True, if you’re going to properly cook with genderfluid, altidude affects the recipe. If the genderfluid is lower altitude, to reach boiling for ideal flavor, the genderfluid needs more time but doesn’t need to be as hot. (*insert goblin joke here*)
Was gonna make a joke referencing the infamous “Top 10 Hottest Female Sonic Characters” video but realized I can’t because even three movies in, we have yet to see ONE female character from the games in these movies. How sad is that?
i suppose maddie is roughly “the size of an average human mother”, though
Given that the first one evidently started its script existence with [insert cartoon character IP here] and ended up surprisingly good, with the second one adding the characters from Sonic 2 and 3, I think we’re doing okayish.
The supporting cast from the games doesn’t really explode until Shadow is introduced, I think.
Plus there was the Archie Sonic comic, and three different cartoons that came out before Sonic Adventure 2. Some of the Archie Sonic characters even made cameos in Sonic Spinball IIRC.
Granted, now that I think about it, there’s not exactly a huge list of female Sonic characters is there, outside of the comics. Something like 9 or 10 total I think? The Archie series was packed full of them though.
But yeah, no non-human characters yet. I do actually understand why they wanted to have Sonic 3 focused entirely on Shadow… though Rouge would have probably been easy enough to fit in, and I’m kind of sad they didn’t include her. :C Hopefully we get some kind of Team Dark spinoff show or something!
https://ezgranet.github.io/thiotimoline/
It starts out reading like a typical scientific research paper, danse with jargon, and then just keeps getting funnier the further it goes.
Wait the link isn’t what I recalled. I recalled a paper that tried to fool the compound by preventing the addition of water once the reaction occurred. It did not go well.
Oh wait… they were first introduced in Sonic Adventure, not 3, so not relevant to comic… but there’s *still* the fuzzy little animals saved when you break badniks… those are off limits, too.
Jocelyne turns her attention back to Joyce, who’s staring at her phone. Jocelyne looks at the screen and is like, “Uh, I appreciate at support to me liking girls, but you didn’t need to pull up pictures of books for me.”
Fucking autocorrect doesn’t want me talking about boobs. Or it wants the pictures of Dorothy’s boobs to also include books, make a themed photo shoot out of it.
Jocelyne: “Joyce, are you okay with our talk about bisexuality?”
Joyce: “Huh? Sorry, I was distracted by this boobs picture from a friend.”
*everyone else’s eyebrows hit the roof
I mean, This is debatable but I don’t feel like doing a deep dive into the MCU to find out. (I know it’s not true if we’re just saying Marvel)
The problem with these comics getting posted at a time where it’s late for me is that I’m commenting as I’m getting ready to sleep, so sometimes I’m just hit post on a comment that isn’t a complete though.
I guess it depends on the metric. We judging by subtext, cause Civil War has the most tension but I feel like the Thor movies have the most bare ass shots. Love and Thunder was pretty horny too actually.
Actually my first instinct was that I just saw someone post the fight in the bar from Iron Man 3 and I couldn’t think of any moments from Ragnarok that came close to it in terms of horniness, although it Ragnarok might make it up in volume, I think IM3’s horny is pretty concentrated to small bursts.
The actual right answer is probably one of the non-MCU films though. One of the Blades or the X-Mans or the Deadpools.
Civil War has that scene where Sebastian Stan choke-slams Scarlett Johansson on a table while she’s got her legs wrapped around him. That’s pretty much neck-and-neck with the bar fight, aye?
I think in terms of ‘equal pandering to either gender you’re attracted to’, I’d say. Most MCU movies are pretty 80+% male (unless it’s Black Widow, Captain Marvel or The Marvels).
I guess there’s Ant-Man and The Wasp? But I don’t think that was very horny.
Ragnarok had Thor, Valkyrie, Hulk, Loki and Hera? Which is a good spread I think.
So is Becky’s fear either ‘what if Dina no longer likes me?!’ or ‘what if Joyce could be into girls after all and Dorothy steals her away?!’ or ‘what if Joyce could be into girls after all and I gave up on her too quickly because I thought she was unattainable?!’.
Or y’know, I guess all four (yes there’s a fourth one, she just hasn’t found it yet).
Becky’s identity as a lesbian was hard fought for, and I think she finds security in it. The idea that it could change is scary. It’s also hard when you grow up in an environment that thinks the correct response to queerness is to change it, to accept that change can happen in a non-abusive way. The idea that someone “can’t change” their sexual orientation is also used as are argument for why it should be accepted.
(There is a difference between changing your sexuality and your sexuality changing– but Becky’s new to considering it at all, so I’m not sure she’s distinguishing it or what)
All of this is exactly it, except that this is 90% of people who struggle with this, and the reality of advertising that attraction can change is that a bunch of people who simply do not want the gays to exist would try harder to make gay people straight.
I think your answer hits the nail right on the head. Her dad wanted to change her, her church wanted to change her, but Becky knew what they didn’t: that this wasn’t “sin,” this was how she was made, that she’s been that way “forever.”
And she knew she knew she was “fearfully and wonderfully made” as she was, and that it wasn’t *her* choice. And like she said to Joyce, she knew that God would be on “the right side.”
But, if it’s something that actually CAN be changed. That, if she had tried enough, she could have done. Why, then that doesn’t sound like “how you’re made” anymore; that sounds like however many other sins that take hard work.
… We don’t even know the circumstances of Becky’s mom’s death. We know she took her own life, and we know that Becky feels some responsibility, if not for her mom’s death, then for living a particular way. On the page that Thag mentions, actually. The “sorry, Mom.”
There’s also a big distinction between “can change” and “can be changed”.
That it can change still doesn’t put it under your control. It’s still how you’re made. Trying harder wouldn’t change anything.
Exactly, and it changing doesn’t mean you or anyone can guarantee the direction it changes in. Like, yeah, going on T might lead to someone being more interested in sex with men– or sex with women, or sex in general.
Yeah, Becky is still very much stagnant in her views, regardless of everything that has happened to her. Questioning herself is actually going to force her to actually, finally deal with the fact that her religion both murdered her friend and tried to murder her other friends.
Yeah, I don’t think Becky has much to worry about. The possibility of change does not necessarily imply change in a bad direction.
I, for example, have only leaned more lesbian as time has gone on – both due to my own romantic preferences and because move and more of the “men” I’ve slept with have since turned out to be trans women.
I know the “it’s unchangeable!!!” argument is currently necessary because there are smallminded bigots out there who don’t even want to understand the basics, so they aren’t ready for “actually, it’s way more complex than that…” (just like they keep saying only-two sexes is basic biology, and ignore that advanced biology says otherwise…)
I just keep wishing that we didn’t (have to) lean so hard into “born this way, it’s unchangeable”, because that allows so little room for growth and change and fluctuation. I’ve been afraid to change labels, because if you keep being told you are hard-wired one way and all other things aren’t true and you just didn’t find out yet, it invalidates previous identities i felt right in at the time.
Sometimes, even LGBTQIA and ally people put so much emphasis on “THE NEW THING YOU FOUND WAS ALWAYS TRUE (and everything else wasn’t)” that it does not capture my entire experience. I want all the identity labels and all the ways i used to identify to be an integrated part of my identity and my history as a person. I’m not truer to myself with the labels i use now, than i was with the labels i identified with as a baby queer. The feeling of “THIS IS RIGHT” i got when i started out is REAL. I don’t want it to be overwritten by what i use now.
I wish that we could learn to support people’s growth and travel through phases in life and celebrate them as real and true and important. “It’s just a phase” is another of these demeaning ways to ignore what we experience. So what if something “was a phase”?! The moon has phases, and that doesn’t mean a gibbous moon is less real just because it’s going to be full again at a later point. A phase can be any length and we learn something and it empowers us and there is no end goal except being true to ourselves in that moment. I want to look back on my previous identity labels and experiences and cherish what they gave to me in terms of identity and community. And when i move forward to different labels and experiences, i will carry them with me, because they are part of me.
The political stance i wish we could make people see is, basically, Pro Choice. Choosing labels and experiences that fit how our brains are wired (and re-wired if the chemical soup changes, as thejeff put it^^). It’s just impossible to bring pro-choice and pro-selfdetermination arguments in the hellscape we currently live in.
Until we can truly celebrate that everyone knows themselves best, i guess we’ll have to stick with the *born this way* stuff for a bit longer.
re: smallminded bigots, the idea that it’s “necessary” because they’re not willing to learn any better to navigate the complex world in which we live is still part of the problem
when they are confronted with truth about human diversity and biology which they cannot deny is MUCH more complex than what they were brought up to think, well, that’s somehow YOUR fault — you took their perfectly simple black and white world which they knew like the back of their hand, and needlessly overcomplicated it by existing just as you are 🙄
Their story on how *you* did that is just as complex as the truth you try to tell them, and no, i don’t make jack shit sense. But to them, the lesson behind that story is clear — the world is this way ONLY NOW because certain people made it that way; and all conservatives have to do is take power back from those people, and everything will be simple again.
Is our country run by 6-year-olds who are brought up to venerate ignorance and militarism, and who can’t be bothered to think too deeply about anything besides football and furniture?
Though it wouldn’t work on everyone of course, there’s a subtle, but pretty solid argument that sexual orientation can change, but isn’t changeable.
It might change with time or even more so with other drastic changes like HRT, but you can’t just choose because it’s more convenient for you (or for society).
Yeah, that’s how i’d put it. Like how, really, any component of someone’s personality can change, but you can’t toss somebody into a machine and change it how you like.
What’s odd to me is that she knew this when Joyce was freaking out on Ruth for dating Jason. She gave a really good explanation to Joyce about how people can like both, and came down on the side of “people should be true to themselves, because not doing it is dangerous to them.” So I’m curious as to what else is going on with Becky right now, because this seems like a slight step back from where she was a while ago.
sexuality, gender and neurodivergence
all fluid things, this ya need to learn yeah
breakin free of the conformist hive
gonna kick things up into overdrive
HRT does that sometimes! Not always. Some people go from straight to gay, or gay to straight, or gay to gay… Or become bi. Or stop being bi? Or straight to straight.
And its tricky to predict, too. Like, you’ll have a boyfriend you’re really, really into, you level up at night, and BOOM, you’re suddenly a Sylveon? What happened to Umbreon? What the fuck are Baby Doll Eyes??!!
I’m cis, but I had to get HRT for a while because my meds fvkced with my hormones, and when my wife went through menopause she also did HRT to mellow out the changes from that (sometimes women’s E production drops too fast and HRT gives a gradual reduction). Both of our HRT was in the form of a topical cream.
i keep forgetting SO often that HRT was invented for cis people, haha.
Maybe because cis people (esp cis men) don’t ever talk about HRT at all (except you, which is cool!), while trans people gush about their HRT all the time <3
At one point I was prescribed spironolactone, and I was like, “Oh, cool, like trans women” and forgetting for a bit that it’s mainly cis women who take it.
(But also it helps with my own dysphoria around it to think of it as a trans medication, so)
Did find some tubes of a clear cream when using the guest room of a friend’s family. Assumed it was lube because our friend (trans daughter of the family and how we got to know them all) had used the guestroom with her two partners during the week.
At breakfast she laughed and said she sure hoped we hadn’t tried using them because it was HRT they misplaced while packing up.
Take your time to figure this shit out. Definitely talk to your doc about it, but make sure you don’t feel externally pressured either way and make sure your motivation is internal. Which can be tough.
Oh, and always, we all have permission to make mistakes so don’t be afraid to recklessly try things…
So basically what I am saying is do whatever you want? I can’t even tell anymore.
But i agree. The good thing about HRT is that (unlike what uninformed bigots believe) it’s very, very, excruciatingly slow to see changes. So i can just advise: get started even if you are only 80% sure. If you dislike it, you can always stop. Some things are irreversible, yes, but if you stop testo after 4 months and you already grew 3 hairs, it will be manageable even if you decide against wanting a beard after all.
Taking it can give you a better feeling on whether it is right for you.
I started T when only being 80% sure, and the sureness fluctuated a bit at the start, but…. i just never stopped, so i guess i’m 100% sure now that it’s right for me. 🙂 (8 years… wow)
Yeah, this is probably going to be my approach. I don’t like committing to things unless I’m 100% certain, but a friend of mine was like “just try it for three months and see how you feel, not long enough for any permanent changes’
HRT is one of those things where, for the first little while, all you’re committing to is doing it for one more day. You just keep re-committing as long as it seems to be going well. You can also stop at any point, even after months or years- you’re just more likely to have hit a permanent change by then. There’s no little HRT fae in the bottle waiting to make a deal where as soon as you take any, you have to be on it forever.
which is to say: go for it.
(with medical consultation, yanno.)
Good luck!
Every one of the trans women I know who’s on it is happier now than she was before.
Go get that those titty skittles!
(or whatever the trans male version is since you didn’t specify which way you were going)
It’s hard to accept change in yourself. When I came out as bisexual, I was met with people saying that would change, or asking if I was “still bisexual” at various points. And then when “bisexual” felt like it no longer really fit as a label, it was hard to let go of–like, it felt like it would be biphobic of me, or supporting biphobia or something.
I also didn’t go to gay or straight like the people saying bisexuality doesn’t last were saying– it just got messier and didn’t feel like “bisexual” worked for me anymore.
So now I just use “queer” and let what that means change as I do, but there are still things that are hard– like, I’m probably aromantic now, but I didn’t used to be– I used to be super romantic, and I miss those feelings and miss wanting those things, but now it’s kind of like I reach for them and they’re just… not there.
I’ve met plenty of people who are Very Not Cool with other people’s sexual fluidity, including several queer people. Sometimes it’s discomfort like Becky’s having here, but sometimes they’re being intentionally exclusionary for other reasons.
My working theory for a lot of this stuff is that the way we think about sexuality and gender and honestly a lot of things is constrained by the need for advocacy movements to adopt the positions that are the most rhetorically effective rather than the ones that are the most true.
It means the way we think about these things are often positions designed to resist attack from bad actors rather than positions designed to help us actually understand ourselves.
I wish we were in a world where people were allowed to just be whatever the hell they wanted. Unfortunately, we have to preemptively worry about how bigots will take us when explaining ourselves, which definitely hamstrings communication quite a bit.
Well put, i kinda replied along these lines on another comment.
It would be great if we could distinguish those points. Some parts of it, *we* are ready to understand, but the world is much slower and we unfortunately have to be patient until they catch up… while internally, we can already talk specifics that might be common knowledge in 10 years…
“The most violent element in society is ignorance.”
– Emma Goldman
The backbone of a functioning democracy is an informed public — for democracy is a system in which all citizens share Power, and thus the responsibility that comes with it, and need to be well informed of the actual workings of the complex natural and artificial systems which govern our lives. Hence the marked importance of our education system.
Without an informed public, or worse yet when the public is deliberately misinformed, “democracy” very easily looks like a situation where three wolves and a sheep decide what’s for dinner.
At which point, it is no longer democracy, but Tyranny of the Majority.
It’s actually quite interesting to see Becky who is usually depicted as remarkably well adjusted to accepting different gender/sexual orientations for someone with her religious fundamentalist background having a point of struggle. She’s usually a step ahead of Joyce out of the two of them.
I grew up in a similar background to Becky, so like. I get why she might feel anxious about this actually. She’s probably had a lot of people in her evangelical life tell her she’d grow out of her feelings for girls, or start wanting to be with men the way she’s “supposed to”.
It’s scary to feel like the people who you thought accepted you might feel the same way as those evangelicals! As other commenters have noted, she may not see the difference yet between “some people’s sexualities can change” and “so yours has to, too”.
In my own life as a lesbian I’ve actually gotten a lot of pressure from other lgbt people who’ve brought up sexual fluidity as like a “well but how can you rule out guys entirely because you can never know for sure so there’s no reason to ever be a lesbian” so like, her anxiety isn’t even really that unfounded I feel like?
I thought I was bi before I realized my feelings for guys weren’t actually attraction. It was hard to reach a point where I accepted myself as a lesbian, and I still struggle a lot with feeling like it’s somehow wrong of me to acknowledge that I am not interested in men at all. A lot of that insecurity has grown from other lgbt people (who are most of my social life!) treating lesbianism as this too-rigid, conservative thing that enlightened people grow past.
I freeze up now, just a little, when people start to talk about sexualities being changeable. Because sometimes even people who are mostly kind and accepting will turn to the lesbian in the room and be like, “You know you really should be dating men,” and think they’re being super progressive for saying so. And it hurts a lot more than when my youth pastor said it, you know?
(P.S.: since lesbians now have a reputation for transmisogyny I wanna be clear that “men” here means actual men, cis men and trans men, it’s not some nasty dogwhistle terf bullshit. Trans lesbians get the same flak too!)
I don’t think she so much scared about her suddenly liking boys, than what it means that maybe someday she could. Her quest to be herself led to her loosing ties to her only real community she had ever had, her church, and, ultimately, her Dad being beaten to death in a dark basement surrounded by her traumatized friends.
The idea that she could one day like boys is the idea that maybe if she had just stuck to the program, kept her mouth shut and held out a little longer, then maybe she could still have been happy and all that pain and death avoided.
None of what happened was her fault, but I doubt she lacks some feelings of guilt about what happened and the idea that it wasn’t needed must be horrifying.
Metaphorically speaking, she decided to walk her through a minefield because she had been told 100% the enemy had a sniper on the other path, and then a bunch of her squad got hurt by mines. Later she learns there was a 95% chance the sniper was even there.
Second guessing herself or feeling guilty isn’t logical, she didn’t kidnap her friends or kill her dad and she was working with the best information she had, but I think part of her will always be afraid that if she had waited and chosen the other path, then just maybe nobody would have gotten hurt. As such, part of her will always be terrified that that would mean all pain was her fault.
partly this, and partly it’s knowing that if the people who want to convert her straight get to hear about this, conversion therapy gains traction again. The queer community has worked so hard on “you can’t change us, please stop trying” that this is a real fear. Neither Becky nor bigots (i do have hope for Becky of course!) understand at this point that “change happens on its own” is not a problem, only “forcing change on someone” is.
Because Becky has defined herself as lesbian and styled every single aspect of her existence as ‘not into dudes’ and now it’s being undermined by someone who confirms nothing is set in stone.
Becky might not be as rigidly fundamentalist in her thinking as Joyce can be but she’s still from the same type of upbringing.
In my favorite porn comic (yes, it’s Alfie, I’m cultured), one of the main characters identifies very strongly as a lesbian, to the point that she ran away from her family and an arranged marriage. Later in life, she tried sex with a guy (part of a threesome, it’s a porn comic), and found she enjoyed it, which led to a major crisis of identity for her. She’d left that arranged marriage, which would have pulled her family out of destitution, because she was convinced she could not be happy with a man. If that wasn’t true, did she betray her family for nothing? (Yes, Alfie is porn with a serious plot, you should read it, it’s good)
Back to the point, when you build your identity on top of your sexuality, thinking of it as fluid can be seriously destabilizing.
Huh. I honestly had no idea sexuality could change. I always just figured it was locked in and people just… figured themselves out better. Is that a thing that just happens or is it an HRT thing?
It can be either, although IMO the true extent of what causes what is unclear. It’s not really easy to research this stuff, since so much is self reported.
yeah as it turns out, earth creatures including humans are THAT many orders of magnitude more complicated in many things, including the diversity of sexuality and how it changes
Sexuality can and does change, but also I knew a guy who’s gay now who was pretty anti-straight relationships when he was a girl (like down to some of that “all straight sex is inherently rapey” nonsense) because imagining himself in a relationship with a dude made him feel… very girl in ways that felt violating for reasons he could not yet understand. Being able to imagine yourself in a relationship without triggering dysphoria would, I imagine, change a lot about who you could comfortably feel attracted to.
There’s also a lot of crossover in the general messaging around gender and sexual orientation, so someone might think their feelings that go with not being feminine, for example, mean that they’re a lesbian. (Sexuality is more permissible to question than gender, generally, especially before recent years.) (“More” does not mean to imply that people are particularly invited to quest their sexuality either.)
There was a transwoman that I knew before and after transition, who went from a straight dude to a straight woman in the space of 9 months. There was a brief bisexual period in the middle, but only a few months after she got into a bra and stopped using falsies she was dating a dude and left her girlfriend, who is also one of my friends.
It can be a result of HRT, therapy, rebuilding mental frameworks, self-acceptance, natural hormone shifts in the body over time, and probably too many other things to count. In my experience, people don’t usually talk about it, because biphobia and conversion therapy are so heavily entrenched in US culture. It’s nice to see people (and fictional characters) being more open about this kind of shift.
It’s one of those topics where people get real nervous real quick, and for fairly good reason. There’s just too much precedent of discussions like it having either malicious or technically-well-meaning-but-ultimately-very-harmful intent behind them.
Kinda like how, if I say I’m curious why some people are gay and some aren’t, someone’s probably gonna worry I’m looking for a way to ‘cure’ being gay. When actually it’s just: okay so why are sexualities a thing at all?
So, yeah, it is nice to see some discussion of it in what is pretty obviously not going to be a maliciously-based context. We can safely assume that the solidly queer-inclusive webcomic is not about to say “well actually gay bad, let’s fix it”, which makes a good platform where people are (hopefully) not expecting to hear some conversion therapy bullcrap.
Yeah, my thoughts were running along similar lines too. I actually didn’t know that sexuality could potentially be altered during HRT and one’s restructuring of their identity, but upon reflection, that actually makes a lot of sense. What I am worried about though, is that the people behind “gay conversion camps” and the like will learn about this and go “Ohh, we were just doing it the wrong way!”
On the other other hand though… If there is someone who doesn’t like their sexuality and the option to just pop a pill and it switches over, do we really have the right to stand in the way of that? It IS their body, their choice after all.
I do think there’s a lot more to learn in this area, that practice is running ahead of the science because we’ve learned enough to take the first steps, and that advice as to who would benefit most from which adjustments will get better, perhaps a lot better, and the adjustments will become subtler and less troublesome.
No to torturing people into believing they are what they are not, but also yes to “can we do even better for ourselves and our neighbors?”
HRT doesn’t work like that, though. It doesn’t guarantee that any sort of sexuality-based change will happen, and it seems like, when people do have something change, it’s more in the realm of “oh wait I like more genders now” than “wait now I only like the one”. A gay trans dude isn’t gonna go on HRT and suddenly become straight. Well- /A/ gay trans dude, as in one particular guy somewhere, might. Gay trans dudes in general are not going to become straight on HRT. Some of ’em might just wind up bi.
(asterisk: you do sometimes get people who start out as, say, “I’m a lesbian I guess because I like women and I’m?? a woman?? since I have the uterus and all??” and then realize “oh, wait, no, I’m actually a straight dude”, but that’s not a change in sexual attraction, that’s a change in perception of said attraction.)
It’s a reasonable worry, but we can’t hold back from discussion and acceptance of a very real thing because of the fear that someone will misunderstand and misuse it.
And also, yeah, if we did have some kind of reliably-changes-sexuality pills, and someone was determined enough to be willing to take those for years (if not the rest of their life) and notably change many aspects of their body in order to change their sexuality, that isn’t anyone’s business to interfere with. All we have any reason to try to change is the societal shame. A bit like how the fact that some people get plastic surgery because they feel like they aren’t attractive enough doesn’t mean we should stop everyone from having plastic surgery.
For a lot of people, that is true. For some it’s not though. Sometimes it’s related to hormones like HRT and sometimes it’s about understanding yourself or labels better and sometimes stuff just plumb changes.
Getting a bit philosophical here, but is there actually a difference between learning more about yourself and changing?
Every time you learn, you change. That already proves that change is possible, so maybe we should ask: Why would there be categories where change isn’t possible?
Well, except for a few limits from the hard sciences, but as you get to the more human sciences everything becomes a lot more changable. Culture is definitely changable, as is phenotype. Genotype can change as well, though that is already quite a bit harder. The need for cell walls so far seems to be a hard requirement for life, as is the presence of at least some water. But things like identity, sexuality, or sartorial preferences? Those are definitely in the realm of changable.
You bring up a good point, though I would say there’s still some difference.
Using myself as an example, there were signs I was always bi/pan – though that’s somewhat difficult to suss out because I was also a somewhat late bloomer romantically/sexually. I’d never even had an obvious crush until I was like 16. So I came out as into one gender, then the other, because even though I accepted the concept of bisexuality in other people, I was able to fool myself into thinking I just… wasn’t. And, again, it didn’t help that my sample size of characters and real people I was actually into was small enough I wasn’t really sure which was correct, haha.
Now I realize that there were various external pressures on me making me think I had to be gay in either direction, but that I really never actually gave that much of a shit about my partners’ genders and/or genitals. So I’m pretty confident in saying that, yeah, I was always bi/pan and that’s not really a change. I’ve been pretty stable in the background and I’m just being true to myself now. (Interestingly, over the years I’ve basically thought I was everything BUT straight LOL.)
But I’ve heard of other people who had a more sudden change, often hormonally-driven, instead of a slow realization they were suppressing parts of themselves. So while I wouldn’t say I changed, I definitely would say they did?
I think the terminology we have makes it difficult to describe. Like there’s some quality that was different between a trans woman that remained solely into men and Jocelyne. I would call that bisexuality since bisexuality is about the capacity for attraction. That potential was always there for her to be attracted to women but there were other factors that prevented it.
This kind of phrasing also works more against proponents of conversion therapy. They would use the phenomenon of trans people’s attraction changing to argue “see! Homosexuality is just a product of having the incorrect hormones for a person”.
Another way to phrase it is that sexuality is like LED lighting. RGB works by having a diode each for Red, Green, and Blue. For someone with all three, a particular diode might not be turning on but it’s still there all along unlike someone who doesn’t have that diode in the first place.
For me it was an HRT thing, specifically Progesterone and not Estrogen. I was in a straight relationship with a man for 19 years (I transitioned back in 1994) until I got on Progesterone back in Feb of this year. I’m now in a lesbian relationship with a woman and far happier then I ever was before with zero interest in men… Even the ones in Thor Ragnarok.
Here is the part where it all gets nebulous though and I think about Becky’s point. The first relationship I was ever in post transition was with a girl, but due to it going poorly in the bedroom I just decided on men after that and stopped considering women for 3 decades. Somewhere between HRT, a personal habit of bad experiences causing me to write off things forever, and my autism… I cant really know what the truth is. If HRT changed my perspective or my changed my preferences or helped me regain one i started with and denied this whole time. What I do know is I’m happy with my new girlfriend now and that is what matters most to me at the end of the day. Even if I don’t understand how my brain works.
Hmm. Ragnarok doesn’t have Gamora (green) or Nebula (blue, cyborg, Karen Gillan), so it doesn’t have the MCU’s hottest women in it, but it does feature Abs Hemsworth, the third hottest MCU dude, so it’s pretty high up there.
For some reason, my first pass over this strip was backwards (not sure why, I haven’t been reading manga lately) and I got to the second-to-first panel before I realized that it was Jocelyne, not Joyce. The only surprising bit was that “Joyce” was being that open about it with Becky…
Becky’s heading for a breakdown about sexuality stuff, isn’t she? Not because of her own, from what I’ve seen, but just the idea that it *is* fluid for many people clearly stresses her out. Which I get, as someone 1) who likes being able to put everything into neat little boxes and 2) whose sexuality(/gender) has definitely changed and cannot be categorized well At All–but even if hers *did* change one day, that wouldn’t make her experiences right now mean any less. I just worry about what’s going to be the catalyst for that impending breakdown.
(Also: oof, I remember how HRT makes one’s libido go all weird, lmao)
^*to clarify, I meant that I haven’t seen any indication that Becky’s own sexuality has changed at all (and ofc I believe someone when they say who they are)
What!? That movie came out seven years ago! That’s like a whole lifetime! She can not possibly have seen it! I mean, nobody watches really old movies! It’s inconceivable!
14 year olds frequently are attracted to and develop crushes on adults (especially unavailable ones – singers, actors, etc.). That’s normal. That’s not fucked up. If an adult takes advantage of a 14 year old’s crush, THAT’S fucked up. But seeing a movie as a teen or tween and going “oh man, [actor] hot” is not “fucked up.” Unclutch thy pearls.
…And if that WASN’T what you meant by fucked up, please explain, because it’s literally the only thing I can think of.
I don’t think it makes sense that way, since the point is the changes HRT is inducing. 14 year old Jocelyne wouldn’t have done the whole cast of Ragnarok. Jocelyne today would.
Which still doesn’t really make sense, because people can watch movies from (checks) seven years ago.
I took that as your meaning, but it doesn’t really make sense either– like, I watched a show from 2008 earlier today– so I can see why people would have other interpretations.
Oh, yeah, that’s a thing, for gender and sexuality both. They can’t be deliberately changed, but, like pretty much everything else about people, they can shift over time.
It’s why you get some people who know they’re trans from childhood, and why you get some people who don’t just take awhile to notice, they very firmly /are not/ at odds with their AGAB until some later point in life. Sometimes the person who starts transitioning in their 30s didn’t realize or didn’t accept it until now, sometimes they just… genuinely weren’t trans yet.
Vaguely related, I’ve seen a… theory? way of thinking? floating around somewhere that says “girl” and “woman” are different genders, and “boy” and “man” are different genders. Most girls grow up into women, most boys grow up into men, but sometimes a girl grows up into a man or a boy grows up into a woman.
When it comes to sexuality, you can also get people who have or develop exceptions. Say you have a straight dude whose wife, after 20 years of marriage, turns out to be his husband. Sometimes you then get a straight dude who’s very attracted to his husband. Or you can have a straight guy who’s attracted to a good chunk of women and to, like, one random guy ever, who doesn’t consider himself bi because it’s literally just been the one guy. Sexuality, like any other aspect of human behavior and personality, can be wiggly for some people.
For all of that, discussion can be a bit tricky. Both because people get (somewhat reasonably) scared of ill intent if there’s a discussion about changing gender/sexuality, and because we can’t really point a Bi-O-Matic at people to figure out if some of their attraction is new or if it just wasn’t accepted/present/relevant until now.
I’m aware, for example, of someone who’s taken testosterone now and then while tinkering with their gender, who’s normally a lesbian but winds up bi when they’re on T. They can’t tell how much of that is because men perceive them differently and interact with them differently, potentially in less offputting ways with less offputting implications, when they’re on T.
If it can happen accidentally then it can happen on purpose, as soon as you figure out how it happens. People are subject to causality. Whether you should is an entirely different matter.
Theoretically.
But it still might well not be something that can be isolated so that only that one thing can be changed. Or replicated to a treatment that can change anyone.
That’s an interesting concept, that “girl” and “woman” are not the same gender.
It took me probably until around 30 before I felt like “woman” described me at all. Some of that was age, I just didn’t feel “old enough” or “mature enough” for the title. But a lot of it was that I just didn’t relate to a lot of the typical gender-related things that relate to being a woman. I didn’t really fit the “tomboy” label, or feel very gender non-conforming, etc. Because I liked “GIRLY things” … which is different.
I actually really like Becky being horrified at the prospect of shifting sexuality as her liberation from fundamentalism is based on “knowing thyself.”
I was terrified of that happening to me, I met so many who said they were going to be lesbians, and 4 years of hormones and a surgery later you would meet their boyfriends. So GLAD I never had to deal with that! 25 years later, happily man free. There hasn’t been a penis in the apartment since the dog died. Heh.
Look, I get that the dog just kept bringing home boyfriends for a sleepover. But what I was trying to imply was that it kept finding loose dicks in the bushes or something, I don’t know.
I’ve also heard it as stuff like “I hated the idea of being a girl’s boyfriend. But turns out I’d love to be her girlfriend”. A lot of gender is expected from relationship dynamics.
I’m much more a Mummy (1999) bi-spectrum sort of person, much less a Thor: Ragnarok (2017) bi-spectrum sort of person. Sure, it’s a false choice anyway, but still.
Some trans women report colors being brighter a few months into HRT. Whether that’s because they are feeling a lot happier, because HRT really affects that, or some third option… unknown!
I mean, it’s true because why would they lie, but I’m also not really here to debate trans experiences with total strangers online. I offered information I was interested in offering, you are welcome to google any further questions you may have.
As a nonbinary person, I’ve been on both sets of hormones and I can’t ever say my vision has been different. (And as an artist, I think I’d be pretty likely to notice haha.)
That said, pregnant people sometimes report differences in their ability to smell, so… yeah, hormones can affect a LOT of random shit you wouldn’t expect.
Part of her probably is, but she’s having a crisis right now of the thought that her sexuality might change when she’s made it such a big part of her identity.
She’s also had some insecurities about Dina’s sexuality in the past, so she could be worried about that. Neither of them are taking hormones, though, so their preferences for romantic and sexual partners aren’t likely to change.
It’s great to see Jocelyne so happy, but it must be pretty awkward for Joyce to hear her sister talk about how excited she is. Also, Becky’s fear that she might start to be attracted to male is weird, I wonder if she’s had dreams where that happened.
Jocelyne seems to be talking to Becky, not Joyce.
Becky has a *lot* invested in her identity, such as the deadly hostility of her father, and the cold shoulder from the church community she grew up in.
Weirdly, that potential sexuality change is actually the scariest part of the HRT itself for me(there are things I’m more afraid of but those are more to do with “can I get it?” and/or bigotry) like, I’m already grappling with my sexuality changing since my egg cracked (ace to maybe straight? To add bi to the maybe list) so the idea of it changing Again is just a bit frustrating. Not frustrating enough to not want it but frustrating enough that I really hope it doesn’t happen
Weird hornyness? In my experience you should get ready for your libido to absolutely fall off a cliff and then you’ll be like “damn, it’s really weird how much time people spend being horny at all.
Mine did that, which also helped me realize I’m demi. Because it’s a lot easier to notice that you’re not really sexually attracted to many people when testosterone isn’t also making you horny a ridiculous amount of the time.
Apparently most anti androgens do decrease libido but some estrogens(I believe spiro is an infamous example) can put it right back up/increase it further.
late to this party because my sleep schedule is just fucked right now do to a rib injury. I want to get on HRT so bad, and now knowing it’s probably going to be illegal the next 4+ years sucks. so happy Jocelyne gets to be on her journey. also dear lord Becky has so much stress when it comes to her sexuality. ~<3
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what you’d have to watch out for is after filling up with gender fluid if you would do the entire cast of Sonic the Hedgehog 3
Don’t forget to top of your gender fluid.
If you get the gender fluid, do you have to be top? What about the bottoms?
Nah, usually you get someone else to top you after you get your gender fluid. Especially if it’s not informed consent but gatekept a lot.
Buy some gender fluid today
Now we need a complete 3-phase diagram of the freezing & boiling points of gender fluid.
^ brionl’s subtlest attempt at asking what it takes to get someone’s genderfluid hard/soft
I’m at basically sea level but don’t forget the high-altitude instructions for those readers so inclined.
True, if you’re going to properly cook with genderfluid, altidude affects the recipe. If the genderfluid is lower altitude, to reach boiling for ideal flavor, the genderfluid needs more time but doesn’t need to be as hot. (*insert goblin joke here*)
I mean –
[frantically shoves Sonadow art under a table]
Hahaha nothing to see here!
Was gonna make a joke referencing the infamous “Top 10 Hottest Female Sonic Characters” video but realized I can’t because even three movies in, we have yet to see ONE female character from the games in these movies. How sad is that?
i suppose maddie is roughly “the size of an average human mother”, though
Given that the first one evidently started its script existence with [insert cartoon character IP here] and ended up surprisingly good, with the second one adding the characters from Sonic 2 and 3, I think we’re doing okayish.
The supporting cast from the games doesn’t really explode until Shadow is introduced, I think.
I mean, before Shadow we had Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Metal Sonic, Mighty, Ray, Espio, Charmy, Vector, Fang, Bark, Bean, Big and Gamma.
Plus there was the Archie Sonic comic, and three different cartoons that came out before Sonic Adventure 2. Some of the Archie Sonic characters even made cameos in Sonic Spinball IIRC.
Granted, now that I think about it, there’s not exactly a huge list of female Sonic characters is there, outside of the comics. Something like 9 or 10 total I think? The Archie series was packed full of them though.
In the games, I can think of Amy, Rouge, Cream, Tikal, Maria, Blaze, Silver, Elise, Shade, Sage, Wave, Shahra, Merlina, and Zeena.
I’m gonna guess that the movie producers won’t (can’t?) touch any content from Archie or the old western shows.
Yeah… even Archie can’t touch a lot of the Archie characters these days.
(Fuck Ken Penders … and Archie’s incompetent lawyers)
I mean, there was Longclaw, but yeah, no Batface the Rouge (…yet?)
I stopped paying attention to Sonic after 3 & Knuckles, and now I’m too afraid to ask.
Technically Maria is a game character!
But yeah, no non-human characters yet. I do actually understand why they wanted to have Sonic 3 focused entirely on Shadow… though Rouge would have probably been easy enough to fit in, and I’m kind of sad they didn’t include her. :C Hopefully we get some kind of Team Dark spinoff show or something!
Fair point, I completely overlooked her. Though uh, she’s pretty firmly a minor so that’s probably for the best.
Gender fluid is more stable than resublimated thiotimoline see “The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline” by Asimov et al.
No, but it’s getting there. Think of it as a transitional compound.
Nice job 🙂
Tell us more about this Thot Timeline or whatever it is.
https://ezgranet.github.io/thiotimoline/
It starts out reading like a typical scientific research paper, danse with jargon, and then just keeps getting funnier the further it goes.
Wait the link isn’t what I recalled. I recalled a paper that tried to fool the compound by preventing the addition of water once the reaction occurred. It did not go well.
Don’t kink shame!
Wait… entire cast?
Okay, there’s a few in there you can shame. (*Glares at anyone who sexualizes a chao.*)
Oh wait… they were first introduced in Sonic Adventure, not 3, so not relevant to comic… but there’s *still* the fuzzy little animals saved when you break badniks… those are off limits, too.
*comment, not comic… darn brain, you’ve been up over 45 minutes, kick into gear already!
I mean, Alyla Browne might be a bad idea
you say that like people who haven’t tried cycling out their gender fluids don’t fall into that camp on the reg
Really wish I could watch Joyce’s facial expressions though that conversation.
She got a text with pictures that distracted her.
oh gods
I hope you’re right
gods I hope you’re right xD
Jocelyne turns her attention back to Joyce, who’s staring at her phone. Jocelyne looks at the screen and is like, “Uh, I appreciate at support to me liking girls, but you didn’t need to pull up pictures of books for me.”
Fucking autocorrect doesn’t want me talking about boobs. Or it wants the pictures of Dorothy’s boobs to also include books, make a themed photo shoot out of it.
That’s okay my brain changed it back for you anyway ^_^
Yeah, these days one eventually develops auto-autocorrect-correct.
Now I want pics of Dorothy’s boobs to include journals, post-it notes, or spreadsheets. What new* office-organizational kink is this?
*ahwhoamikiddingialwayshadit
If any of the cast were to incorporate office supplies into their saucy photos, it would be Dorothy.
A week from now (in-comic) Dorothy discovers that the image of her bosom is being used to catch attention in ad.s for copier paper.
How studious do you think Dorothy is that she keeps books down her top?
The average book would be hell on a bra and quite uncomfortable, yeah.
A small A6 pocket notebook, though, should be fine.
If Becky sees that and thinks Dorothy and Joyce’s relationship has gone there, we’re gonna see… something.
Jocelyne: “Joyce, are you okay with our talk about bisexuality?”
Joyce: “Huh? Sorry, I was distracted by this boobs picture from a friend.”
*everyone else’s eyebrows hit the roof
My instinct is that it’s just locked in a still frame of mild embarrassed shock
who wouldn’t amiright
Thor Ragnarok was like the horniest Marvel movie.
I feel like that’s debatable?
I mean, This is debatable but I don’t feel like doing a deep dive into the MCU to find out. (I know it’s not true if we’re just saying Marvel)
The problem with these comics getting posted at a time where it’s late for me is that I’m commenting as I’m getting ready to sleep, so sometimes I’m just hit post on a comment that isn’t a complete though.
I guess it depends on the metric. We judging by subtext, cause Civil War has the most tension but I feel like the Thor movies have the most bare ass shots. Love and Thunder was pretty horny too actually.
Actually my first instinct was that I just saw someone post the fight in the bar from Iron Man 3 and I couldn’t think of any moments from Ragnarok that came close to it in terms of horniness, although it Ragnarok might make it up in volume, I think IM3’s horny is pretty concentrated to small bursts.
The actual right answer is probably one of the non-MCU films though. One of the Blades or the X-Mans or the Deadpools.
I was going to say ‘but we had naked Hulk in Ragnarok’, but then I do remember we had actual Thor butt in Love and Thunder.
Yeah it’s probably the first Deadpool then. I often think of outside the MCU as not even Marvel but now they’re all under the same umbrella anyway.
Civil War has that scene where Sebastian Stan choke-slams Scarlett Johansson on a table while she’s got her legs wrapped around him. That’s pretty much neck-and-neck with the bar fight, aye?
I think in terms of ‘equal pandering to either gender you’re attracted to’, I’d say. Most MCU movies are pretty 80+% male (unless it’s Black Widow, Captain Marvel or The Marvels).
I guess there’s Ant-Man and The Wasp? But I don’t think that was very horny.
Ragnarok had Thor, Valkyrie, Hulk, Loki and Hera? Which is a good spread I think.
Hela, not Hera. Wrong pantheon by several degrees of latitude.
What, ALL of them? Even Taika Waititi? Jeff Goldblum?
I mean, Peter Dinklage I get.
Especially Taika and Jeff.
Two men very widely considered to be attractive? Yes also those.
Dang Becky, almost elbowed right into those 4-month-of-E tits, that’ll hurt a girl 😛
Oh god don’t remind me of that 😖
So is Becky’s fear either ‘what if Dina no longer likes me?!’ or ‘what if Joyce could be into girls after all and Dorothy steals her away?!’ or ‘what if Joyce could be into girls after all and I gave up on her too quickly because I thought she was unattainable?!’.
Or y’know, I guess all four (yes there’s a fourth one, she just hasn’t found it yet).
“What if I’m not really a lesbian and all this was for nothing!”
I think it’s “Becky is deeply uncomfortable with the idea that she could be anything other than a Lesbian” for very understandable reasons given her history.
I think you’re definitely on the right path for where Becky’s story might be heading
God I hate how fucking homophobic Jennifer is.
Which is ironic considering her relationship with Ruth.
All of em is good
Becky’s identity as a lesbian was hard fought for, and I think she finds security in it. The idea that it could change is scary. It’s also hard when you grow up in an environment that thinks the correct response to queerness is to change it, to accept that change can happen in a non-abusive way. The idea that someone “can’t change” their sexual orientation is also used as are argument for why it should be accepted.
(There is a difference between changing your sexuality and your sexuality changing– but Becky’s new to considering it at all, so I’m not sure she’s distinguishing it or what)
All of this is exactly it, except that this is 90% of people who struggle with this, and the reality of advertising that attraction can change is that a bunch of people who simply do not want the gays to exist would try harder to make gay people straight.
I think your answer hits the nail right on the head. Her dad wanted to change her, her church wanted to change her, but Becky knew what they didn’t: that this wasn’t “sin,” this was how she was made, that she’s been that way “forever.”
And she knew she knew she was “fearfully and wonderfully made” as she was, and that it wasn’t *her* choice. And like she said to Joyce, she knew that God would be on “the right side.”
But, if it’s something that actually CAN be changed. That, if she had tried enough, she could have done. Why, then that doesn’t sound like “how you’re made” anymore; that sounds like however many other sins that take hard work.
… We don’t even know the circumstances of Becky’s mom’s death. We know she took her own life, and we know that Becky feels some responsibility, if not for her mom’s death, then for living a particular way. On the page that Thag mentions, actually. The “sorry, Mom.”
This is going to be big.
There’s also a big distinction between “can change” and “can be changed”.
That it can change still doesn’t put it under your control. It’s still how you’re made. Trying harder wouldn’t change anything.
Exactly, and it changing doesn’t mean you or anyone can guarantee the direction it changes in. Like, yeah, going on T might lead to someone being more interested in sex with men– or sex with women, or sex in general.
It’s almost as if our core essential selves are electrical impulses in a chemical soup, which can be altered by other chemicals.
Which is disturbing in its own way.
Yeah, Becky is still very much stagnant in her views, regardless of everything that has happened to her. Questioning herself is actually going to force her to actually, finally deal with the fact that her religion both murdered her friend and tried to murder her other friends.
I don’t think Becky even knew Mike, so which friend got murdered?
Yeah, I don’t think Becky has much to worry about. The possibility of change does not necessarily imply change in a bad direction.
I, for example, have only leaned more lesbian as time has gone on – both due to my own romantic preferences and because move and more of the “men” I’ve slept with have since turned out to be trans women.
This is me. The older I get, the gayer I am.
Spot on!
I know the “it’s unchangeable!!!” argument is currently necessary because there are smallminded bigots out there who don’t even want to understand the basics, so they aren’t ready for “actually, it’s way more complex than that…” (just like they keep saying only-two sexes is basic biology, and ignore that advanced biology says otherwise…)
I just keep wishing that we didn’t (have to) lean so hard into “born this way, it’s unchangeable”, because that allows so little room for growth and change and fluctuation. I’ve been afraid to change labels, because if you keep being told you are hard-wired one way and all other things aren’t true and you just didn’t find out yet, it invalidates previous identities i felt right in at the time.
Sometimes, even LGBTQIA and ally people put so much emphasis on “THE NEW THING YOU FOUND WAS ALWAYS TRUE (and everything else wasn’t)” that it does not capture my entire experience. I want all the identity labels and all the ways i used to identify to be an integrated part of my identity and my history as a person. I’m not truer to myself with the labels i use now, than i was with the labels i identified with as a baby queer. The feeling of “THIS IS RIGHT” i got when i started out is REAL. I don’t want it to be overwritten by what i use now.
I wish that we could learn to support people’s growth and travel through phases in life and celebrate them as real and true and important. “It’s just a phase” is another of these demeaning ways to ignore what we experience. So what if something “was a phase”?! The moon has phases, and that doesn’t mean a gibbous moon is less real just because it’s going to be full again at a later point. A phase can be any length and we learn something and it empowers us and there is no end goal except being true to ourselves in that moment. I want to look back on my previous identity labels and experiences and cherish what they gave to me in terms of identity and community. And when i move forward to different labels and experiences, i will carry them with me, because they are part of me.
The political stance i wish we could make people see is, basically, Pro Choice. Choosing labels and experiences that fit how our brains are wired (and re-wired if the chemical soup changes, as thejeff put it^^). It’s just impossible to bring pro-choice and pro-selfdetermination arguments in the hellscape we currently live in.
Until we can truly celebrate that everyone knows themselves best, i guess we’ll have to stick with the *born this way* stuff for a bit longer.
re: smallminded bigots, the idea that it’s “necessary” because they’re not willing to learn any better to navigate the complex world in which we live is still part of the problem
when they are confronted with truth about human diversity and biology which they cannot deny is MUCH more complex than what they were brought up to think, well, that’s somehow YOUR fault — you took their perfectly simple black and white world which they knew like the back of their hand, and needlessly overcomplicated it by existing just as you are 🙄
Their story on how *you* did that is just as complex as the truth you try to tell them, and no, i don’t make jack shit sense. But to them, the lesson behind that story is clear — the world is this way ONLY NOW because certain people made it that way; and all conservatives have to do is take power back from those people, and everything will be simple again.
Is our country run by 6-year-olds who are brought up to venerate ignorance and militarism, and who can’t be bothered to think too deeply about anything besides football and furniture?
Yes, yes it is. 😑
Though it wouldn’t work on everyone of course, there’s a subtle, but pretty solid argument that sexual orientation can change, but isn’t changeable.
It might change with time or even more so with other drastic changes like HRT, but you can’t just choose because it’s more convenient for you (or for society).
Yeah, that’s how i’d put it. Like how, really, any component of someone’s personality can change, but you can’t toss somebody into a machine and change it how you like.
What’s odd to me is that she knew this when Joyce was freaking out on Ruth for dating Jason. She gave a really good explanation to Joyce about how people can like both, and came down on the side of “people should be true to themselves, because not doing it is dangerous to them.” So I’m curious as to what else is going on with Becky right now, because this seems like a slight step back from where she was a while ago.
Because it’s not that people can like both, it’s that sexuality can change, which echoes her dad and thoughts of conversion therapy.
sexuality, gender and neurodivergence
all fluid things, this ya need to learn yeah
breakin free of the conformist hive
gonna kick things up into overdrive
To the tune of My Favorite Things?
i was thinkin more like free-style rap,
but sure whatever works i guess XD
HRT does that sometimes! Not always. Some people go from straight to gay, or gay to straight, or gay to gay… Or become bi. Or stop being bi? Or straight to straight.
yeah it like a branched Pokemon evolution, it can go either way depending on a lot of stuff ^^
And its tricky to predict, too. Like, you’ll have a boyfriend you’re really, really into, you level up at night, and BOOM, you’re suddenly a Sylveon? What happened to Umbreon? What the fuck are Baby Doll Eyes??!!
‘Its terrifying. Glad it didn’t happen to me
Saw this conflict for Becky coming and called it in a previous strip only to get told off for it man it’s tasty to be vindicated nomnomnomnommers
Oh my fucking god, FINE. I’ll call my doctor and talk to them about HRT. Even webcomics are rubbing it in my face now
Good luck!
4 years last month.
Zero regrets
Does it come in topical cream form? Cuz then you could really rub it in your face.
I’m cis, but I had to get HRT for a while because my meds fvkced with my hormones, and when my wife went through menopause she also did HRT to mellow out the changes from that (sometimes women’s E production drops too fast and HRT gives a gradual reduction). Both of our HRT was in the form of a topical cream.
i keep forgetting SO often that HRT was invented for cis people, haha.
Maybe because cis people (esp cis men) don’t ever talk about HRT at all (except you, which is cool!), while trans people gush about their HRT all the time <3
“cis men don’t ever talk about HRT….” You somehow missed all of the ad.s for products to treat low-T?
Those taking it don’t want to talk about it, because low-T is seen as a personal flaw.
At one point I was prescribed spironolactone, and I was like, “Oh, cool, like trans women” and forgetting for a bit that it’s mainly cis women who take it.
(But also it helps with my own dysphoria around it to think of it as a trans medication, so)
Did find some tubes of a clear cream when using the guest room of a friend’s family. Assumed it was lube because our friend (trans daughter of the family and how we got to know them all) had used the guestroom with her two partners during the week.
At breakfast she laughed and said she sure hoped we hadn’t tried using them because it was HRT they misplaced while packing up.
oh noooo 😀
The instructions of HRT cream state very clearly that it should not be put on genitals, so i *also* hope you didn’t use it as lube 😀
No, we did not xD wouldn’t be polite to go and use other people’s stuff without permission
I mean… mood…
LET’S GOOOOOOOOOO
Take your time to figure this shit out. Definitely talk to your doc about it, but make sure you don’t feel externally pressured either way and make sure your motivation is internal. Which can be tough.
Oh, and always, we all have permission to make mistakes so don’t be afraid to recklessly try things…
So basically what I am saying is do whatever you want? I can’t even tell anymore.
interesting take, considering your user name 😀
But i agree. The good thing about HRT is that (unlike what uninformed bigots believe) it’s very, very, excruciatingly slow to see changes. So i can just advise: get started even if you are only 80% sure. If you dislike it, you can always stop. Some things are irreversible, yes, but if you stop testo after 4 months and you already grew 3 hairs, it will be manageable even if you decide against wanting a beard after all.
Taking it can give you a better feeling on whether it is right for you.
I started T when only being 80% sure, and the sureness fluctuated a bit at the start, but…. i just never stopped, so i guess i’m 100% sure now that it’s right for me. 🙂 (8 years… wow)
Yeah, this is probably going to be my approach. I don’t like committing to things unless I’m 100% certain, but a friend of mine was like “just try it for three months and see how you feel, not long enough for any permanent changes’
HRT is one of those things where, for the first little while, all you’re committing to is doing it for one more day. You just keep re-committing as long as it seems to be going well. You can also stop at any point, even after months or years- you’re just more likely to have hit a permanent change by then. There’s no little HRT fae in the bottle waiting to make a deal where as soon as you take any, you have to be on it forever.
which is to say: go for it.
(with medical consultation, yanno.)
good luck, you can made a try
Good luck!
Every one of the trans women I know who’s on it is happier now than she was before.
Go get that those titty skittles!
(or whatever the trans male version is since you didn’t specify which way you were going)
You got this! Best decision I ever made, coming up on 3 years now.
People seem to be cool with sexuality fluidity until they realize their own sexuality could be fluid.
i mean, maybe?
Becky’s is more the exception than the rule it seems, given what Leslie told her about fluidity.
And then they spend like an hour taking pictures of their boobs to send to their BFF, and tack on a “lol” like it makes it not mean anything.
The “lol” is key.
It’s hard to accept change in yourself. When I came out as bisexual, I was met with people saying that would change, or asking if I was “still bisexual” at various points. And then when “bisexual” felt like it no longer really fit as a label, it was hard to let go of–like, it felt like it would be biphobic of me, or supporting biphobia or something.
I also didn’t go to gay or straight like the people saying bisexuality doesn’t last were saying– it just got messier and didn’t feel like “bisexual” worked for me anymore.
So now I just use “queer” and let what that means change as I do, but there are still things that are hard– like, I’m probably aromantic now, but I didn’t used to be– I used to be super romantic, and I miss those feelings and miss wanting those things, but now it’s kind of like I reach for them and they’re just… not there.
I’m sorry to hear that, and I hope you find a good place to be in.
I’ve met plenty of people who are Very Not Cool with other people’s sexual fluidity, including several queer people. Sometimes it’s discomfort like Becky’s having here, but sometimes they’re being intentionally exclusionary for other reasons.
im an alien and really fluid myself, I do not find that exclusion stuff fun 🙁
Is Becky ready for the real talks about sexuality and that it can still change decades into your life or sometimes even moment to moment?
Nobody tell Becky that she may have caused a change in sexuality in her girlfriend.
I have missed these adult conversations about sexuality Becky seems to foster
My working theory for a lot of this stuff is that the way we think about sexuality and gender and honestly a lot of things is constrained by the need for advocacy movements to adopt the positions that are the most rhetorically effective rather than the ones that are the most true.
It means the way we think about these things are often positions designed to resist attack from bad actors rather than positions designed to help us actually understand ourselves.
Oops, this was meant to be a reply to Nono.
I think you’re definitely onto something here.
I wish we were in a world where people were allowed to just be whatever the hell they wanted. Unfortunately, we have to preemptively worry about how bigots will take us when explaining ourselves, which definitely hamstrings communication quite a bit.
Well put, Thag!
I can’t support this statement enough. Succinct, elegant, and tactful.
you said the thing i was thinking but good !
+1
Well put, i kinda replied along these lines on another comment.
It would be great if we could distinguish those points. Some parts of it, *we* are ready to understand, but the world is much slower and we unfortunately have to be patient until they catch up… while internally, we can already talk specifics that might be common knowledge in 10 years…
“The most violent element in society is ignorance.”
– Emma Goldman
The backbone of a functioning democracy is an informed public — for democracy is a system in which all citizens share Power, and thus the responsibility that comes with it, and need to be well informed of the actual workings of the complex natural and artificial systems which govern our lives. Hence the marked importance of our education system.
Without an informed public, or worse yet when the public is deliberately misinformed, “democracy” very easily looks like a situation where three wolves and a sheep decide what’s for dinner.
At which point, it is no longer democracy, but Tyranny of the Majority.
Why is Becky so worried about sexuality changing doesn’t mean hers will
Because she finds the idea that a core pillar of her identity could just shift like that frightening on it’s own.
I think that’s a pretty reasonable thing to be unnerved by, the potential malleability of the things that we think make us ourselves.
It’s actually quite interesting to see Becky who is usually depicted as remarkably well adjusted to accepting different gender/sexual orientations for someone with her religious fundamentalist background having a point of struggle. She’s usually a step ahead of Joyce out of the two of them.
I grew up in a similar background to Becky, so like. I get why she might feel anxious about this actually. She’s probably had a lot of people in her evangelical life tell her she’d grow out of her feelings for girls, or start wanting to be with men the way she’s “supposed to”.
It’s scary to feel like the people who you thought accepted you might feel the same way as those evangelicals! As other commenters have noted, she may not see the difference yet between “some people’s sexualities can change” and “so yours has to, too”.
In my own life as a lesbian I’ve actually gotten a lot of pressure from other lgbt people who’ve brought up sexual fluidity as like a “well but how can you rule out guys entirely because you can never know for sure so there’s no reason to ever be a lesbian” so like, her anxiety isn’t even really that unfounded I feel like?
I thought I was bi before I realized my feelings for guys weren’t actually attraction. It was hard to reach a point where I accepted myself as a lesbian, and I still struggle a lot with feeling like it’s somehow wrong of me to acknowledge that I am not interested in men at all. A lot of that insecurity has grown from other lgbt people (who are most of my social life!) treating lesbianism as this too-rigid, conservative thing that enlightened people grow past.
I freeze up now, just a little, when people start to talk about sexualities being changeable. Because sometimes even people who are mostly kind and accepting will turn to the lesbian in the room and be like, “You know you really should be dating men,” and think they’re being super progressive for saying so. And it hurts a lot more than when my youth pastor said it, you know?
(P.S.: since lesbians now have a reputation for transmisogyny I wanna be clear that “men” here means actual men, cis men and trans men, it’s not some nasty dogwhistle terf bullshit. Trans lesbians get the same flak too!)
It’s creepy to think of being changed against my will, even by my own person.
Yup.
This is why loads of people who think they’ve gone through character development actually have not.
I don’t think she so much scared about her suddenly liking boys, than what it means that maybe someday she could. Her quest to be herself led to her loosing ties to her only real community she had ever had, her church, and, ultimately, her Dad being beaten to death in a dark basement surrounded by her traumatized friends.
The idea that she could one day like boys is the idea that maybe if she had just stuck to the program, kept her mouth shut and held out a little longer, then maybe she could still have been happy and all that pain and death avoided.
None of what happened was her fault, but I doubt she lacks some feelings of guilt about what happened and the idea that it wasn’t needed must be horrifying.
Metaphorically speaking, she decided to walk her through a minefield because she had been told 100% the enemy had a sniper on the other path, and then a bunch of her squad got hurt by mines. Later she learns there was a 95% chance the sniper was even there.
Second guessing herself or feeling guilty isn’t logical, she didn’t kidnap her friends or kill her dad and she was working with the best information she had, but I think part of her will always be afraid that if she had waited and chosen the other path, then just maybe nobody would have gotten hurt. As such, part of her will always be terrified that that would mean all pain was her fault.
partly this, and partly it’s knowing that if the people who want to convert her straight get to hear about this, conversion therapy gains traction again. The queer community has worked so hard on “you can’t change us, please stop trying” that this is a real fear. Neither Becky nor bigots (i do have hope for Becky of course!) understand at this point that “change happens on its own” is not a problem, only “forcing change on someone” is.
Because Becky has defined herself as lesbian and styled every single aspect of her existence as ‘not into dudes’ and now it’s being undermined by someone who confirms nothing is set in stone.
Becky might not be as rigidly fundamentalist in her thinking as Joyce can be but she’s still from the same type of upbringing.
Also a good point!
It’s so easy to fall from one rigid dogma into another one.
sometimes needing to fight to be allowed to be something cements some thoughts around it
In my favorite porn comic (yes, it’s Alfie, I’m cultured), one of the main characters identifies very strongly as a lesbian, to the point that she ran away from her family and an arranged marriage. Later in life, she tried sex with a guy (part of a threesome, it’s a porn comic), and found she enjoyed it, which led to a major crisis of identity for her. She’d left that arranged marriage, which would have pulled her family out of destitution, because she was convinced she could not be happy with a man. If that wasn’t true, did she betray her family for nothing? (Yes, Alfie is porn with a serious plot, you should read it, it’s good)
Back to the point, when you build your identity on top of your sexuality, thinking of it as fluid can be seriously destabilizing.
I am amused that Thor Ragnarok gets a tag.
Huh. I honestly had no idea sexuality could change. I always just figured it was locked in and people just… figured themselves out better. Is that a thing that just happens or is it an HRT thing?
It can be either, although IMO the true extent of what causes what is unclear. It’s not really easy to research this stuff, since so much is self reported.
^
yeah as it turns out, earth creatures including humans are THAT many orders of magnitude more complicated in many things, including the diversity of sexuality and how it changes
Sexuality can and does change, but also I knew a guy who’s gay now who was pretty anti-straight relationships when he was a girl (like down to some of that “all straight sex is inherently rapey” nonsense) because imagining himself in a relationship with a dude made him feel… very girl in ways that felt violating for reasons he could not yet understand. Being able to imagine yourself in a relationship without triggering dysphoria would, I imagine, change a lot about who you could comfortably feel attracted to.
There’s also a lot of crossover in the general messaging around gender and sexual orientation, so someone might think their feelings that go with not being feminine, for example, mean that they’re a lesbian. (Sexuality is more permissible to question than gender, generally, especially before recent years.) (“More” does not mean to imply that people are particularly invited to quest their sexuality either.)
There was a transwoman that I knew before and after transition, who went from a straight dude to a straight woman in the space of 9 months. There was a brief bisexual period in the middle, but only a few months after she got into a bra and stopped using falsies she was dating a dude and left her girlfriend, who is also one of my friends.
It can be a result of HRT, therapy, rebuilding mental frameworks, self-acceptance, natural hormone shifts in the body over time, and probably too many other things to count. In my experience, people don’t usually talk about it, because biphobia and conversion therapy are so heavily entrenched in US culture. It’s nice to see people (and fictional characters) being more open about this kind of shift.
It’s one of those topics where people get real nervous real quick, and for fairly good reason. There’s just too much precedent of discussions like it having either malicious or technically-well-meaning-but-ultimately-very-harmful intent behind them.
Kinda like how, if I say I’m curious why some people are gay and some aren’t, someone’s probably gonna worry I’m looking for a way to ‘cure’ being gay. When actually it’s just: okay so why are sexualities a thing at all?
So, yeah, it is nice to see some discussion of it in what is pretty obviously not going to be a maliciously-based context. We can safely assume that the solidly queer-inclusive webcomic is not about to say “well actually gay bad, let’s fix it”, which makes a good platform where people are (hopefully) not expecting to hear some conversion therapy bullcrap.
Yeah, my thoughts were running along similar lines too. I actually didn’t know that sexuality could potentially be altered during HRT and one’s restructuring of their identity, but upon reflection, that actually makes a lot of sense. What I am worried about though, is that the people behind “gay conversion camps” and the like will learn about this and go “Ohh, we were just doing it the wrong way!”
On the other other hand though… If there is someone who doesn’t like their sexuality and the option to just pop a pill and it switches over, do we really have the right to stand in the way of that? It IS their body, their choice after all.
I do think there’s a lot more to learn in this area, that practice is running ahead of the science because we’ve learned enough to take the first steps, and that advice as to who would benefit most from which adjustments will get better, perhaps a lot better, and the adjustments will become subtler and less troublesome.
No to torturing people into believing they are what they are not, but also yes to “can we do even better for ourselves and our neighbors?”
HRT doesn’t work like that, though. It doesn’t guarantee that any sort of sexuality-based change will happen, and it seems like, when people do have something change, it’s more in the realm of “oh wait I like more genders now” than “wait now I only like the one”. A gay trans dude isn’t gonna go on HRT and suddenly become straight. Well- /A/ gay trans dude, as in one particular guy somewhere, might. Gay trans dudes in general are not going to become straight on HRT. Some of ’em might just wind up bi.
(asterisk: you do sometimes get people who start out as, say, “I’m a lesbian I guess because I like women and I’m?? a woman?? since I have the uterus and all??” and then realize “oh, wait, no, I’m actually a straight dude”, but that’s not a change in sexual attraction, that’s a change in perception of said attraction.)
It’s a reasonable worry, but we can’t hold back from discussion and acceptance of a very real thing because of the fear that someone will misunderstand and misuse it.
And also, yeah, if we did have some kind of reliably-changes-sexuality pills, and someone was determined enough to be willing to take those for years (if not the rest of their life) and notably change many aspects of their body in order to change their sexuality, that isn’t anyone’s business to interfere with. All we have any reason to try to change is the societal shame. A bit like how the fact that some people get plastic surgery because they feel like they aren’t attractive enough doesn’t mean we should stop everyone from having plastic surgery.
For a lot of people, that is true. For some it’s not though. Sometimes it’s related to hormones like HRT and sometimes it’s about understanding yourself or labels better and sometimes stuff just plumb changes.
So much about humans loves a good “just plumb changes”.
Getting a bit philosophical here, but is there actually a difference between learning more about yourself and changing?
Every time you learn, you change. That already proves that change is possible, so maybe we should ask: Why would there be categories where change isn’t possible?
Well, except for a few limits from the hard sciences, but as you get to the more human sciences everything becomes a lot more changable. Culture is definitely changable, as is phenotype. Genotype can change as well, though that is already quite a bit harder. The need for cell walls so far seems to be a hard requirement for life, as is the presence of at least some water. But things like identity, sexuality, or sartorial preferences? Those are definitely in the realm of changable.
You bring up a good point, though I would say there’s still some difference.
Using myself as an example, there were signs I was always bi/pan – though that’s somewhat difficult to suss out because I was also a somewhat late bloomer romantically/sexually. I’d never even had an obvious crush until I was like 16. So I came out as into one gender, then the other, because even though I accepted the concept of bisexuality in other people, I was able to fool myself into thinking I just… wasn’t. And, again, it didn’t help that my sample size of characters and real people I was actually into was small enough I wasn’t really sure which was correct, haha.
Now I realize that there were various external pressures on me making me think I had to be gay in either direction, but that I really never actually gave that much of a shit about my partners’ genders and/or genitals. So I’m pretty confident in saying that, yeah, I was always bi/pan and that’s not really a change. I’ve been pretty stable in the background and I’m just being true to myself now. (Interestingly, over the years I’ve basically thought I was everything BUT straight LOL.)
But I’ve heard of other people who had a more sudden change, often hormonally-driven, instead of a slow realization they were suppressing parts of themselves. So while I wouldn’t say I changed, I definitely would say they did?
I think the terminology we have makes it difficult to describe. Like there’s some quality that was different between a trans woman that remained solely into men and Jocelyne. I would call that bisexuality since bisexuality is about the capacity for attraction. That potential was always there for her to be attracted to women but there were other factors that prevented it.
This kind of phrasing also works more against proponents of conversion therapy. They would use the phenomenon of trans people’s attraction changing to argue “see! Homosexuality is just a product of having the incorrect hormones for a person”.
Another way to phrase it is that sexuality is like LED lighting. RGB works by having a diode each for Red, Green, and Blue. For someone with all three, a particular diode might not be turning on but it’s still there all along unlike someone who doesn’t have that diode in the first place.
I think one of the few reliable things you can say about all people is that there are very few things you can reliably say about all people.
For me it was an HRT thing, specifically Progesterone and not Estrogen. I was in a straight relationship with a man for 19 years (I transitioned back in 1994) until I got on Progesterone back in Feb of this year. I’m now in a lesbian relationship with a woman and far happier then I ever was before with zero interest in men… Even the ones in Thor Ragnarok.
Here is the part where it all gets nebulous though and I think about Becky’s point. The first relationship I was ever in post transition was with a girl, but due to it going poorly in the bedroom I just decided on men after that and stopped considering women for 3 decades. Somewhere between HRT, a personal habit of bad experiences causing me to write off things forever, and my autism… I cant really know what the truth is. If HRT changed my perspective or my changed my preferences or helped me regain one i started with and denied this whole time. What I do know is I’m happy with my new girlfriend now and that is what matters most to me at the end of the day. Even if I don’t understand how my brain works.
Hmm. Ragnarok doesn’t have Gamora (green) or Nebula (blue, cyborg, Karen Gillan), so it doesn’t have the MCU’s hottest women in it, but it does feature Abs Hemsworth, the third hottest MCU dude, so it’s pretty high up there.
You misspelled “Aunt May”.
Oh right, yes. Abe Hemsworth, the third hottest Aunt May.
Damn skippy!
But it does have Kind Man.
For some reason, my first pass over this strip was backwards (not sure why, I haven’t been reading manga lately) and I got to the second-to-first panel before I realized that it was Jocelyne, not Joyce. The only surprising bit was that “Joyce” was being that open about it with Becky…
Yeah, individually I see Jocelyne and Joyce. But when they’re in the same panel together, I have to fight my brain trying to go “two Joyces?!”
One of them needs to put her hair up or something.
It’s okay, Becky, just because it can change doesn’t mean your’s will.
And even if it does, it’s not like you have to explore those changes unless you wanna.
Becky’s heading for a breakdown about sexuality stuff, isn’t she? Not because of her own, from what I’ve seen, but just the idea that it *is* fluid for many people clearly stresses her out. Which I get, as someone 1) who likes being able to put everything into neat little boxes and 2) whose sexuality(/gender) has definitely changed and cannot be categorized well At All–but even if hers *did* change one day, that wouldn’t make her experiences right now mean any less. I just worry about what’s going to be the catalyst for that impending breakdown.
(Also: oof, I remember how HRT makes one’s libido go all weird, lmao)
^*to clarify, I meant that I haven’t seen any indication that Becky’s own sexuality has changed at all (and ofc I believe someone when they say who they are)
I just hope she doesn’t go TERF.
I can’t see that happening but I can see her flat out rejecting the idea.
Arguably fucked up on that sliding timescale a lil, she’s, what, early twenties? Thor Ragnorok came out when she was like 14
What!? That movie came out seven years ago! That’s like a whole lifetime! She can not possibly have seen it! I mean, nobody watches really old movies! It’s inconceivable!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
I’ve got a pretty good grasp on how its meaning has shifted, though. 😉
If an unthinkable thought exists, how would anyone know?
There’s nothing wrong with 14 year olds with crushes on adults, it only becomes a problem if that crush makes use of that teen.
Not to mention she’s talking about how she feels now, not when she was 14 years old
Jocelyne is not 14 years old. She says she’s horny for Thor Ragnarok »now«. She’s not talking about seven years ago.
…And? Rita Hayworth died years before I was born, I’m not going to deprive myself of *hair-flip* “Me?”
14 year olds frequently are attracted to and develop crushes on adults (especially unavailable ones – singers, actors, etc.). That’s normal. That’s not fucked up. If an adult takes advantage of a 14 year old’s crush, THAT’S fucked up. But seeing a movie as a teen or tween and going “oh man, [actor] hot” is not “fucked up.” Unclutch thy pearls.
…And if that WASN’T what you meant by fucked up, please explain, because it’s literally the only thing I can think of.
I don’t think it makes sense that way, since the point is the changes HRT is inducing. 14 year old Jocelyne wouldn’t have done the whole cast of Ragnarok. Jocelyne today would.
Which still doesn’t really make sense, because people can watch movies from (checks) seven years ago.
johnny rampaging through teenagers’ bedrooms, tearing down all posters of celebrities
is this what you earthlings refer to as a “senior moment”? XD
14yo girls have crushes on people and *GASP* experience normal bodily responses to those crushes.
The only thing fucked up is you making it weird.
I’m pretty sure “arguably fucked up” was intended here as “a mistake was maybe made here” not “wow look at this perv”
that was meant to be a reply to someone else but whatever
Yeah, you got it. People kinda went off on that, huh?
I took that as your meaning, but it doesn’t really make sense either– like, I watched a show from 2008 earlier today– so I can see why people would have other interpretations.
Oh, yeah, that’s a thing, for gender and sexuality both. They can’t be deliberately changed, but, like pretty much everything else about people, they can shift over time.
It’s why you get some people who know they’re trans from childhood, and why you get some people who don’t just take awhile to notice, they very firmly /are not/ at odds with their AGAB until some later point in life. Sometimes the person who starts transitioning in their 30s didn’t realize or didn’t accept it until now, sometimes they just… genuinely weren’t trans yet.
Vaguely related, I’ve seen a… theory? way of thinking? floating around somewhere that says “girl” and “woman” are different genders, and “boy” and “man” are different genders. Most girls grow up into women, most boys grow up into men, but sometimes a girl grows up into a man or a boy grows up into a woman.
When it comes to sexuality, you can also get people who have or develop exceptions. Say you have a straight dude whose wife, after 20 years of marriage, turns out to be his husband. Sometimes you then get a straight dude who’s very attracted to his husband. Or you can have a straight guy who’s attracted to a good chunk of women and to, like, one random guy ever, who doesn’t consider himself bi because it’s literally just been the one guy. Sexuality, like any other aspect of human behavior and personality, can be wiggly for some people.
For all of that, discussion can be a bit tricky. Both because people get (somewhat reasonably) scared of ill intent if there’s a discussion about changing gender/sexuality, and because we can’t really point a Bi-O-Matic at people to figure out if some of their attraction is new or if it just wasn’t accepted/present/relevant until now.
I’m aware, for example, of someone who’s taken testosterone now and then while tinkering with their gender, who’s normally a lesbian but winds up bi when they’re on T. They can’t tell how much of that is because men perceive them differently and interact with them differently, potentially in less offputting ways with less offputting implications, when they’re on T.
If it can happen accidentally then it can happen on purpose, as soon as you figure out how it happens. People are subject to causality. Whether you should is an entirely different matter.
Theoretically.
But it still might well not be something that can be isolated so that only that one thing can be changed. Or replicated to a treatment that can change anyone.
That’s an interesting concept, that “girl” and “woman” are not the same gender.
It took me probably until around 30 before I felt like “woman” described me at all. Some of that was age, I just didn’t feel “old enough” or “mature enough” for the title. But a lot of it was that I just didn’t relate to a lot of the typical gender-related things that relate to being a woman. I didn’t really fit the “tomboy” label, or feel very gender non-conforming, etc. Because I liked “GIRLY things” … which is different.
I don’t know that this makes any sense.
I actually really like Becky being horrified at the prospect of shifting sexuality as her liberation from fundamentalism is based on “knowing thyself.”
DING
DING
EFFING
DING.
The entire cast? Going by screen time, that includes the “taser”
Anyone can be like Meredith Baxter (not necessarily will). But if this Joyce lookalike is… then would Joyce be… nah, unless…
it makes you more attentive?
I was terrified of that happening to me, I met so many who said they were going to be lesbians, and 4 years of hormones and a surgery later you would meet their boyfriends. So GLAD I never had to deal with that! 25 years later, happily man free. There hasn’t been a penis in the apartment since the dog died. Heh.
I know people who have cats that keep bringing in dead birds. So now I wonder about your dog.
Most birds don’t have a penis.
Ducks have most of the penis.
Look, I get that the dog just kept bringing home boyfriends for a sleepover. But what I was trying to imply was that it kept finding loose dicks in the bushes or something, I don’t know.
The idea of My chihuahua doing that is pure brain bleach.
Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope! Serious man allergy!
Come on. How long will it be before Becky borrows Joyce’s phone? I have aging popcorn here.
I also wonder how much of that initial ‘repulsion’ was deep seated envy mixed with frustration. It is very easy to jumble those things up.
I’ve also heard it as stuff like “I hated the idea of being a girl’s boyfriend. But turns out I’d love to be her girlfriend”. A lot of gender is expected from relationship dynamics.
So it comes down to how one is treated in a romantic relationship, or how one would like to treat one’s partner. Must ponder.
It’s quite possible, but there’s pretty solid evidence that attraction itself can change.
Re: the alt-text, wanting to do both 1999-era Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss just means that you have a functioning libido.
…and you’re not 0 or 6 on the Kinsey scale. Those exist.
I’m much more a Mummy (1999) bi-spectrum sort of person, much less a Thor: Ragnarok (2017) bi-spectrum sort of person. Sure, it’s a false choice anyway, but still.
Naw. Now if you’re talking George of the Jungle– Now THERE. . . !
Ok Ursula would be nice. No Ape please, that’s just too weird. I don’t know if George himself understands sex, he’s right up there with Galasso
Do HRT makes the colors looks brighter??
Wasn’t there something about women having better colour vision than men?
A quick Google search turns up anecdotal evidence, but Science seems at this point unconvinced.
Some trans women report colors being brighter a few months into HRT. Whether that’s because they are feeling a lot happier, because HRT really affects that, or some third option… unknown!
If it were true wouldn’t that mean trans men would report colors looking duller ?
I mean, it’s true because why would they lie, but I’m also not really here to debate trans experiences with total strangers online. I offered information I was interested in offering, you are welcome to google any further questions you may have.
yee, it seems human bodies often work in ways that are not always apparent or intuitive
heck it’s only been like a century since humans first discovered the concept of different nutrients in different foods XD
I don’t see how this is relevant to what I said.
Not necessarily, some changes are only one-way, like voice and body hair
As a nonbinary person, I’ve been on both sets of hormones and I can’t ever say my vision has been different. (And as an artist, I think I’d be pretty likely to notice haha.)
That said, pregnant people sometimes report differences in their ability to smell, so… yeah, hormones can affect a LOT of random shit you wouldn’t expect.
true, sounds like one long trip, like physically and mentally surfing a big wave ^^
also followed your BlueSky profile <3
Becky, shouldn’t you be happy that Jocelyn is going from being a straight woman to being a bi woman?
Or LESBIAN?
Part of her probably is, but she’s having a crisis right now of the thought that her sexuality might change when she’s made it such a big part of her identity.
She’s also had some insecurities about Dina’s sexuality in the past, so she could be worried about that. Neither of them are taking hormones, though, so their preferences for romantic and sexual partners aren’t likely to change.
Took me a minute to process why this could be a troubling/painful concept for Becky…
You heard the lady, Willis! Time for some more smut! See if you can get a deal with the MCU
Don’t worry, Jocelyne, I id myself as a straight cis dude, and I can still totally relate to how you’re feeling. It’s Chris Hemsworth.
It’s great to see Jocelyne so happy, but it must be pretty awkward for Joyce to hear her sister talk about how excited she is. Also, Becky’s fear that she might start to be attracted to male is weird, I wonder if she’s had dreams where that happened.
Jocelyne seems to be talking to Becky, not Joyce.
Becky has a *lot* invested in her identity, such as the deadly hostility of her father, and the cold shoulder from the church community she grew up in.
Becky like THREAT TO LESBIAN DETECTED
Man, this makes me want HRT so badly. Why is it so hard to get an appointment for this stuff?
Weirdly, that potential sexuality change is actually the scariest part of the HRT itself for me(there are things I’m more afraid of but those are more to do with “can I get it?” and/or bigotry) like, I’m already grappling with my sexuality changing since my egg cracked (ace to maybe straight? To add bi to the maybe list) so the idea of it changing Again is just a bit frustrating. Not frustrating enough to not want it but frustrating enough that I really hope it doesn’t happen
BECKY: “…worldview… crumbling…”
That’s the problem with investing too much of your self image in a label.
That’s also the problem with creating a panic room from trauma and never actually dealing with it.
Weird hornyness? In my experience you should get ready for your libido to absolutely fall off a cliff and then you’ll be like “damn, it’s really weird how much time people spend being horny at all.
Mine did that, which also helped me realize I’m demi. Because it’s a lot easier to notice that you’re not really sexually attracted to many people when testosterone isn’t also making you horny a ridiculous amount of the time.
Apparently most anti androgens do decrease libido but some estrogens(I believe spiro is an infamous example) can put it right back up/increase it further.
Atleast that is what I’ve heard
Spiro is also a diuretic so I wasn’t going to touch that with a 50ft pole.
Yeah it also does that so fair enough
late to this party because my sleep schedule is just fucked right now do to a rib injury. I want to get on HRT so bad, and now knowing it’s probably going to be illegal the next 4+ years sucks. so happy Jocelyne gets to be on her journey. also dear lord Becky has so much stress when it comes to her sexuality. ~<3
I’m ace/sex-squeamish and I would do Tessa Thompson
Ragnarok is going to be The Mummy for Zoomers