Good points, and I think we generally agree. I definitely didn’t mean to exclude anyone in those real or hypothetical situations you mentioned. To me, those examples are more about showing how gender is, or can be, biologically fluid. There are many “odd” situations that aren’t binary. So amongst the many unusual ways that sex can occur biologically, “male brain in a female body” or “I reject the concept of gender entirely” are valid and believable.

I agree with your last point as well, but in the context of this post, would you tell Rachel Dolezal that she says she’s Black, so she’s Black? I guess I was trying to find some sort of difference between gender and race identity, the way the question was posed.

I’m definitely not claiming to have an unassailable argument, so thanks for responding with good points.

I’m no expert on either topic. But I believe humans basically start off as female in the womb, and either become male or don’t. And there are many intersex conditions. The body responds to hormones typically associated with either sex. So gender is fluid in a biological sense. If someone transitions to male, female or nonbinary, they already kind of contained that potential.

However, race is a social construct, usually based on heritage as well as biological appearance. So it’s hard to say how much biology is really involved. Does the human body contain the ability to be any race? Or to cultivate an appearance that prompts other humans to socially categorize you as one race or the other?

Maybe for people who are mixed race, there is a sort of spectrum available to them. They likely know how to present themselves in a way that gets them categorized as one race or the other.

But otherwise, not really. If you’re White, and you say, “I identify as Black,” the question might be: do you have Black heritage? If you don’t, you can’t really create it out of thin air. There wasn’t a situation while you were in the womb where various hormones could have influenced you to appear more Black than you do. If your parents are both White, they were going to have a White baby, no matter what. Race is a social construct, but it’s based on appearance and heritage. It’s about belonging to a group, not about being an individual, the way gender is.

If you’re assigned female at birth, and you say, “I identify as male,” then cool! Your body already has the capability to become hormonally male. You can socially identify as male. Any human, of any race, has this potential. Any two parents could have a baby that is any sex or gender, depending on various factors.

Aww, thank you!!

Thank you. I appreciate that you took the effort to give specific compliments and critique.

I agree about the meat stick throne. I wish I had taken a little more time with the watercolour application, maybe so that the red of the meat sticks would be the focus of the last panel, and not be competing with blues and pinks.

I also hesitated to show the trucker on a meat throne, because I wanted him to be less of a king and more of an equal participant in the revelry, but I couldn’t think of another pose for him. Plus… meat stick throne!!

Just for fun, I’m attempting to attach another photo I took of the comic, in sunlight, with brighter colours.

[(https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/2e0a9beb-6753-4e43-adc8-c44f74c1480a.jpeg)

He realizes that the non-sasquatch elf characters are also travelers who veered off the path, and slowly transformed into elves.

New people arrive over the years in various ways.

Whoa. I never thought of that, but it could very well be his dream.

I don’t have a website or social media with comics, unfortunately. I started making these recently to share with friends (as motivation). There is one other comic I posted on Lemmy, but it’s in a different style.

Maybe in the future? :)

You should interpret it as me making this comic quickly and forgetting to fill in his hair colour in the second panel

The magic forest restored his youth.

Also, thank you for the nice compliment!

Thanks for answering.

“I don’t have any evidence, I just think so, and I’m old” is enough for me to understand your mentality.

I don’t see it as a cage at all.

I know my comment was long, but you haven’t answered:

• Why you think that the same people who advocate for services within 15 minutes also advocate for confining people within a certain zone as part of that goal - have they ever said so? Why would they want to do so anyway? What do they get out of it?
• Why you think that traffic calming is a slippery slope to confining vehicles, or all modes of transport, within a certain zone, instead of just trying to balance the ease of access between vehicles and bikes, scooters, skateboards, buses, pedestrians, etc.

If you want to believe in a conspiracy, why not look at the ways in which the auto industry has suppressed other modes of transport, from inventing the term “jaywalking” to suppressing electric trams to building giant highways through poor neighbourhoods?

I looked this up and found this information about it:

In its Local Plan 2040, Oxford City Council proposed installing elements from the 15-minute city urban concept in neighborhoods throughout the city over the next 20 years. These plans included proposals to improve accessibility to local shops and other amenities for residents so they didn’t have to always drive. Separately, Oxfordshire County Council announced traffic-reducing measures throughout the city, with infrastructure to encourage car travel around the city by using the ring road rather than already congested roads. Initial opposition to the plans led to proposals to introduce permit schemes to facilitate car travel at certain times, allowing car access to areas that the council planned to restrict to motorists.

First, the article says it was separate. Nobody said, “We are blocking everybody’s access to this road because the goal of 15-Minute City is to restrict people and forbid them from leaving their zone.”

Second, it was just traffic-calming. They put up some planters blocking roads to vehicles to encourage access by bike, pedestrians, etc. That’s not restricting access, that is INCREASING access. By bikes.

They decided that a different, busier road was more appropriate for cars. How on earth does that equate to restricting access? So your car had to drive further, using a big busy road instead of a local quiet street - boo-hoo! This, to you, was a sign that the government wants to confine you to a 15 minute area and never let you leave?

Are the following measures, to you, a sign of nefarious “restricting access”?

• An ambulance can drive the wrong way down the street, but you cannot
• A bus can travel in a bus lane, but you cannot
• A commercial vehicle can park in a loading zone, but you cannot
• A vehicle with several people can travel in a special HOV lane, but you cannot if you are driving alone
• A toll bridge reads your license plate to check if you paid a fee to access that route, and charges you a fine if you did not
• The city takes out a vehicle lane to build a dedicated bike lane and plant some nice shrubs
• The city closes a street temporarily for a neighbourhood block party
• The city installs speed bumps on a quiet street
• The city builds a traffic circle at a quiet intersection
• The city puts up a sign limiting the speed you can travel
• A highway cuts through an existing quiet suburb, meaning your car cannot cross it on a quiet street; you have to use an onramp and get on the busy highway

All of those technically “restrict access” by your seeming definition. Well, at least by vehicle. Is it your assertion that private vehicles reign supreme, and if the government does anything to slow down, discourage, or increase the cost of vehicle travel, it means their future goal is to create walled mini-cities that folks can’t leave?

Edit: also, you say that people threatened to hang the city council to get them to renege - are you proud of this? Your “side” is threatening to murder people if they don’t govern the way they want, and that’s just “being vigilant”? To prevent planters from being placed on a street? What the hell?

It really is. You’d think they’d choose a positive news story.

Has anyone ever actually said, “I think we should have all services within a zone of 15-minute travel, and we should restrict people from leaving their zone, and this is called 15 Minute Cities and I support that idea”?

“Having services readily available” is the entire idea. “You’re not allowed to go to another area” is nonsense that someone else tacked on to the concept to make people hate it.

Not even a grown-up book! Read a different magical fantasy book aimed at children or teenagers. And see how good those are, too. Many of them were written before Harry Potter.

I do think HP is good at the pacing and mystery aspect of it. The magical world isn’t really that alluring, unless you are a 12 year old kid in 2001 who never read another book until now.

Reminds me of JD Vance.

Some people first glom onto left-leaning causes and opinions. They advocate for open-mindedness and human rights for all. They might even get really into the righteous purity of it all, where they get to criticize others for not being progressive enough.

But then maybe they don’t get satisfaction out of that for long. Maybe they find that another leftist is criticizing them for their wrong-headed views. Maybe they aren’t getting enough cookies for being a feminist.

So they switch over the right-leaning side of things. Maybe that allows them to be more openly hateful.

Or maybe they just changed their minds.

Honestly, I don’t know much about Rowling’s beliefs other than being a TERF. Maybe she supports all other “feminist” and anti-racist and left-leaning progressive causes. Perhaps she didn’t go all-in on the likes of Trump, the way Vance did.

But you’d never know, since all she talks about is being anti-trans.

Thank you for your genuine and educational response!

It would be funny if earwax could be expelled intentionally, by clenching our ears and extruding a big ol tube of wax.