Inktober/Drawtober Challenge

Festive bulb 🎄

i think mob can have a little espurr, as a treat

Some fun Earl sketches/doodles for @somelazyassartist, because seeing them reblog nearly every single one of my Earl posts today reminded me that it’s been far too long since I last drew my beloved transgender son.

Some people are being weird about Stevonnie’s intersex designation.

Hopefully I can write a post that sums up and addresses a few confusions and criticisms I’ve been seeing!

Intersex: This is a term for anyone who has one of the dozens of biological sex variations outside of “male” and “female.” Knowing someone is intersex does not tell you anything about their genitals, their hormones, their surgeries, their gender identity, whether they identify as trans or nonbinary, their secondary sex characteristics, or their chromosomes.

Some intersex variations are hormonal. Some are about genitals. Some are chromosomal. Some are a mixture.

Intersex is a designation that is exactly as “sexual” as calling someone “male” or calling someone “female.” It isn’t explicit in a way that makes it racy, sexualized, or inappropriate for children to see. And in fact, it answers zero questions about what is in Stevonnie’s pants (or the pants of any intersex person).

Preoccupation with nonbinary, intersex, and trans people’s genitals is what’s inappropriate.

And unless the person in question wants you to know, it isn’t your business.

Please also acknowledge that while we’re talking about a cartoon character here, the way we treat and talk about them shouldn’t be different from the way we treat and talk about real people. It’s not about whether we’re concerned about “hurting” an imaginary person. You all know that how people react to conceptual people is often how we learn to react to real people. Trans people and intersex people and people with hormone variations have historically been (and continue in the present to be) mocked and paraded as weirdos, from “man in a dress” pitched as a joke to “bearded lady in a sideshow” tropes.

Note: Say intersex, not “intersexed.” Because people aren’t intersexed any more than they’re maled or femaled.

I personally have a couple intersex friends who are open about their designation. It’s way more common than you might think and the shame and stigma surrounding intersex is part of why many people have been saying it’s bizarre or gross to talk about associated with Stevonnie. Intersex isn’t rare, bizarre, or gross. It’s just what happens when physical sex isn’t a binary, which it’s not.

Some people don’t find out they’re intersex until they have genetic testing for some reason and see a chromosome anomaly. Some people don’t find out they’re intersex until they don’t experience typical puberty. Some people find out they had unnecessary surgery when they were infants to “normalize” their external genitalia, which is something some intersex activists are trying to stop from happening (especially since a. unnecessary surgeries can be painful and dangerous; b. they cannot consent at that age; c. they may have preferred an intersex body; and d. the sex determined by doctors or parents to be the right one might be the wrong one if the intersex person grows up and identifies differently gender-wise, and the parts they were born with are forever taken from them).

Stevonnie being intersex is a positive thing overall, mostly because intersex is not talked about for no good reason, and because of that we’ll continue to have generations of parents who want unnecessary surgery on intersex infants, intersex people feeling ashamed or weird about their bodies, and people in general believing untrue things about the physical sex of bodies. A character just casually identifying as intersex is a really nice change for once.

The only issue I have with it, honestly, is the same issue I have with non-binary representation on the show. So far, we’ve only seen it explicitly acknowledged in Fusions.

Fusion is a magical concept on a SF/fantasy show, and I do worry that the value of intersex rep on the show is somewhat diluted by the fact that it’s attached to a character who is LITERALLY a mixture of male and female characters. Being “a mix of male and female” isn’t really the best way to see intersex people–the parts in question have names and what determines their maleness or femaleness or non-binary-ness is who owns the parts–and I worry that if some people are introduced to intersex for the first time as if it only exists as a result of an impossible science fiction concept, they might also get the idea that it doesn’t happen in the real world.

It does happen in the real world! Just like nonbinary people and same-sex couples!

I would love to see some explicit nonbinary and intersex rep among human cartoon characters, and more same-sex human relationships too. SU is the perfect show to do this because it’s got sensitive, informed, diverse, cool people behind it who know how important this is. There are still people watching this show who are “excusing” its queerness because it’s mixed with literal aliens, but the intention of the show is the opposite: to give its audience characters that are relatable to historically marginalized groups who are not from outer space. So far it’s still GREAT that we got a Gem wedding, a few casual references to humans who are probably gay or queer, a polyamorous Gem Fusion, and a nice little gaggle of nonbinary Fusions, including an intersex Fusion. The only reservation I have with it is that introducing these concepts attached to characters whose non-binary and/or intersex identities and designations are consequences of being literal mixtures of more than one person does make it less readily incorporated into a less savvy viewer’s real-life understanding. What’s still fantastic about it is that people can see Stevonnie supporting Intersex Awareness Day and look it up and find out why it exists. It’s absolutely a stepping stone if nothing else, and they’re not wrong for doing it.

And please do stop claiming that talking about intersex is sexually explicit or disgusting because you think it refers to the genitals of minors. That isn’t true AND it is misleading when it comes to what intersex is. If you wouldn’t consider it inappropriate to ask a new parent about the gender of their baby knowing they can’t ask the baby and are therefore explicitly disclosing what genitals the child has, you shouldn’t consider it inappropriate to have a children’s show character identify as intersex.

Hope that helps.

Alcremie tiered cake by magicalleaf-282!

garlic bread to share to your aspec friends :)

rb to share

A closer look at the Buruburu...Mugyu! merch line (Pokemon comforting their pre-evolutions) from the Japanese Pokemon Center

Reunited

Steven Universe Comic #36 (2020) - Outline & Review

The thirty-sixth installment of the ongoing comic series for Steven Universe is about Connie and Steven’s latest trip to Buddwick library. Steven learns about the organizational power of libraries, but it’s all for naught when all the books they want are missing even though they’re not checked out. Could someone or something be snatching Buddy’s books?

Plot:

Steven and Connie head back to Buddwick Library, where they had an adventure once upon a time reading about Buddy Buddwick’s adventures touring the world documenting Gem stuff. They decide to find more of his books, including the original journal, but Steven doesn’t know how to use the library’s systems. Connie helps him learn.

After they use computers to track down a bunch of Buddy’s books and write down their locations on cards, Steven and Connie split up to find them and mysteriously, none of the books they’re looking for are on the shelves. They ask a librarian, but the books are listed as checked in. They’re not sure what to do.

Connie suggests the books must all be shelved improperly somewhere in the library, and when they begin to search more thoroughly, they find evidence that a creature is lurking among the books. They track it down and find that this creature is a corrupted Gem who has snatched all of Buddy’s books and has thrown them all into a closed-off room!

The Gem attacks, so Connie and Steven battle it and poof it. And when they get a look at the books it’s been hoarding–all of them Buddy’s–they find all kinds of books documenting Gem history.

They enjoy reading and looking at pictures of places they’ve been and creatures they’ve encountered, and Steven is surprised how much Buddy got around. He speculates that the corrupted Gem collected all these Gem-related books so it wouldn’t have to feel alone and could be surrounded by something familiar. But now, it does not have to be alone, and someday soon it will be okay.

Notable:

1. Connie mentions that a new book is out by the author of Unfamiliar Familiar. I wonder if it’s a new series? Neither of them said anything about how Connie didn’t like the ending of the last one. I wonder if she still considers herself a fan.

2. Connie’s hair is short in this comic, so it takes place after “Kevin Party,” but Steven still mentions “Mayor Dewey” even though he stepped down to let Nanefua be mayor in “Dewey Wins” (several episodes before “Kevin Party”). I guess this is either an inconsistency or a manifestation of Steven just doing what lots of fans also do–still calling him “Mayor” even though he isn’t because we’ve known him that way for so long.

3. The Diamonds’ murals as depicted on the Moon Base are included in one of Buddy’s books. The comic does say that the murals are “across the world,” so I guess it’s suggesting that the same murals that are on the moon are in various locations on Earth too. This struck me as strange that there would be a bunch of Diamond murals around and we’ve never seen them in Steven’s travels on Earth, but I guess they wouldn’t necessarily have to be in protected Gem locations.

4. There’s a monster listed as “The Leviathan” that looks kind of like a monster in a previous comic, but I’m not sure whether it’s a specific show monster. It looks like a Centipeetle but with a wormy tail, in the water. I wonder if it’s supposed to be what William Dewey encountered while coming to Beach City. Other locations and images are familiar–the Sky Spire, the Communication Hub, Rose with her lions, the Centipeetle, the Great North monsters, more Diamond murals with speculations on what they’d really look like, and even a cute old-timey image of Ruby and Sapphire in old fashions. When the heck would he have seen that??

5. This comic implies that Buddy’s work primarily focused on documenting Gem activity and Gem places, since his books were the ones the creature stole. I kinda thought the episode “Buddy’s Book” implied that Buddy documented his Gem-related travels in one book and then was encouraged to become an author by Rose, after which he went on to write about other things because he didn’t want to just be “a tourist.” But she did emphasize that his documentation was unique and that he was talented at it, so maybe that’s what encouraged him to keep finding and writing about Gem stuff. There are dozens of books in that room, though, and I had trouble picturing that many volumes all with the same format.

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]