when my Mom showed up at school to give presentations and help out.  She was looking out and supporting me.

As a kid, I would be late for when the school bus came to pick me up, being more preoccupied with the TV.  At first, Mom had me go to school in my pyjamas, *certain* that the shame would shake me out of my complacency.  It didn’t.

I only changed my habits when I went to school without having lunch prepared, and then wasn’t allowed to have any food.  The teachers had been warned beforehand, and were told not to share their lunches with me, no matter how much I complained, even as they agonized over my reactions, but my Mom said it was necessary.  When I came home that day, I was practically starving, and my Mom said something along the likes of, “If you had been prepared before the bus came, you would’ve had lunch.”

Since then, I’ve always made it a point to be on time for anything.

It might’ve seemed borderline abusive at the time, but she was just applying Logical Consequences, which are different from Natural Consequences, where a child learns things after making silly mistakes and figuring things out, which is pretty much the mainstay of children’s TV episodes.  Once the child realizes that certain actions result in certain consequences, they’ll be better prepared to avoid doing that again.  But other times, there are moments when simply learning the lesson afterwards doesn’t work, or won’t stick without outside intervention. 

My main problem was that I never learned these potentially reputation-saving lessons until long after the fact.

When most other students would have been embarrassed at the concept of sex ed, I just engaged the lessons with the same clinical detachment as any other class, having been familiar with the source material, thanks to books like Where Did I Come From? and What’s Happening to Me?, which explained body functions like the most normal thing in the world with silly drawings.

That in turn led to me being called the 12-letter ‘M’ word.  (No, the other one)

One time in class, the teacher gave a question.  I don’t remember the question, let alone what subject we were talking about.  It could’ve been ‘things that were once thought to be harmful’, but I remember the answer I piped up with, which was, “Like Masturbating?” which elicited tons of laughs from all the students around me.  I had no idea what was so funny, and it had to be explained that even though the text said the act wasn’t something to be ashamed of, what I said wasn’t the kind of thing normally said in public conversation.  For about a year, I was paired up with a lab partner who disparagingly nickednamed me ‘Masturbation’.

Even though the act was on my mind, having it continuously pointed out and reminded really rankled on me.  I couldn’t understand why these High School teens were so utterly infantile about basic sexuality.  (Looking back on my thoughts and actions now, that should’ve been a big honking clue)

To this day, I have reoccurring dreams of being naked at school, but in these scenarios, I’m more concerned about completing my 3-month project due in 2 weeks that I haven’t even started and didn’t even know about.

I also never understood what was supposed to be so funny about men wearing women’s clothes.

If it was okay for women to wear men’s clothes, then shouldn’t the reverse be true?  Just wear whatever’s comfortable!  If the clothes you want to wear are on the other side of the rack, that shouldn’t be a deterrent, just as long as it fits.  

I don’t really care about fashion or style, just function.  My choices are fairly basic.  I prefer to wear soft clothes with seamless seams, little social commentary (allegiance to specific sports teams or cartoons are visually distracting) I’ve often had to have the holes in my clothes pointed out, since I’m so used to feeling comfortable, and don’t really care about how I’m perceived.

When I started getting more invested in comics that weren’t of the Newspaper variety, I was quite enthusiastic about reading digest collections of Richie Rich and Archie.  (Don’t sneer - they were extremely popular and cheap) But the more I read them, the more I noticed that there was an element in these comics that kept cropping up that annoyed me.  It wasn’t the repetitive plots, the page limitations or the corny jokes.  It was that the sentences invariably ended with exclamation points, and there were very few instances where periods were put in place, and that put me off.  (Question marks didn’t count)

When I become overexposed to media, I become hyper-aware of the limitations of the form, and once notice something that keeps showing up, it becomes impossible to ignore, especially when certain themes start to show up.

I don’t know when it started (probably around Twilight & the Hunger Games), but I got annoyed when dystopian stories struggling under suppression started shoehorning in romance plots which only served to distract, particularly love triangles that hardly elevated the story, and would’ve benefited from their absence.  Why did EVERY story need a forced romance subplot?  Being more interested in creating artificial drama than authentic chemistry.

I got so annoyed by this that I even parodied this outlook early on in my WebNovel:

RIP - Microwave

With animals freely wandering into cities without a care and the air becoming cleaner, today marks the first time National Earth Day is ACTUALLY thematically faithful.

And on top of everything, the Microwave that'd been faithfully used for 30+ years finally conked out. This model, a Litton Generation II Multi-wave was useful not just in how quickly it heated up food compared to the later models, but also beneficial in that the interior had a flat base, without a rotational model in the middle, allowing room for larger pots to be cooked inside.

There was the visible smell of smoke emanating from the kitchen, and I wondered if I was responsible.  But that couldn't be.  The hard-boiled eggs I cooked were taken care of that morning.  And the stew was taken out of the oven.  I was later informed that it was from the engine side, which produced a vibrating noise that would've been in imperceptible to my underdeveloped ears.

Finding a suitable replacement isn't going to be easy. Especially one that'll last longer than 3 years.  I also found the early model to be more powerful and functional compared to the later models.  I've become so accustomed to using the microwave for heating up everything that I prefer the melted bread to the toasted one, even when the bread would wind up sticking to the plate unless lifted quickly enough.  I later devised a method to transfer the bread from the hot plate to a cold one so I wouldn't be forced to eat it as quickly.

Whenever I cooked any food inside, I would always prefer to keep it on the default highest setting, no matter how much splatter it would cause inside.  The food always tasted better to me the hotter it was.  And if the water from noodles happened to spill over (which happened often), I would do my utmost best to cover up the mess as best as possible before anybody noticed.  As long as the proof of mess was cleaned up in a hurry, I was confident I could get away with the crime, no matter how many times I failed.

The last time the machine was in for repairs, it was because the code buttons for setting heat times for frozen items (peas, meats) wasn't working. When the Repairman came, there were only three numbered buttons that didn't work. After he left, four more numbered buttons didn't work anymore. And my Dad paid good money for that.  He said the only way he could've fixed it was by finding the right parts, which weren't around anymore.

At the end, the only buttons that still worked were 3, 6, 8, 0, Start and Clock. (later, the number 9 started working again) As a result, I usually inputted times in multiples of 3 for quick and easy use. Also, to input the time, we had to wait for 3:00, 3:03, 3:06, 3:08, 3:30, 3:33, 3:36, 3:38, 6:00, 6:03, 6:06, 6:08, etc. otherwise we'd have to wait hours before the proper time would come up again.

To get an idea of how old this model was, the lightbulb had long since burned out, so that opening the door and seeing only darkness within was expected.  Likewise, the knob that opened/closed the front door was falling off. At first, Scotch tape was put over the knob to keep it in place, before being replaced with masking tape the colour of the microwave. My Dad later replaced the tape himself, but I wasn't satisfied with how he did it, since there was too much of a gap. So I held the knob close and redid the taping to make it feel more natural. If he noticed anything, he didn't tell me, and I preferred to keep it that way.

In its last years, the door was also beginning to sag, and certain secret methods were used to keep it locked in place.  Before throwing it out on the front lawn, the cable wire was removed along with the knob to prevent anyone from using the defective microwave ever again.  In the meantime, I'll have to rely on the generosity of neighbors fortunate enough to have a spare microwave lying around until a suitable replacement can be found.  Years ago, I actually found a close non-rotatable microwave at a garage sale for $10, but it was given away without my knowledge simply because it 'made too much noise'.  That 'noisy' spare sure could've come in handy right now.

It'd been around for as long as I'd been alive. I'd practically lived growing up with it. Losing the microwave was like losing a friend.

These images aren't from the defunct microwave in question, but online auctions that have passed. They're the closest to the one I had.  I had no idea other models had dials on them.

LOOK at that flat smooth base, with no annoying rotating center to get in the way!
Plenty of room to stuff large cooking pots inside!

Pet Peeves - Missing Comic-Inspired Titles

One of the great pleasures of getting a Newspaper comic collection is finding the relevant comic title name drop inside.  While the comic was running, it was a challenge trying to guess what the title of the next collection would be.  Usually, we were nowhere close, because we couldn't possibly enter the minds of the cartoonists drawing them.

But the annoyance comes when there's an inspired title, and no relevant accompanying comic inside.  This could be understandable if the comic repeats cover space, and would be considered cheating reusing space that could be better filled by another comic or doodle artwork.  The earliest example would be the first For Better or For Worse book, back when it was just starting out, and hadn't gained cult status yet.

It would take years before the relevant comic would be seen again.  I doubt many longtime readers even knew it was based on a strip, only reworked and redrawn.

Another annoyance is when the title shows up, but doesn't show up in that book, but in another.  This was evident for the phrases, "It must be Nice" and "Pushing 40".  But FBOFW isn't the only comic guilty of this low-key crime.

Perplexingly enough, this extra-long Cathy cover on par with Isekai titles didn't have this comic, but the next collection did.

But this wasn't the only instance.


It can be particularly erroneous when a comic makes a passing remark that made perfect sense when running, but as the years pass by and the collective memory of the audience dims, they no longer recall the significance or meaning behind the titles.  Particularly for one of Adam's last long-running mini-arcs.


In some cases, the inspiration can be so obscure and unseen that even long-time fans may not even know where the reference came from, in the case of this Sunday Shoe throwaway panel:


Ironically enough, you're more likely to see a comic title on the back of a paperback that splits a large collection in half.  Despite getting a raw end of the deal, these things were ubiquitous, which suggests somebody out there was buying these things.  I don't have any physical copies around, but I do remember one particular example.


Just imagine the above colourized and reorganized in a 2x2 panel layer.  The thing about this comic?  It didn't appear in "Wake me up when I'm a Size 5" as noted, but in "Thin Thighs in Thirty Years".  What's the point of re-releasing these properties if you can't even get your own references right?

Trans Form

Apologies for not updating my blog in a long time.  I’ve been preoccupied with working on my WebNovel.  But I’ve also been struggling with other personal issues.  I didn’t want to reveal this until I was given permission to do so.

In February of this year, my sister approached me with a secret that she’d been hiding from our family for the better part of a year.  She was extremely nervous about telling me, and only decided to share it with me, even knowing that I wouldn’t pass judgement on her.

The revelation that she identified more as a man, a gay man, and still found men attractive.

This was both surprising and unsurprising.  My sister had never really adhered to feminine standards, tending to shun typical girl’s activities.  The girliest toy she had was a My Little Pony, back when ponies looked like horses, and a barbie doll still in the wrapping.  (She hoped there’d be demand for that particular doll, racking up resell value, but that probably only applies to boy’s toys)

LGBT issues had become prevalent in media recently.  Elli (formerly Thunt) of Goblins fame recently came out as transgender, which certainly explained her sudden inset of depression, causing the comic to go into a year-long hiatus.  I never thought that our household would become part of that statistic.  We never think it’ll affect us until it actually happens.

What worried me upon hearing the news was that I might not be as tolerant as I first thought.  I’d been so used to the idea of having a sister, that having a sudden brother filling in that role was a drastic change.  (Especially given how much we fought as kids)  But as soon as I saw my sibling, those doubts faded away.  As long as I didn’t get tangled up on gender expectations and pronouns, it was no big deal.

The main problem was that I would have to acclimate myself in referring to her as a him, and use he instead of she.  It’s easier when it’s someone I haven’t been associated with for years.  That, and I still feel the need to call him by the old nickname of Chant, than Adam, his chosen male name.  He said that I could still call him by that old nickname, since it was gender-neutral.  Though he didn’t like my usage of Sie, Zir, and other experimentative alternate gender terms, which surprised me.  I have problems with the collective noun "They", since it’s using collective nouns to describe a singular.  even though I have trouble with using collective nouns to describe a single person.  Saying “They did it!” while pointing to a crowd can be extremely confusing.

This common complaint was something recently pointed out in Robot Hugs, who is also Trans.  The author has posted honest personal accounts, and devoted their artwork and stories to feminist causes.  The title sounds like it comes from the main character having their feelings invalidated to the point of feeling like a robot.  The actual truth is something different.

What surprised me was finding out that Transgender people routinely change their names, feeling that their old name causes physical pain.  That it was on par with being called the N-word or having a pebble in your shoe.  I had no idea that there was so much stigma attached.

One thing I worried about calling my sibling by his new name was saying his old name before remembering, thereby calling him "Chadm".  It's one thing if the new name is close to the old name (Joe/Josephine, Karl/Caroline) but such a radical change takes some getting used to, even with repeat practice.  Though, upon first learning about his preferred name, I naturally replied, “It’s like I don’t know you from Adam.”

And there was the subject of what their child was going to call him.  I approached several suggestions, ranging from a planned (but never developed) story idea involving a girl who had two mommies, and would shy away when they kissed, because that was “mushy”, and call them Mother and Mum.  But my sibling objected on being called “Father”, since that sounded too formal.  I went through the range of early baby sounds, of Ba, Da, and Ma, rejecting Muda for being too memeable, and suggesting Dumas, in praise of Alexander Dumas.

Only recently did they finally reveal my sibling’s change to their child, and the mother would be called Papa, and the father would be Daddy.  The child’s response was, “Is Daddy going to be a girl?”

My Brother-in-Law, has been remarkably supportive of his decision, even though it can’t be easy on their sex lives.  The common refrain in getting married is that “You won’t be losing a daughter, you’ll be gaining a son”.  In the same token that he wouldn’t be losing a wife, he’d be gaining a husband.  But I don’t WANT a brother - I want a sister!  And I’m sure “Daddy” feels the same way.

It’s kind of like the inversion of DAR! - a Super Secret Lesbian Diary, where the autobiographer identified herself as lesbian, then wound up marrying a man anyways.

In a way, I can kind of understand why he doesn’t want to be a woman, even if I don’t identify with the reasons for doing so.  There’s so much maintenance involved.  The constant application of makeup, choosing the right kind of clothes, beautifying oneself just to meet an impossibly expected standard.  And keeping that up on a daily basis is too much trouble.  So much time can be saved without having to care about looks.

On the plus side, it’s given me the excuse to introduce him to two genres that I’ve been obsessed with that deal with gender - the indie game Undertale, featuring a gender-neutral protagonist, and the cartoon Steven Universe, the show about Gay Space Rocks, NOT to be confused with Land of the Lustrous, the Anime about Gay Space Rocks.  (LotL also has the cardinal sin of having the majority of Space Rocks have similar body types, which makes telling them apart difficult.)

When it comes to portraying boys who want to retain girlish quantities, well, there are far more accounts of those in number.  But when it comes to showing women who want to be men, that figure drops dramatically.  Sure, there are instances where females have disguised themselves to enter male-dominated territory, but I can’t think of any where they actually wanted to be a man in the process.

There’s an excellent comic about how it’s fine for girls to like boy things, but distasteful for boys to like girl things.

It's easy for me to identify with women, but it's far harder for me to identify with Gender Dysphoria. I’ve tried to read several autobiographies surrounding the issue, but my mind start wandering.  The closest I came to was skimming through Trans Mission: My Quest to a Beard by Alex Bertie, which had the benefit of having pages filled with enlarged text.  Despite getting into people’s heads and reading their innermost thoughts, I could never really relate.  But I greatly identified with Being Ace, a memoir comic about being Asexual.  Probably because the concept of being bewildered by the overwhelming daily barrage of sexuality greatly appealed to me.

The irony was that I oftentimes took out books dealing with gender identity without realizing my sibling's internal dilemma.  One of which was Super Late Bloomer.  In fact, I only lent that to him because I wasn’t too enamoured with the other gender identity comic books on the subject.  But now that I know about his condition, I felt the need to show him the books I once thought wouldn’t be appealing.  If there’s one thing I take pride in, it’s finding comics relating to any subject, no matter how obscure.

Super Late Bloomer: My Early Days in Transition by Julia Kaye - These comics were first available online in gag-a-day diary form and then collected later.  A simple three-panel Newspaper daily comic and the most approachable introduction of someone getting acclimated into the new world of transitioning.

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe - a recent publication I pre-ordered as a birthday present, featuring the gradual mental process of a young child raised by hippie parents trying to figure themselves out.  It’s probably the closest thing that relates to my sibling’s experiences growing up.  A sample can be seen here:

Appelez Moi Nathan (Call me Nathan) by Catherine Castro and Quentin Zuttion - a French book that I found by sheer chance, and features a lesbian teen who grows increasingly upset about the obtrusiveness of hir breasts, and wonders how everybody else can possibly be fine with them.  What most struck me were two symbolic NSFW double-page spreads, one where the protagonist is overwhelmed, drowning in a sea of breasts, and the other where sie has the mental image of tearing hir own breasts off, just to feel relief.  It manages to say a lot with very little.  There are large blank spaces surrounding the watercolour pictures, but there’s an intensity of emotion within these drawings not seen elsewhere.  I sincerely hope this gets translated sometime soon.

Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash - I wasn’t expecting much with the silhouette cover and simplistic childish drawings, but the authentic scenarios and convincing dialogue drew me in, and I leisurely absorbed it, not wanting the experience to end.  And once I finished the personal outing, I reread it again, which is something I rarely do for books that demand slow reading.  The closest this comes to trans issues is when the titular character becomes more confident after imagining herself as one of the Backstreet Boys.

Gumballs by Erin Nations - I didn't know what I was getting into, and the subject came as a complete surprise.  I mostly skipped over the single-page character profiles.


Part of It by Ariel Schrag - a collection of short comics throughout various ages of Ariel’s life.  I particularly liked the ones about her gossiping on the bus, and her time spent teaching children.  The longest story involves her dilemma over a pair of glasses.  This mainly deals with Lesbian subtext, and the author has gotten in some trouble about a novel of hers.  More details at the end of this post.(*)

Interestingly enough, both Gumballs and Part of It make a passing reference to Stand by Me, saying it was extremely influential during their formative years.  It could be a coincidence, but maybe it’s because there are very few emotionally honest movies about boys.



The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang - a parable about a Prince who wants to wear dresses, and his personal Dressmaker who willingly obliges to his request.  Despite the lush drawings, I thought my sibling wouldn’t like it, but he excused the ending, saying that it was a Fairy Tale.

Family Portraits - an online collaboration effort between multiple LGBT artists, sharing their personal experiences.  Also ne of the few instances of a girl transitioning into a man, and something I thought would be presumably relatable, but wound up being pretty forgettable.

Witch Boy and The Hidden Witch - done by Molly Ostertag, the same artist of Strong Female Protagonist, but I wish the writing was better.  I wasn’t a big fan of the constant put-downs of the titular boy for wanting to delve into the “forbidden” realm of magic only solely restricted to women, despite having the soul of one.

Flocks by L. Nichols - an autobiographical comic where the lead is presented in the body of a Puppet with button eyes.  Apart from that odd dissonance, this book suffers from being extremely repetitive.  The puppet in question is constantly beset by disturbingly hateful comments from the Church, feels bad, and cries all the time, feeling extremely confused.  This goes on for pages and pages.

First Year Out: A Transition Story by Sabrina Symington
This was one of the first Trans comics I read, and I wasn’t a big fan, because I felt the dialogue felt stilted and artificial.  I felt that it could've been done better.  It might work fine as an introductory issue, but not much else.  I gravitate more towards works that contain multiple topics of interests with trans issues being just one of the subjects

It’s the same problem I had with Bingo Love, a romance between two Christian girls rediscovering each other years later.  The artwork was well done, but the narrative felt extremely wooden and the exposition was clunky.  I Wanted to like it, but the execution fell far away from my expectations.

It’s as if these Trans people, given the chance to express their experience in a meaningful way, find themselves unable to articulate themselves so, their self-esteem having been ground into the dirt.  As if their self-esteem was tied in with being misgendered for so long.  As if they’re too timid to fully broach the subject that they’re extremely close to, offering up insecure platitudes that don’t feel honest about the personal issue.  It’s a shame, because they’re the ones most closely associated with the subject, and can give honest insight that wouldn’t be available elsewhere.

For the most part, when it came to alternate comic representation of gender norms, you couldn’t do better than Manga, the gateway drug being Ranma ½.  There were other notable titles such as Futaba-Kun Change!, Your & My Secret (Released by ADV, then picked up by Tokyopop, and annoyingly enough, the last volume was never released), Genshiken II, and, the Moto Hagio story X+Y in A’A Prime.

Yet for their willingness to explore gender-bender stuff, it hasn’t always knocked my socks off:

My Wife is a Man - Something I thought would be relevant to my sibling, featuring a man dressing up as a woman, and her husband still loving her all the same.  Instead, the two of them were gay lovers before, and Yuki only transitioned into dressing up as a woman later.  And rather insultingly, the wife acts too stereotypically female.  Yuki has no other identifiable traits.

Wandering Son - one thing that particularly bugs me about Fantagraphic’s version is that they constantly divide the title from the page it shows on, leaving large singular textless pages.  Another fault (that the artist admitted) is that many of the characters are hard to tell apart.  And the sparse minimalist dialogue doesn’t help much.  Also, the English publication has stopped at the 8th volume since 2015.

My Brother’s Husband - has a brother dealing with his Gay twin dying suddenly, and having to deal with his foreign husband who's Canadian to boot (given the artist’s propensity towards bear men). The Manga does a good job of showing the living brother's discomfort, and trying to overcome personal biases.  But it feels like fluff in parts, and I felt the second half never really delved into the mental conflicts, and only skirted the issues.

Too often, I become alienated when the stories I read devote their time in taking the subject matter too seriously.  I find that comedy works well as a coping and identifying tool when used appropriately.  Such is the case when it came to titles such as Magical Girl Boy.  It might not strictly apply, since like Ranma, the titular character doesn’t enjoy changing genders.

I also highly recommend the webcomic Never Satisfied, with a trans lead, and characters who respect xheir decision.
During the serialization of the last chapter, I was obsessively reading past pages over and over, delving their content for potential clues as to what could possibly happen next.  Sure, you can read what happened now in one sitting, but waiting for the next page was exquisite torture.

I much more prefer it when transitioning or awakening sexual identity as ONE of multiple background elements, such as the Lesbian plot in Jason Lute’s Berlin, or the Reeducation Camp in the 9th issue of the survival comic, No Mercy.

(*)
In the time that I recommended Ariel Schrag's comic, I later found about her novel, Adam, a problematic book that was made into a problematic movie.  It seems counter-intuitive that someone who wrote about growing up as a closet Lesbian that she would have a teenage boy pretending to be transgender to get into a Lesbian's pants.

It's a shame that someone who wrote so honestly about her own experiences simply wasn't able to get into the mindset of someone else different from her.  Better she should've stuck with what she knew, rather than pigeonhole Bisexual and Trans issues in a RomCom setting.

Although the LGBTQA community is supposed to rally everyone under a single banner, there's a lot of discrimination among those ranks.  Gender confusion should be common grounds, and yet, some groups condemn others for "infringing on their property."  In the comments, it was pointed out that:

"Bisexuals are unfairly outed for being unfaithful and not "sticking to one side". 

"Lesbians can be passionately transphobic and biphobic if they see the existence of those other groups as a threat to the legitimacy of their identity." 

"I'm still trying to figure out how this resulted from a lesbian writer and a trans director. It's like if a black guy made Birth of a Nation (the first one)." 

"There are some lesbians who have an 'I got mine, F you' attitude towards the rest of the LGBT+ community. I suspect that Schrag is one of them."

Despite the problematic elements of Ariel Schrag's novel, I still felt the need to include her comic it if only to show the similarities in taste of Stand by Me.  Her earlier work, Likewise, is leaden with dense Cerebus-style text crowding the pages.  In other words, DON'T support Adam, but at least check out Part of It.  Support the works that are deemed worthy.