Rooster Tails
A New Zealand Transman Comic Blog
So, in light of some awesomely amazing comments on the blog and tumblr – I’ve made a few adaptions to the queer 101 comic. Thought I’d pop it up on this here part of the blog in all it’s glory 
So, in light of some awesomely amazing comments on the blog and tumblr – I’ve made a few adaptions to the queer 101 comic. Thought I’d pop it up on this here part of the blog in all it’s glory
I want to have that black t-shirt with the red Q on it
It’s a pretty cool shirt – maybe if I ever get around to opening an online store I’ll make a shirt like that.
Thankyou, it’s so nice to see asexuals included. So many people don’t even realize it’s possible to not care for sex at all and even more, that it’s ok.
Yeh, I added a bit more to the section about asexuality, ’cause I got some good feedback about how i’d over simplified it in the original version. It felt really important to include, because it’s something that’s hardly ever recognised in queer spaces (or, at least in my experience of queer spaces).
This is so great! I’d love to buy a copy/download of it to use for newcomers and such at the school queer club I’m a part of!
Oooh yay – I am planning to sell them online soon! Will keep you posted
I thought this was great. Oh and by the way, under the “GenderQueer/Androgynous[...]” section with the three paragraphs sections, the second line of the second paragraph has a typo. You have the word “peoplein” instead of “people in”.
I think I need to make this required reading for my strips!
Thought I would post a link to this page on our Facebook page facebook.com/whatsyourposition Just checking ok with you. I can recognise you as the creator.
Woah, that’d be so ok!
Ohgod, thankyouthankyouthankyou for adding in panels 14-17, it’s so hard to explain that to people.
Oh good, glad you liked it! I got some really awesome feedback on how I could fix it, so yay and thankyou to the people who commented!
Yeah, it drives me mad that it’s so hard to explain that who I find sexually and romantically attractive don’t always match up.
Hello, I love this strip because it is a great beginner’s view on gender and sexuality.
I just happen to be the president of my school’s GSA and I’d like to ask if you would allow me to print this out and put it up in our display case at school.
Please get back to me, Thank you for your time!
Yeh – that’s totally ok – and thanks so much for asking. What school are you at (just so I know where it’s being used)? (You can email me if ya want – sorchard (AT) ymail (dot) com in case you don’t want everyone to know)
This was sent through the Diva Las Vegas website by Annie the DLV administrator (annie ) to all our members. We are a group of CD/TG/TS/etc… MTF’s. If you decide to add to this it would be nice if you defined the breakdown definitions between Crossdressers, Transexuals, Transgendered, Drag Queens, etc… so others can identify what the differences are. Also a fact that a very high percent, estimated at 80%+, are Heterosexual, with a small percentage of that being Bi and an even smaller percent bi Gay. Nost os us are loving to people of all genders and sexual preferences and non-judgemental, but we do have our “better than thou’s” in our people, I just haven’t found any in our group.
Thanks for your time spent on developement of the cartoon, it was fantastic. I will be forwarding it to all my friends outside of DLV also.
Sincerely yours,
Katherine
This was sent through the Diva Las Vegas website by Annie the DLV administrator (annie ) to all our members. We are a group of CD/TG/TS/etc… MTF’s. If you decide to add to this it would be nice if you defined the breakdown definitions between Crossdressers, Transexuals, Transgendered, Drag Queens, etc… so others can identify what the differences are. Also a fact that a very high percent, estimated at 80%+, are Heterosexual, with a small percentage of that being Bi and an even smaller percent being Gay. Most of us are loving to people of all genders and sexual preferences and non-judgemental, but we do have our “better than thou’s” in our people, I just haven’t found any in our group.
Thanks for your time spent on developement of the cartoon, it was fantastic. I will be forwarding it to all my friends outside of DLV also.
Sincerely yours,
Katherine
Hey Katherine – sounds like an awesome idea – I’d really like to add more, or maybe do a separate one for gender entirely ’cause there’s just sooo much more to say! I love the idea of explaining a bit more about what words different people use to describe themselves, and talk about performance, and clothes and bodies and everything more. Thanks for your kind words, I’ll be sure to send a comic your way when I redo it
This is a BEAUTIFUL comic! Can’t believe I’d never seen it before! I wonder if you’d noticed that the first 6 panels show up twice? They seem to repeat themselves. Anyway, well done!
OH thanks so much!! Yeh, I can’t figure out what I’ve done wrong to get rid of the first 6 panels, but I can’t seem to fix it :S
hey! I love this 101, I’m making one all about gender, and it turned into a whole book.
So it is a big big task, but one artist to another, kudos for getting it down so concisely. If you want to share feedback or resources, feel free to email me.
Oh I totally thought I’d replied to you – woops. I loooooove the gender book, it’s so great!!
I remember having a queer youth representative who taught us about heteronormative sex and gender. I wish he had come equipped with something such as this: may have saved me some fuckin time!
I completely agree with that, and with Crabbadon. It took me too damn long to realize I’m ace (it was little more than a month ago, and I’m almost 23), not because I was ever actually in denial about it, but because the fact that sexual attraction, romantic attraction, and libido are three different things that don’t always neatly match up is not the most intuitive of concepts, and no one ever explained it to me. I had to get it from Wikipedia.
Sigh, so disappointing – I don’t think this comic is totally perfect, it simplifies it all way too much, but it’s really sad that this is better than most of the sexuality/gender education stuff that’s available. Especially the asexual stuff – I hadn’t even put it in there in my first draft – and I got some amazing feedback from people commenting so I added it in, but it’s still not perfect, and still not enough.
I wanted to thank you for this. I didn’t know ‘gender queer’ was a thing, and I’ve always thought that because I didn’t want to straight-up be a man that ment I must be a girl, you know, one or the other. It’s hard to describe how I feel, having read this I understand my feelings a lot more and they make more sense to me. I’m so happy to finally understand this about myself. Thank you, thank you.
Thankyou, this means heaps. I put that comic together to try and give it to people to help explain what all the different terms mean, and to encourage people to be nice to other people. It’s so amazing that it’s helped you personally. <3
This is very fine! I realise it is (as you say up there) showing just one way of looking at all this, and it’s useful information for me to see how it *doesn’t* describe my experience, since to me it all feels more like a “probability field” than a linear spectrum-type deal. I appreciate your open-endedness in pulling this together.
). Go figure.
Labels are just models (coarse-grained attempts to try and describe experience) and as such never fit anyone exactly, but they’re still very useful communication (and diagnostic) tools, so long as people remember to keep asking “…so what does that word mean when *you* use it?” – I say this as a pansexual (but asexual) trans tomboy who sometimes feels like a trans man trapped in a male body (and who will almost certainly, post-SRS, find herself sometimes packin’
…and by the way, I only just discovered your strip today, and am flying through it, enjoying it like crazy. Thanks very much for this! xx
(damn, I missed “genderqueer” off my comprehensive label-list…)
Yay! Yes! The whole one line spectrum thing is soooo flawed, I feel like it’s about 1% of how complicated it actually is – but it’s a start, I guess, the beginnings of an explanation.
Heh, yes, and by now I’ve caught up to the present on your strip (since I lack middle gears) so I’ve read the newer comic about the older comic you wrote about the shortcomings of labels, so I know I wasn’t saying anything you didn’t already know (I knew that already…)
Dunno if you’ve come across this already, but I think it’s very fab (and does a really good job on the non-binariness of some of us):
http://tranarchism.com/2010/11/26/not-your-moms-trans-101/
I’m a new reader to this strip and have only been catching up on the archives for the last few days, yet this has quickly become one of my favorite webcomics. It’s incredibly encouraging to read a strip that’s not only a personal account, intriguing in and of its own right, and well-drawn, but also focuses on deviants from “normal” gender and sexuality in such a positive light.
I can email you with the specifics of where this would be used, if you would prefer)
Additionally, this comic in particular is probably the best (and most concise) explanation of sexuality and gender that I’ve ever found! Not only does it explain a majority of the primary descriptors (I appreciated the distinction between romantic and sexual attraction, the explanation of fluidity along these continuums, and the inclusion of asexuals among those described), but it presented such that both those completely new to the idea of being different AND those of us who are quite familiar can easily learn from it. As a fellow “magically-gendered” individual, I’d like to thank you for making this comic-blog!
(Additionally, I’m a member of an American high school that’s starting a new GSA, and was wondering if I could get your approval to print this off as an infographic? Naturally, you would be given full credit and citation
Could you send me an email address I can use so that our correspondence doesn’t get mixed up with comments? I edit _Polare_ the quarterly journal of the NSW Gender Centre, and I’d like to discuss the possibility of using some of your material in _Polare_.
Thanks,
Katherine