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Post by fwip on Jul 2, 2014 6:45:41 GMT
Oh thank you! That was driving me batty. I knew I had read it, I just couldn't remember where. Well, it's still unclear who administers the mysterious 'test' and decides who gets accepted and stuff.
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Post by Lightice on Jul 2, 2014 7:06:48 GMT
Are you asserting that all fairies are female? As far as we can tell, fairies are indeed a one gender race. We've never seen a male fairy or been alluded to their existence. Somehow I doubt that the Anwyn or the elementals would be put in the same category as birds or rabbits.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2014 7:43:11 GMT
People get changed into stones, fountains, various trees, a woman with hell-hounds as her lower body, and some such all the time in the Metamorphoses, some of them against their own volition; Iphis is straight-up disguised as a boy and brought up as such because her father wanted a male heir. Athena casually takes the form of a man while guiding Telemakhos in the Odyssey. Bloom is made pregnant in the Circe chapter of Ulysses. Would this also render Homer, Ovid and Joyce transphobic? Or should a distinction be maintained between an author and their creation?
I'm uncomfortable with demands that a work of fiction should conform to social expectations; the intentions behind that may certainly be good-natured, but it's akin to the spirit of censoring.
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Post by hypixion on Jul 2, 2014 14:54:56 GMT
Somehow I doubt that the Anwyn or the elementals would be put in the same category as birds or rabbits. humanoids?
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Post by warrl on Jul 3, 2014 3:03:11 GMT
Are you asserting that all fairies are female? As far as we can tell, fairies are indeed a one gender race. We've never seen a male fairy or been alluded to their existence. On what basis can we say, then, that we've seen a female fairy? On the available evidence they are quite possibly a no-gender race, and acquiring ANY gender would be a dramatic change. So maybe they'd be put in the same category as fairies. Simply on the basis of size, actual fairies are far more numerous. Or maybe the question has never come up, so is undetermined. (Don't bother bringing up Annie's fire-elemental ancestor; there's no statement or suggestion that said ancestor ever became human.)
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Post by Tom Siddell on Jul 3, 2014 12:59:15 GMT
I guarantee the reason behind it is that Tom didn't think of the implications for trans* people. Please do not make declarative statements and accusations about my personal motivations when you have no idea what you are talking about. Things are set up in the comic as they are for a reason.
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Post by hypixion on Jul 3, 2014 14:23:33 GMT
Oh thank you! That was driving me batty. I knew I had read it, I just couldn't remember where. Well, it's still unclear who administers the mysterious 'test' and decides who gets accepted and stuff. I think the headmater, he seems to be the leader or some kind. He was the head in all of the meetings that happened in the court. This only appllies if the headmaster is also the big boss in the Court. Are you asserting that all fairies are female? As far as we can tell, fairies are indeed a one gender race. We've never seen a male fairy or been alluded to their existence. It's a bit ridiculous to asume fairies are only female because we have only seen female fairies until now. Tom might have just used only female fairies because that's how most people imagine them, female.
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Post by Daedalus on Jul 3, 2014 18:06:24 GMT
I guarantee the reason behind it is that Tom didn't think of the implications for trans* people. Please do not make declarative statements and accusations about my personal motivations when you have no idea what you are talking about. Things are set up in the comic as they are for a reason. If you don't mind me asking, how far ahead have you planned the plot? Also, how in depth is your plan - do you know the content of every page ahead of time, or is it a bit improvisational?
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Post by SilverbackRon on Jul 4, 2014 0:41:14 GMT
Please do not make declarative statements and accusations about my personal motivations when you have no idea what you are talking about. Things are set up in the comic as they are for a reason. If you don't mind me asking, how far ahead have you planned the plot? Also, how in depth is your plan - do you know the content of every page ahead of time, or is it a bit improvisational? No peeking behind the curtain allowed!
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Post by sapientcoffee on Jul 4, 2014 6:04:48 GMT
As far as we can tell, fairies are indeed a one gender race. We've never seen a male fairy or been alluded to their existence. It's a bit ridiculous to asume fairies are only female because we have only seen female fairies until now. Tom might have just used only female fairies because that's how most people imagine them, female. Also from Word of Tom (right above the 'Red and Blue' section): "All of the Regional Fairies we've seen thus far are female. Are there any male Regional Fairies? Or, do all Regional Fairies just look like human females?" "There are no male Regional Fairies" ________________________________________________________________ "How do Regional Fairies reproduce without males?" "Not sexually"
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Post by fwip on Jul 4, 2014 6:51:06 GMT
It's a bit ridiculous to asume fairies are only female because we have only seen female fairies until now. Tom might have just used only female fairies because that's how most people imagine them, female. Also from Word of Tom (right above the 'Red and Blue' section): "All of the Regional Fairies we've seen thus far are female. Are there any male Regional Fairies? Or, do all Regional Fairies just look like human females?" "There are no male Regional Fairies" ________________________________________________________________ "How do Regional Fairies reproduce without males?" "Not sexually" In addition, Hypixion, I don't think Tom is the kind of person to depict things one way just because that's the way they're depicted in popular culture. If anything, I would think that the opposite was true - if he wanted male fairies, he would explicitly design a male fairy character (or redesign a female character as male) to show that.
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Post by csj on Jul 4, 2014 7:00:22 GMT
just because they aren't male doesn't automatically make them female; except for the bit about becoming human females, they'd probably be better considered as genderless
ya jerks
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Post by fwip on Jul 4, 2014 7:01:32 GMT
I guarantee the reason behind it is that Tom didn't think of the implications for trans* people. Please do not make declarative statements and accusations about my personal motivations when you have no idea what you are talking about. Things are set up in the comic as they are for a reason. I like how all Tom has to do is say "I have my reasons" and the whole community collectively says "Okay, that's fine, Tom." despite what we were saying before.
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Post by Rasselas on Jul 4, 2014 7:53:47 GMT
He does have a point beyond that. Also, not everyone was saying the same things.
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Post by Lightice on Jul 4, 2014 10:01:14 GMT
Please do not make declarative statements and accusations about my personal motivations when you have no idea what you are talking about. Things are set up in the comic as they are for a reason.[/quote] Sounds like we do get to hear the matter addressed. Nice. Well, all I wanted to know was that there's an actual plot-related reason to the whole issue. I expected that to be the case, since the comic has never had such a random "it just is"-moment before.
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Post by hypixion on Jul 4, 2014 13:11:38 GMT
It's a bit ridiculous to asume fairies are only female because we have only seen female fairies until now. Tom might have just used only female fairies because that's how most people imagine them, female. Also from Word of Tom (right above the 'Red and Blue' section): "All of the Regional Fairies we've seen thus far are female. Are there any male Regional Fairies? Or, do all Regional Fairies just look like human females?" "There are no male Regional Fairies" ________________________________________________________________ "How do Regional Fairies reproduce without males?" "Not sexually" Ah, never read all of that so I didn't know. Also from Word of Tom (right above the 'Red and Blue' section): "All of the Regional Fairies we've seen thus far are female. Are there any male Regional Fairies? Or, do all Regional Fairies just look like human females?" "There are no male Regional Fairies" ________________________________________________________________ "How do Regional Fairies reproduce without males?" "Not sexually" In addition, Hypixion, I don't think Tom is the kind of person to depict things one way just because that's the way they're depicted in popular culture. If anything, I would think that the opposite was true - if he wanted male fairies, he would explicitly design a male fairy character (or redesign a female character as male) to show that. I dind't mean that he does it because it is popular but because he is just another person who imagines them like that. But that's not important anymore as the answer is already known.
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lit
Full Member
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Post by lit on Jul 4, 2014 15:28:18 GMT
I smell drama brewing... Someone (I didn't find the original post) pointed out that gender is less of an issue to animals than it is to humans, given that they have a looser society. It's more of a biological thing with them, so they probably have less reason to object to it being changed. Same probably goes for fairies. This was me, on page one of this thread! Yes. I'll reiterate that I would suspect that the way animals experience "gender" is different from the way humans do, and while animals in Gunnerkrigg Court are definitely sometimes portrayed as anthropomorphic, it's still a stretch to say that placing a "female" animal in a "male" human body would definitely have any ill effects on it (him?). While most of us would definitely perceive the GKC fairies as females or feminine due to their appearance & mannerisms, it's also a stretch to say that fairies perceive themselves as female the same way that human women tend to. What femininity means to them and what femininity means to humans can be entirely different things. This probably falls under the category of wild speculation, but I like to think that because they come from such different societies, Foley students don't all personally identify as "girls" or "boys" to the fullest extent - if they ever got into gender theory they might discover themselves more closely aligned to a nonbinary or genderqueer identity (making them trans!) But since they seem a pretty self contained community, they probably don't reinforce strict gender roles among themselves, making going through the trouble of pinpointing their gender somewhat senseless. Gender is a human thing, and though there are similarities, it's not even universal to every human community. Any time we assign a gender to an animal and traits based on that gender, what we are doing is projecting, and it's often incorrect, and it's possible to do this to other people as well. Calling the Foley ex-animals "boys" and the ex-fairies "girls" may mean nothing to them other than an efficient way to distinguish the two different cultures.* Anyway, that's my headcanon. I have no idea if this will ever be touched on in the course of the story, but I do appreciate any narratives that lend themselves to deeper thought about gender and what it really is.
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Post by csj on Jul 4, 2014 19:24:43 GMT
Humans arbitrarily applying their social constructs onto nonhuman beings. In a world where people dress up pets in human-inspired attire, 'train' animals to mirror our own behaviours, and regularly develop fictional stories featuring anthropomorphic beings.
Say it ain't so.
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Post by The Anarch on Jul 4, 2014 19:48:54 GMT
While most of us would definitely perceive the GKC fairies as females or feminine due to their appearance & mannerisms, it's also a stretch to say that fairies perceive themselves as female the same way that human women tend to. What femininity means to them and what femininity means to humans can be entirely different things. Honestly, there's probably a lot of things that fairies have different perspectives on compared to humans in general.
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Post by Per on Jul 4, 2014 21:09:51 GMT
Did you just link to THE BEST PAGE
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Post by warrl on Jul 5, 2014 3:20:54 GMT
Also from Word of Tom (right above the 'Red and Blue' section): "All of the Regional Fairies we've seen thus far are female. Are there any male Regional Fairies? Or, do all Regional Fairies just look like human females?" "There are no male Regional Fairies" Note that Tom does not endorse the claim that the Regional Fairies we've seen are female. He only directly answered one of the two questions directly asked.
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Post by The Anarch on Jul 5, 2014 4:39:40 GMT
Did you just link to THE BEST PAGE Well, I did link a page that goes up . . .
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Post by sapientcoffee on Jul 5, 2014 8:11:41 GMT
Did you just link to THE BEST PAGE Almost, but not quite.Also from Word of Tom (right above the 'Red and Blue' section): "All of the Regional Fairies we've seen thus far are female. Are there any male Regional Fairies? Or, do all Regional Fairies just look like human females?" "There are no male Regional Fairies" Note that Tom does not endorse the claim that the Regional Fairies we've seen are female. He only directly answered one of the two questions directly asked. Yeah, I thought about saying that I like how Tom's terse-ness and "answering questions but not"...ness but didn't because I am lazy. I was just answering the post with a thing I knew was in WoT. In my brain the fairies are Schrödinger female until Tom clears things up in the comics, I don't have a firm belief either way. Ah, never read all of that [Word of Tom] so I didn't know. I hadn't looked at it until it was linked earlier and was surprised by how much was in there! Thanks to whoever all edits it.
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