Shades Of A 109
Eh, s’all right I guess?
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Yay for immediately assuming you’re the problem without even considering that it could be something outside of anybody’s control. \o/
To be fair, it isn’t like there’s a lot of awareness about asexuality and the like. If you’re already insecure (“I know I’m not the sexiest girl”) and your partner doesn’t even really know what he is or if he’s sexually attracted to people or not, it isn’t surprising you might pin the problem on yourself. i mean, this sucks for everybody. Which is why awareness
Speaking for myself as a female-bodied person who once had the looks of JD (but only myself): Society is hard on us. I was dumped at 17 for being unattractive to my partner – later he told me that he is a transgendered gay man and not a lesbian as he assumed at 17, but that was nearly eight years later and the insecurities followed me for a long time. People who are not the idealized version of beauty, especially female bodied persons, are judged so, so hard for our hair, our clothes, how sexually appealing we are to a small minority of people but how society accepts beauty to be. It’s hard to feel sexy when the world is telling you how unattractive you are. I had loads of confidence in my ability to flirt, my smarts, my creativity, but when it comes to sex or sexuality? I still freeze up even if I appear to be more on the scale where society sees me as attractive. It’s scary. It’s hard. It’s a constant battle to not be hateful. And it’s so beautiful when you find someone you think thinks you are beautiful too.
And it’s sucky and full of ‘oh, god, it’s me, because they are wonderful and I am ugly’ when you find out you’re wrong.
note A: I say female-bodied but in no way mean anything save for the stereotypical boundaries society sets for gender and gender expression in the constraining world. Persons born with a certain set of organs or secondary sexual characteristics that do not fit their proper pronouns or gender are not the gender or pronoun simply because they have those organs/initial characteristics. It’s just me trying to express societal norms pressed onto persons in my world during the younger/developmental years in the majority of places that I am aware of (and may very well be wrong).
subnote B: I can’t speak for anyone else in JD’s position or my own nor can I speak for JD. Their mindset is their own, this is my POV from my experiences.
subnote c: female bodied and she/her pronouns and I didn’t change my looks for society. medication for a variety of mental health reasons allowed me to feel comfortable in my own skin with the side effect of eating better and thus changing diet.
sorry for all the notes. Didn’t want anyone to think…uhh, any of that stuf.
Just wanted to say thanks for sharing. Interestingly enough, I’ve known trans* people who have struggled with similar feelings. One of my exes had a hard time believing that I or anyone else would find her attractive because she didn’t fit the stereotypical standards for beauty. Anyways, just tossing out another POV. Thank you for sharing your own.
Best “don’t hate my post” annotations ever, haha! ^_^
And you’re right. There is so little awareness of all the various sexualities, genders, etc., so misunderstandings abound. I will be honest; I knew next to nothing about asexuality before this comic. Thanks to this, I did my homework, but it took conscious awareness of my own ignorance before I realized how little I knew. (And I consider myself to be a fairly open-minded person, so perhaps this goes to show how little the general public is aware of these things.)
Society in general makes people –of all types– think that if sex isn’t the best thing you’ve ever experienced since the first time you ate a candy bar, then YOU must be doing something wrong. If you aren’t enjoying it, you’re not doing it right. If your partner isn’t enthralled by your genitals, you’re a bad lay and ugly and boring and you can’t pleasure others so just go ahead and become a frigging nun/priest already. (To partically quote a sarcastic frenemy of mine.)
JD blames themself, Anwar blames himself, the stereotypical “It’s not you, it’s me” line gets bantered, both walk away feeling like they are awful people, and ignorance prevails. Happens so often, it’s tragic.
I’d sort of really like to know what you thought about asexuality before and after “doing your homework”. Not to offend you or anything; I just think it wound be interesting to hear.
Yay for making fun of someone else’s insecurities without even considering that they might be outside of that person’s control. \o/
This.
You mean it’s wrong of her not to be assuming he’s in the closet? Or molested? Because that is the conclusion most 18 YOs (most ppl in general) would come up with past blaming themselves. Asexuality may have been around since the beginning of life, but it is a pretty new and misunderstood concept.
Woah woah WOAH! I apologize to all of you who assumed I was attacking or insulting JD for her mindset, but let me assure you that was definitely NOT what I was doing at all.
It was meant to be ironic and more of an “Oh sweety…” post than anything judgemental. I’m not about to condemn anybody for taking something somebody said personally, it’s a very human reaction and nothing to blame somebody for, so again I’m sorry if what I posted came across otherwise.
._.
For their*, for THEIR, pronoun slip. >_<
For the record I read your comment as a ”well, we’ve all been there” type remark; I think the wording was just a little ambiguous.
Well that’s unfortunate.
As misguided as it is, I actually think it’s kind of sweet that JD jumped to “OMG what am I doing wrong?” rather than right to “What’s wrong with YOU?”
I mean, it’s not PERFECT. A perfect reaction would probably ‘would you like to discuss this with me’ or similar.
But of the two possible reactions a normal, average, BELIEVABLE character would make, this is the better one, yes. :)
(Also, props for Tab for writing such believable characters; too many webcomics out there have idealised, rather than actualised, people)
Precisely. This is the most believable reaction a person would make. “Sex is only ‘okay’ for my partner so I must be doing something wrong.” I think that’d be the most common first reaction, and way better than a bitchy “What’s wrong with you” or instantly assuming this must be due to a TRAGIC past. (Not everyone who doesn’t fit sexual “norms” was abused/molested as a child!)
I’ve certainly jumped to this conclusion before. Even if you know about asexuality its really difficult to ignore societies messages that its the DFAB persons fault if sex isn’t good for the DMAB person.
Especailly because JD and Anwar really don’t communicate, JD might have thought Anwar was having fun too.
Man I hope JD improved their communication skills after this, t least a ittle bit :/
Well they’re good friends now, so he must have been able to explain to her.
Her? The only chicks in this comic are Anwar’s mom, the sexy French girl, and Chris’s domme, and I’m pretty sure you’re not referring to any of them. :/
Funny you should say this on the page that JD refers to themself as “a girl,” hah.
JD is certainly a “they,” but I’m not sure they identified as such (or were aware of the possibility, just as they likely weren’t aware that asexuality was a thing) during this timeframe. The slip-ups in misgendering seem to be more common during the flashbacks, and I can see why that might happen.
I was just being a smartass. :p I don’t really get what’s so hard about JD’s pronouns. Over and over and over it has been made clear by Tab and the other readers that JD always has been a “they”, even before coming out as such, and that it’s stupid to misgender people as if they were different people before coming out.
It’s frustrating, especially if you’re the one being misgendered. All I mean is that I can see why someone might be more prone to accidentally misgendering someone when shown in flashback, especially for a lot of people who identify as female and are relating strongly to JD’s circumstances in these flashbacks.
Not saying it’s okay to misgender. Just saying I can get why people would be more likely to slip up.
Also, yes, JD has always been a “they,” I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. What I meant was I’m not sure they were aware of the possibility of identifying as such at this moment in time. Given that I would expect JD to not use gendered words like ‘girl’ (as opposed to people who use any gender), I feel like they probably haven’t begun to use nongendered pronouns yet. And I’m not saying that people should feel free to misgender based on this – just that I’m curious about JD’s character development. Honestly, they seem to have grown a lot more than Anwar between the flashbacks and the present.. But maybe I’m just biased because JD’s the best.
Meep; it’s not all about you, JD.
Though I suppose that’s a not-unexpected reaction. In fact I can think of plenty of people I know who would react exactly this way.
It’s very human to take on blame like that.
Fantastic page, as always, Tab.
x
It is only reading the page a second time that I have seen just how close the similarities are between this situation and the current Chris/’War one. Except here ‘War is in Chris’ position and JD in ‘War’s. Right down the ‘blaming self/making it about self’.
Intresting.
I love past-JD’s hair style. It reminds me very much of Annemarie from “All Dogs Go To Heaven”. After having shoulder-length ((or longer)) all of my life, I wanted mine cut like that. But between my explaining wrong and my new stylist’s misunderstanding, the back part got cut WAY shorter, so that it’s all spikey like a reverse-mullet, but in a totally groovy way. ((Wow, run-on sentence much?)) But I wasn’t upset, ’cause it looked AWESOME, especially with my bright purple and black streaked hair. So that’s basically the same style I’ve had for the last four or five years. ^.^
Ok, hair ramble over. I…don’t really have anything deep to say about the scene here. Just poor JD and poor Anwar. They both need hugs and hot cocoa with lots of tiny marshmallows and more hugs, and then lots of talking. And then probably more hugs and many tissues. Yeah.
The amount of bickering over what is clearly accidental pronoun usage is remarkable. Or maybe it’s just the bad attitude about it. Correcting people is one thing, but smart-assery is really just assery.
Pronoun slip ups – mistakes are made and typos happen, especially online. Harsh criticism for human error not cool IMO.
Yep. I would’ve thought just going ”hey, wrong pronoun” would suffice.
Everyone who guessed that JD would assume the problem is with zhim gets a lollipop. Too bad that what zhe thought at first instead of it being something out of anyone’s control.
Ouch. Standard first conclusion there, JD, but oh so wrong! I hope ‘War can get past his (justified) awkward and talk about this.
On another note, very VERY RARELY is JD’s statement actually the case; it really only seems to become an issue if the not-as-pleased party doesn’t vocalize how the pleasing party can improve. *raises hand* Personal experience, again; came out of a particular type of sexual relationship and when moving into another one had to totally relearn how to please my partner because new partner is NOTHING like old partner (very good thing!) and until I figured that out it really wasn’t that good for him. I felt bad. But he took the time to explain what he liked and it got better for both of us! …ok, personal rambling done. You bring that out a lot, Tab, so thanks for making me examine my experiences! It makes me think about good and bad things and make connections I haven’t before.
What I’ve really loved about these comics (both Khaos and Shades) is how much I’ve learned about gender and sexual identity. As a cis-female, I have lived and existed in a world of cis-privilege my whole life and no matter how open-minded I considered myself to be, I really had no idea about how deep the rabbit hole really went. Even as a lesbian, I didn’t comprehend the lives of others living supposed “non-conformist” lives (I use this word because my mental thesaurus isn’t giving me a better one; I know it’s not the right one).
These comics have given me a window into lives other than my own, and not just the comics but the comments as well. I like to think that in the last few years I have become more aware, more respectful and far less ignorant.
Tab, I thank you for my education.
Since many comments seem to be about JD and misgendering them: What I would personally do for past JD is refer to them as “back when they still presented as a girl” and use singular they as pronouns. JD didn’t become gender neutral, they just discovered they were.
I might not be able to speak for JD personally, but I have to say: the accidental mislabelling isn’t very comfortable, but completely understandable, especially when you are still getting to know the person you are mislabelling. (Or when you have known a person for a very long time and they presented as a different gender. I don’t think this applies to JD’s case, but it’s still a thing that happens.)
As someone that’s also labelled female from birth and nowadays identifies as gender neutral, I get a lot of comments of people that don’t understand and/or who think I just want to be a special snowflake. While some people might not be considerate (mainly the latter category) and use feminine or masculine pronouns, there are people who genuinely try to be considerate, but it’s expected that they slip up sometimes. Hell, even I occassionally slip up myself, whether I talk about myself or other people that aren’t cisgender. It’s not on purpose, but correcting yourself is still an important thing to do.
BUT, while I know we live in a time where LGBTWTFBBQ rights are a thing people try to be aware of, I’d still like to say this:
It’s okay if you slip up.
It’s okay if you correct yourself.
I won’t judge you for either of these things.
It’s /not/ okay, however, to act like you know someone’s gender better than the person you are talking about.
So, please, correct your pronoun confusions, but don’t feel like the world will end with just one or two slip ups. You’ll get better! As long as your intentions are good and you better yourself, that’s all I could personally ask for.
I love you all, keep on being awesome. :)
I wish I saw this sooner. Thanks for making this post! :D
I think if someone is well-intentioned and trying to do better, then I try to understand why they slip up and try to help them correct it (not that anyone should feel obligated to teach people, though). And I think, at the very least, that everyone here is trying, and I really appreciate that they do. Not everywhere feels like such a safe space as these comments do, at least for me.
Thank you, Kaoru. It is not good to live in fear. ^^ Much better to forgive.