…that a Google search for “gender issues” turns me up fourth in line (and after this post, probably higher). I’ve technically never done a strip that was openly about questions of gender. Even Gender War is more about “women’s issues” or “women’s rights” than it is about questions of what IS gender. On the other hand, so much of Poet’s struggle is against a society that tells him what it is to be a “real man” and of course, because he isn’t musclebound and given to violent competitive sports, and is more interested in his mind, he is left insecure by a population of middle school peers who define men this way (which, sadly, is also how most of our society still sees “real men”). Poet’s being called a “fag” endlessly is not about homosexuality but about gender ideology — BAD gender ideology.

Naturally, this echoes my own experience as a youth, and it has been interesting to learn in adulthood, and even through the creation of this comic strip, that much of the struggle for my own identity and sense of self-worth has been a struggle against monolithic gender identity. Recognizing this has actually brought me to an understanding that, though I fit the stereotype of a “male” and of being “100% straight”, I feel naturally allied with the LGBTQ community more than, um…whatever everybody else is called, just for having spent so much of my life questioning whether or not I was a “real man”.