- Zoey: I’d like to register for the county championships. But for the men’s competition! I need a new challenge!
- Official: Naturally, only men may be admitted to the men’s competition.
- Zoey: Did you just assume my gender?!
- Official: Of course not, for Twitter’s sake!
- Official: … Date of birth?
- Zoey: 1 January 1970.
|
Leveraging political correctness to avoid giving personal information, now that’s the finest idea!
January 1st 1970, specifically at midnight UTC, is the unix epoch. almost all computers store time as the number of milliseconds from that date.
I imagine this will be stored as a 0. You know what else gets stored as a 0? Boolean values, true or false, essentially, get stored as a 1 for true or a 0 for false. This is called type casting, and can sometimes be done unintentionally, causing bugs.
Another type cast: Null/Nil, that is, meaning no data is here, is sometimes treated as a 0, or false.
Her entry in the database might have Null as the date of birth. Which could be used for another trick later, I imagine.
Looks like nobody remembers what happened when a ranking woman tennis player challenged a man in “Battle Of Sexes”. If this comic were set in a realistic universe, the dumb lesbian would be in for a very rude awakening. Fortunately, it’s not an we’re going to witness some funny hijinks instead.
I don’t see why we shouldn’t let females play male sports as long as we don’t allow the other way around. I’m not fond of the “gender” argument in sports though. Sports are split by SEX not Gender. Sex is biological, unchangeable, XX or XY. Males are predisposed to being better at sports, it’s a fact and the entire reason to split them into male and female sports. Yes there are males who are weak and females who are strong, but it’s usually a safe bet a male will win 1st place in unisex competitions. The advantage is equivalent to doping. Already male women have taken the top places of female sports they are let into. It’s not fair to the females and should make people question why we would continue to split sports if it is allowed.
Author wrote:
I’m actually pretty sure that this will be exactly what will happen: Zoey will be beaten, maybe not by the first man, but by someone. And then she will cry and throw some accusation at her patriarchal oppressor.
Btw. Zoey is not a “dumb lesbian”. She has her quirks, but is an interesting character. Characters without any faults are not very interesting.
Author wrote:
The only “Battle of the Sexes” I can think of was in 1973 when an over-the-hill Bobby Riggs challenged Billy Jean King, the top women’s player, and lost. What battle of the sexes are you thinking of?
(Note that prior to the King match Riggs had beaten another top women’s player, Margaret Court, so he wasn’t that over-the-hill).
I actually thought it a jab at conservatives for calling out male-to-female trans athletes, by using a memetic badass girl who can only threaten male dominance by claiming to be male. And I still found it funny.
I also suspect the age joke is less about competing outside her age bracket and more a computer science reference, but I could be off-base there.
Ferret Williams wrote:
Not necessarily. We use dd MMM yy in the US as well, especially in the military.
This is in poor taste.
Is there some hidden joke in Jan 1, 1970? I’m kind of ignorant.
People don’t seem to get the strong reaction to the “did you just assume my gender?!?” joke. This is perhaps fair enough for someone who doesn’t follow this issue very closely. The problem with this phrase is that it’s more of a dog whistle than a joke. Transphobes essential have only two jokes, all of their online harassment boils down to either this “assume my gender” line or the now infamous “I identify as an attack helicopter” and even those aren’t vastly different from one another. This ubiquity also makes creators who use it more suspicious, they aren’t using it because it’s clever, everyone online has already heard it. Dave Chappelle rightly got criticized for using the attack helicopter joke last year not just because it’s transphobic, but because he is a professional comedian ripping dead jokes from 4chan. So Novil might not have meant anything specific by it, it’s still damaging, but much more to the point, people have good statistical reason to fear it hints at worse underlying positions.
One of the signs of an ideologue is that they can’t accept a joke is just a joke. And, “I identify as an attack helicopter” actually IS pretty funny. If you don’t have to “identify” as what you actually are, why not an attack helicopter?
@ Brett P Bellmore:
And this kind of hits the nail on the head – should you get to decide who you are and what you are, or should everyone else decide for you who and what you are, your own experiences be damned?
@ Brett P Bellmore:
“don’t have to ‘identify’ as what you actually are” what blatant framing you have there. Sure it was funny, I can take a little self deprecating humor. I laughed when I first heard it back in… 2014. I laughed less the next thousand times I heard it, less as the demographics reciting it became more openly hostile to my existence. This joke was done to death years before Netflix started paying comedians to regurgitate it. By all means let me know how toxic the culture around a joke needs to get before I am allowed to criticize a dangerous pattern without being labeled an ideologue.
@ Ferret Williams:
Goint Month, Day, Year isn’t a sign of being from the US, it’s just a sign of deliberately making no sense.
Sorting the numbers by: middle timeframe, short timeframe and long timeframe is just something nobody with any sense of order can do, no matter if in the US or not.
The fact that it’s the accepted standard by law just means the law is evil.
p.s.
This comment was partially in jest.
@ TheWhalersNotTheCoffeeChain:
Wow, so basically you are reducing Zoe’s whole character to being a lesbian. Sounds pretty homophobe to m, your comment, making everything she does about her sexuality. Maybe you should think before you post. ’cause I found your comment offensive, not the joke in the comic!
Also people who think this is transphobe or whatever clearly missed the joke that aims at competitions in sports. There was this guy (a rapper, I think? Forgot his name unfortunately) who said he’s genderfluid, felt like a woman today, beat some women’s world record in weight lifting and went to be a woman the other day again.
Guy’s obviously not genderfluid or whatever but clearly showed where sports went wrong with the whole issue.
@ hellsheep:
went to be a MAN the other day again, sorry, typo.
@ Ratfox:
“Our little
TommyZoey Tables grew up so fast!”Cheesecakes wrote:
Long time fan, first time commenter. As a trans and nonbinary person (so exactly the demographic “did you just assume my gender” is used against), what Cheesecakes said sums it up pretty well. I want to add that I do understand that Zoe is being a jerk by taking advantage of the existence of trans people with her comment, that of course this is something she would do. My problem is honestly even more with the response she gets than her saying this. That response, of not wanting to upset the twitter brigade, tells me that this character (or possibly the author) is more concerned with angry internet comments than the very real danger trans people face of being murdered. Like, literally most states in the US have something called the “gay panic” defense that can be used to avoid legal consequences for murdering trans people. The very first news story I saw this year was about a trans person being murdered at around 6AM on January 1st. Imagine what that must be like, to start the year with news someone in your marginalized group was murdered.
Just to give some idea of what could have been done instead, if the guy had said something like “Oh. Uh what are your pronouns?”, I think that would’ve been much less upsetting for trans people while preserving the comedic flow. Even better would be her getting called out for saying that; maybe that is planned for later. The best (and requiring the most pre-planning) way of still using this phrase would’ve been if the comic already had a trans character who was accepted and pointedly avoided this kind of statement. With that, seeing this character make this comment (and then getting called out for it or being accepted as whatever gender Zoe is claiming) would make it clearer that the author understands trans issues and is not targeting trans people or just using their existence for laugh fodder. Seeing someone say this would still be some level of upsetting to most trans people, so the best method is to get the message across some other way, but if the comic had a history of explicitly supporting trans people, it would mitigate that upset imo. I do not think the comic has a history of denigrating any group; it just hasn’t been explicitly supportive as far as I can remember.
I do really appreciate the epoch joke, though. I normally really appreciate this comic; this is I think the first time it has upset me when that is clearly not the intended response. I hope my comment helps to grow understanding and prevent future such errors in judgement. I honestly believe that this was an honest mistake, not knowing how trans readers would take it, and not malicious.
@ warebec:
Thanks for your comment. Was hoping to hear a trans person’s take on this.
It is interesting that so many comments have misspelled Zoey’s name. Personally, that would irk me more than being mis-pronouned.
@ Evana:
So wait… did you just assume my identification as an attack helicopter? d: (No ill intent. Both of those lines are new to me, and my natural inclination is to mash things together into absurdity.) This comment identifies as a string of letters and numbers, with the occasional special character.
@ warebec:
I’d not heard of the “gay panic” defense. That is some seriously messed up crap. Makes as much sense as an “ugly chick panic” defense.
The trope of a character recoiling in fear of what would the social medias would say has been used for (attempted) comedic effect in previous strips. I rolled my eyes the first time, and I rolled my eyes again this time. Occasionally reading webcomic comments is about as close as I get to any social media, so the joke doesn’t land for me.
@ boar:
Perhaps you overlooked my comment on the first page about the way the date should have been written due to the USA setting? 31 December 1969, due to time zones.
@ hellsheep:
That’s not how any of this works. It’s clear from the five seconds it took to look up this story that the rapper in question wasn’t in any kind of official competition or judged event. They just made their claim and picked up some weights on camera.
Even if we could take the claim of being female in good faith it still wouldn’t be enough to get them into an official competition, the South Park Strongwoman scenario is a blatantly false straw man.
Where trans athletes are even allowed to compete, there are strict rules in place that no cis man could meet on a whim. They require active hormone treatment with maximum testosterone levels so low cis women have been blocked for exceeding them, over time scales that give plenty of time for fat, skin, muscle, etc to fall within female norms.
This rapper obviously did none of that for this little publicity stunt.
warebec wrote:
The irrational hatred of the left towards Western countries – not just America – has become so extreme that it has long ago transgressed the border to discrimination and ethnic prejudice.
These people know that homosexuals are vilified, persecuted, imprisoned and even murdered, they know that there are countries in which this is state imposed and systematically done. They know that literally every single country in the world is more intolerant, worse concerning racism and more violent than the US.
They don’t care. They only care if they can somehow blame the West, especially the US.
@ Nimz:
Timezone adjustment? I have to applaud your attention to detail.
@ Arent:
So bad things can’t be addressed because worse thing exists elsewhere? And constructive critique to make the west better is equivalent to hatred of it?
@ Evana:
It was a stupid thing, of course. Still showing very well the problem. But there are enough trans-woman wrecking havoc in the women competitions with the body of a man. Look up Hannah Mouncey, for example.
Also @topic It’s people’s right to find a joke funny or not. They can think it’s lame or whatever. But all this “I am offended” crap is so annoying. As a dude on a woman’s body I laughed about the joke. I am not offender by it. But I do roll my eyes about many of the comments here.
Arent wrote:
Fascinating viewpoint and one I often see among right-leaning people. Yet when I suggest helping impoverished countries in Africa with much more severe economic problems than the US, I’m told that we should deal with our own poverty issues first…
Doc Mesa wrote:
The single best thing you can do about the poverty in Africa is to relax copyright protection laws.
Of course, this will never happen – Disney still holds the entire elite in its pockets. Thus we are left with a choice between leaving the African countries alone to deal with their own problems… or deliberately ruining their own industries and agriculture by giving them free products that were made in USA.
You have to realize: we have DECADES of experience with aid for African countries.We have already seen how Western aid has managed to only make things WORSE in the past. Unless you buckle up for a fight with Disney, all you can do about Africa is to support the usual diplomatic instruments of lowering tariffs for example if the respective government is playing nicely and not killing “the gays”.
@ Evana:
“what blatant framing you have there. ”
Intentional. Look, if somebody who’s skinny thinks they’re fat, we don’t humor them, and arrange for bariatric surgery as they starve to death.
If somebody gets it into their head that their left hand is a foreign growth that needs removing, we don’t subsidize chopping it off, and congratulate them on catching that tumor in time.
Brains are like any other organ, they get screwed up sometimes. There are a wide variety of dysphorias, and they’re ALL delusions. Humoring the delusion doesn’t cure the problem, often it aggravates it, and eliminates any chance it would resolve itself naturally.
But I don’t have a problem with trans rights. If some guy wants to cut his junk off and take hormones, and he’s otherwise a competent adult and can pay for it himself, well, I’ll feel sorry for him, but he shouldn’t be stopped. That’s his freedom, and I wouldn’t take it away.
The problems set in when he takes the step from, “I’m a girl!” to “And you have to treat me as one!”. No, I don’t. That’s MY freedom, and don’t you try to take it away.
Trans rights will become a lot less controversial when they accept that the right to do what you want even if others think it crazy has to be reciprocal. That live and let live are two sides of the same coin.
Charlie wrote:
…How do you figure? For one thing, men on average serve about 35 km/h faster. When it comes to the top level of professional sports, there’s just no getting past the fact that men are physically stronger than women. This doesn’t mean that your average college guy could beat Serena Williams, but I don’t understand how you could say men’s tennis is less challenging.
@ jamesraylee:
I don’t think so, it’s more the general ‘If this guy is just going to accept blatant nonsense, might as well go the whole way’.
Also many online forms have that date as the default birthday, so on fake or throwaway accounts it’s a pretty common birthdate. If i were to register on a random site I only intend to visit once or twice, my birthday would probably be 1-1-1970 because of that.
i’m going to preface this with the fact that i am transgender so it should be clear that i am an expert on this and anyone who’s cis does not get to tell me i am wrong. cis people do not have the experience or knowledge.
this shit is transphobic. the whole “did you just assume my gender” thing was designed by transphobes to make fun of trans people. usually it is used to make fun of the people who would say it to make fun of trans people but you did not make it clear that you were doing that.
i am not in a mental state where i am ok with arguing my existence on the internet but i will say this:
do not make “jokes” like this again. despite what some idiots here might say it is absolutely punching down. instead: educate yourself on trans people’s experiences (not contrapoints she’s truscum). i would recommend starting with this video on transphobia by philosophy tube https://youtu.be/yCxqdhZkxCo
@ erejnion:
You appear to be confusing copyright (the right to control distribution and duplication of a creative work) with patent law (the registered ownership of an idea or invention) – they are both forms of Intellectual Property Law, but are entirely distinct and separate.
Further, relaxing patent law isn’t going to directly benefit Africa at all, they will still have a lack of capital and infrastructure. There are plenty of free water filter designs out there, yet drinking water is still an issue many places because they don’t have the resources to build filters.
I’m not against revising patent law, but it’s primarily going to benefit other Western companies and consumers first, not the developing world.
Calaqupisi wrote:
“I am transgender and therefore I am infallibly right about transgenderism and cis people do not get to disagree with me.”
Um, sorry, yes we do.
jb wrote:
Don’t presume to speak for all cis people. Most of us aren’t the dismissive and antagonistic type that you appear to be.
@ Calaqupisi:
Cool then let me tell you as a trans that I am not offended by it and that this is not trans phobic imo. Now what?
@ TheWhalersNotTheCoffeeChain:
Never happened? There’s a bunch of trans athletes, specifically males who transitioned to females, unfairly taking women’s records in loads of disciplines by taking advantage of their biologically male body’s size and strength. This comic is making a “reversal of roles” joke, with a female saying she identifies as male to compete with male athletes. You’re allowed to dislike it, humor is subjective, and it’s very true that the trans minority is often targeted with hateful bile, but I don’t think this qualifies. Go blast a real hater.
If one could truly choose what they are, I would’ve stopped considering myself a human being a long time ago (when I was an edgier and more nihilistic version of my present self). There are some things you can’t change.
Like the fact that you are a biological entity and a living being (or at least one that has lived, at some point).
Like the fact that you are a primate, an omnivorous land animal belonging to the homo sapiens sapiens species (as much as for some of us I’d like to cast doubt onto the sapiens part).
Like the fact that you’re born into your biological sex and you can’t change your genes, or everything mentioned before would be irrelevant.
Like the fact that your name and surname is decided by your parents and you need to be of certain age to be able to legally change it.
These are things that are predetermined before you are born, or at your birth. After that, your destiny is in your hands. And no matter how you deny them, they will persist, at least at our current technological progress level.
Even if you identify as a female in a man’s body, your body will provide you with unfair advantages to females that were born this way. So in sports, all the social gender politics should be irrelevant. It isn’t about where do you feel you belong to. It’s about inherent advantages of your body type, if you will. But, deep down, all of you knew that already, I hope.
@ hellsheep:
i have two answers depending on whether you’re actually another trans person or whether you’re a cis person trying to pull a “but what if a trans person disagreed with you” (i would like to trust you but the internet is a hellscape and your wording feels a little off to me).
the answer for if you actually are trans is: if you aren’t offended by it then cool. offense isn’t my problem with it. my problem is that it’s indicative of a mentality that trans people just want special treatment which is absolutely a transphobic mentality.
the answer for if you’re not trans is: fuck you. i excluded cis people from my first comment because they don’t understand living life as a trans person and don’t have the understanding of gender that trans people often (but not always) have. additionally, even trans people who don’t have that understanding are more often open to learning.
Did you REALLY have to make a “did you assume my gender” joke? you could have had her respond like “What you think I’m not strong enough (for the men’s division)?” or something to that effect to show off how over confident and persistent she’s being.
@ Steeeve:
There’s no such thing as “male women”. there are plenty of women who have high testosterone without being trans. That doesnt make them men. Recently I kind of felt like this author was delving a little too “Right leaning” with comments making fun of “SJWs” and the kinds of people commenting stuff like this, just really kinds of cements it for me.
Erebus wrote:
You are free to agree with Calaqupisi if you care to. But won’t you acknowledge that I have a right to disagree? Because that’s the issue here. Calaqupisi is asserting that a cis person like me doesn’t “get to” disagree with a trans person like…, um…, Calaqupisi. And my response is “Sorry Your Transness, but yes. I. do. get to disagree with you!”
@ Paeris Kiran:
It’s a programmer’s joke, the way you mesaure time in computers is called a timestamp is basically a counter of all the seconds since 01 01 1970, that’s also the reason why that’s the earliest date that some websites let you set as your date of birth
Erebus wrote:
Right back at you.
@ Calaqupisi:
I am not going into detail about my personal life on the internet but as I mentioned before, I am a man in a woman’s body so that should tell you enough.
You can’t just walk around and say that things are transphobic just because you think they are or because you are offended by it. That doesn’t make the joke transphobic. So please don’t speak for everyone.
Jonmo wrote:
Of course Tumblr is dead. They used to have big LGBTQ+ community there but then forced it out by declaring that “adult topics” are not allowed there. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a25937501/tumblr-porn-ban/
WonderRabbit wrote:
You are likely right. However, confusion like that is common, because the copyright and patent holders are INTENTIONALLY mixing them to support the illusion those are rights. No. Copyrights and patents are not rights, they are privileges granted by government and therefore form of subsidy.
There are plenty of free water filters. There is significantly less free options in medicine. Relaxing patent law would directly benefit Africa’s healthcare.
On the other hand, yes: it would benefit other Western companies and consumer more than Africa. The ones which would benefit most, however? Asia countries like India and Thailand, IMHO. Not exactly western, but already having quite good infrastructure.
Really. Same tired old joke.I thought this comic was better than this. Maybe it used to be. Not anymore, it seems.
@ Brett P Bellmore:
Well there’s a huge list of professional medical organizations that would object to those false equivalencies, but whatever. An apathetic live and let live attitude is perfectly fine in my book. The main issues for the trans community are employment, healthcare, and housing anyways. Professional athletics is a topic that will only ever be relevant to a tiny fraction of trans people. Athletics are so often discussed because transphobes know it’s an easier topic to stir up prejudice than those other issues of basic living conditions.
Since we have been dragged into that though, I will say that while I must acknowledge you have the right to misgender people (despite what a certain Canadian benzo addict claims), you don’t have the right to dictate the views of other independent groups or people either. In other words, if a record keeping or sport organizing body decides they will include conditions to allow trans people to participate, that is there position and must be respected by non-participants/organization members.