Days 130 – 131

The weekend was pretty uneventfully, a bit of food shopping, brought some more DVDs and a cheap Lynyrd Skynyrd best of (to see if their other songs are as good as Sweet Home Alabama or if it was a one-off):

and then it was mostly chillin’ and listening to music and reading on the weekend.

One thing I read was Howard Chaykin’s The Divided States OfHysteria #1 and then the criticism of the issue, mainly that it was transphobic – in the first issue we are introduced to a trans character, who is a sex-worker and is beaten by three customers, who she shoots and kills, which results in her being arrested.

Also in the narration/voice-over she explains that at 16 she was convicted of statutory rape (of a 14 year boy) with extra years added as she looked/dress like a women, which some online have said highlights how trans people are treated differently by the law as a non-trans person would not have been convicted or would have had a lesser sentence.

I think that some people haven’t read the issue or have only seen a couple of panels or pages and have made a judgement without have the context of the scene. Yes, the three customers are transphobic, and the scene raises tricky issues (re the statutory rape and the violence against a sex-worker) but I don’t think you can use this scene as proof positive that Chaykin is transphobic. You can use it support an argument that the scene is lazy, recycles a tried trope, reinforces that trans people are only sex-workers and/or passive and react to life rather than having purpose and directing their own lives.

My complaint about the issue is that the story is pretty much Chaykin by numbers and does verge on being offensive for offensiveness sake and dull at times. While I think I will buy the next issue, if the story doesn’t pick up or the direction of the characters arcs remains dodgy/confirms the claims of transphobia I won’t be getting future issues.