Burn wrote:Caelus wrote:"Same sex" relationships entail SEX. Not GENDER.
In human terms, "sex" does refer to "gender".
No, it doesn't.
Sex refers to the anatomical distinction between the portion of the population that can generally pee standing up and the portion that generally has to sit down to do so. (There's also "chromosomal sex" but I think that's pretty self-explanatory.)
Gender is a cultural construct representing a set of values or predispositions that we have associated with sex - many of which are arbitrary in nature - like the words "he" and "she".
When people talk of "same sex relationships" they're referring to two people of the same gender.
Given that transgender individuals are relatively few in number, it's simple probability - most same sex relationships are between individuals of the same gender. But "same sex relationship" hasn't traditionally defined by the participants' gender identities.
When same sex relationships were illegal in the United States, marriages were restricted on the basis of SEX not on the basis of GENDER. Who you married depended on what your legal SEX was, not upon your gender identity. So a cisgender man could marry a cisgender woman or a transsexual woman, but whether he could marry a transgender woman depended on where you were.
Heck, opponents of same sex marriage are generally the same people who reject the notion of gender altogether - in their eyes all that determines what it's 'okay' for you to do, and who it's 'okay' for you to be with is which body parts you were born with.
Sex covers both gender AND the action of sex.
No, sex is not synonymous with gender.
As humans, it's a habit we have of trying to apply our human concepts to non-human things.
It doesn't help in this case that Transformers has a long held history of establishing both male and female characters. Yes, they are alien robots who do not have sexual intercourse (well, that we know of anyway!) but we still assign genders to them.
Which was essentially my point. People get bent out of shape and say a story sucks if it has "homosexual relationships", but in the case of Transformers, even the most iconic same-gender relationship currently in the comics features nothing that can genuinely be defined as homosexual. Is it a matter of semantics? Essentially, but it underscores the bigotry on display when people dog an IDW story because of its 'gay robots'. MtMtE and LL have both tackled themes associated with emotional intimacy, commitment, domestic abuse, etc. but they haven't really touched on any feminist or LGBT issues. People who angst because they believe those themes are being 'forced' upon them, or who believe those themes are 'dominating' the story telling are freaking out over something that they've constructed from their own assumptions and preconceptions.
But does the appearance of two robots, (who, by our very own definition are of the same gender) in a relationship actually help gay readers feel included in the fandom?
Generally speaking, if you are part of the dominant portion of society, you don't spend a lot of time thinking consciously about the features that put you in that category. As a white cisgender male, I did not spend much time thinking about the fact that I was a white cisgender heterosexual male until I was put in an environment where that was novel. When placed in the minority position, you become very aware of the attributes that define you as part of that minority. Partly, it's because no one else will let you forget, and partly because the lived experience of being a minority person deeply impacts your identity. Hence, "gay pride" is a thing, but "straight pride" is a joke.
That being the case, when you watch movies or TV shows, or read books or comics, where the characters typically conform to the dominant group, it makes you feel excluded. When you encounter characters that are defined solely by that element of your identity, it makes you feel diminished as an individual. But when you encounter a story with a range of diverse characters, it makes you feel included.
Is that true for every person? No, though in my experience intersectionality matters a lot there; a straight white woman may be able to relate to Bilbo Baggins, but it's harder for a bisexual Brazilian woman to do so.
That's a genuine question because to me, I don't give a flying **** what a persons sexuality is, they can be part of the fandom regardless. You either like Transformers or you don't. Your sexual orientation shouldn't matter.
There are probably not to many people who would explicitly say otherwise, but there are microaggressions and other little things that send an exclusionary message. The way people talk, the words they use. I think women get it worse in our fandom (ever listen to the way the boys on this forum talk about Megan Fox?), but I imagine if I were gay I'd likely spend more time grinding my teeth and shaking my head than I do.
Yeah I know, there's homophobes in all fandoms, but that's a greater problem with society, not the fandom.
Yeah, but the way we effect societal change is by making those changes ourselves - for the IDW authors that some people here deride for being 'woke', that means promoting better values through their storytelling decisions, even if the decisions seem like minor ones.
See again, I gotta disagree. You're saying sexual orientation is only defined once a person is having sex,
Not exactly... I'm saying that in research where sex and sexual behavior matters, we don't often ask about sexual orientation anymore, as it's not a reliable indicator of anything. In research about alienation, prejudice, things like that, we might ask how a person labels their sexual orientation, but if you actually want to know about a person's relationships, you have to ask about the person's relationships.
thus, as Transformers don't have sex, their orientation can't be defined.
I can't agree with that. What if, in some other media, two guys sit holding hands, and then they kiss, and the screen fades. We don't see them have sex, therefore, are they gay? We're left with the impression that they are. But if we take your definition then unless we actually see them having sex then their orientation can't be defined.
But there's a key difference - the 'two guys' you're talking about are presumably human beings, and even if those individuals themselves are not sexually active, they live and love within a culture where the act of sexual intercourse has meaning (and where brothers don't often hold hands or kiss).
Chromedome and Rewind don't have that context. In the comics, they receive some disparaging comments for having a relationship, but the comments others make about them are unrelated to their genders or their non-existent sexuality - characters like Infinitus condemn the concept of conjunx endurae
in general. While the characters' gender may matter to their human readers, it doesn't matter to them, and while the human reader perceives sexuality, it's completely fabricated by the reader's projection of distinctly human traits onto beings that are not human.
Thus, just because we don't see Transformers having sex, doesn't mean they don't engage in some sort of union that could be defined as sex.
Well that depends on how Freudian you are. Some people can see sex or sexual objects in anything. Other people can see that sometimes a Fusion Cannon is just a Fusion Cannon.
Still amused that the free comic is set after a future op issue mind.
