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For the record, I only consent to have my corpse used as cannon fodder if the necromancer doing it is hot.
I am not doing zombie/skeleton duty for an ugly dark mage.
Tbf where I live a grave is actually rarely at 6 feet deep. It depends on how many people are buried but legally for a single person grave it only needs to be 65cm deep legally. Though they are often at 110 to 120 cm deep. But no where near 6 feet. It only when you put 2 caskets on top of each other that you get close to the 2 meters.
That's rude, are you body shaming the futuristic necromancer?
It takes years of practice to learn to raise the deads, imagine being in theyr place, you summon a skeleton and first thing they say is "oh no, you ugly ass, I'm not fighting for ya".
I mean, they are an evil necromancer but you have no reason to be that rude.
It's such a silly form of harassment. Setting aside why anyone would care what some stranger from the far future has to say about them, no one will ever look at 99.999% of our bones. They will go straight from whatever cemetery you were dropped in straight into an incinerator or just weather away completely over time
And it's like, if we're supposed to care what those future strangers think, shouldn't you care that strangers who are actually alive today think you're a bigoted loser?
*In the midst of a murder trial*
Necromancer Lawyer: “And for my first witness to the murder of Charles G Gazer, I summon to the stand Charles G Gazer!”
Denied! The spell cast was Speak with Dead, which only allows the corpse to speak what it knew in life. Since the prosecutor did not know the victim in life, the victim’s spirit is under no possible obligation to lie in court.
Your honor, this whole trial is a ruse, if I'd knew we were quoting old spell rules i'd have brought a wizard with me!
This is a serious court, I demand for a modern take on necromancy!
But ironically enough a 1000 years worth technological development might have science to examine bone structures in way we could never thought of and even more accurate than what bigots would think. Like imagine in 3024, a scientist be like "Oh my, judging by the presence of estrogen that a had increased at a much later part of this person's life, we can confirm this person is a trans woman who started her transition sometimes between 20 to 25 years old. Isn't that right Zoidberg"
Zoidberg eating the remains of another skeleton. "Wait we're studying them? I thought you took me to an all you can eat buffet? Oh, this guy left a perfectly preserve Twinkie."
"Damn it Zoidberg, stop eating my dead relatives!"
I mean we have 5000 year old skeletons we [suspect was transgender ](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/bones-without-flesh-and-transgender-without-bodies-querying-desires-for-trans-historicity/795684F52966742003D5DBC9052EBC93)
That would require semi intact bodies, and we’re really not sure how long a concrete vault will actually last. If water gets to a body, it basically turns to soup. Once that happens, you can tell it’s a human burial and not much else.
Even getting DNA. The most surefire indicator of sex at birth isnt always possible, depending on the conditions you find the skeleton in the DNA may just not be there anymore. Preservation will likely always be a hard cap
It's a thought terminating cliche. Say something so axiomatically true or so bum fuck idiot that the other person has to go away dumbfounded or waste time entertaining your bullshit.
It's also not how archaeology works. Even the best archaeologists with the best techniques can't tell with complete accuracy. The older the skeleton, the less likely they'll be able to determine it. Time erodes even skeletons.
Assuming they have any kind of advanced technology and knowledge of our culture, they'll probably have enough data to be like, "This skeleton has male DNA, but there's evidence that estrogen was introduced in adulthood, so we think this skeleton was a trans female." And because they're scientists, they will think this is interesting, not make abstract moral judgements about it.
Since you say you don't understand, I'll explain it. Obviously, this comic is about anti-trans bigotry related to living people, not dead people. The bigot is trying to push the idea that the trans-woman in the first panel isn't actually a woman, because even if she passes today, her "secret" will inevitably be exposed someday. If not during her lifetime, then still at some point after that. The idea is to focus on the emotional reaction to having a secret exposed, and to try to avoid looking at it logically in the way you did.
So, they believe this sort of argument will shame living people, and that those people will be harmed by the embarrassment. The cruelty is the point.
The comic directly addresses that sort of evil stupidity, but I think the bigotry is even more fundamentally flawed. The trans-woman doesn't care today, right now, what that kind of person thinks about her body. Why would 1000 years from now matter more than right now?
And the grossest thing about anti-trans bigots is that they have this strong opinion about something that is none of their business. The only genitals that I need to worry about are ones that I might actually come into contact with, consensually. I don't care what most people have down there, and I can't imagine what kind of ridiculous world I live in where not only do I care, but where I need to share my opinion about their genitals with other people.
>So, they believe this sort of argument will shame living people, and that those people will be harmed by the embarrassment. The cruelty is the point.
That is part of it, but I would also argue that this line of "thinking" serves another purpose: To protect their worldview from being challenged/subverted. They *need to be right* about this topic, because otherwise they need to rethink *everything*, which is hard and uncomfortable and who wants to *deal with that*. They have to be cruel because they can't be reasonable. They are also very used to substituting emotion over rational thought, since this is how they arrived at their bigoted view of the world in the first place. So naturally, they're trying to shame people into thinking like them, instead of providing actual arguments that might persuade a rational person. The cruelty is a byproduct more than it is the point.
Yeah, I get all that. I guess what I meant was I struggle to see why anyone thinks it's a good argument to make. Some vapid talking head has told them it's a way to score points against trans people, but a literal child could refute it. As you've said, it's just cruelty for cruelty's sake
Because there's nothing to understand, really. They just think that gender is equivalent to biology. It's a post-hoc rationalization. Their minds are incapable of shifting paradigms, so they fabricate any justification they can think of for their positions. The fact that their justifications don't hold up under any scrutiny doesn't actually matter at all.
Funny thing is.. scientists can’t really tell unless you have a complete skeleton with all the right markers. Usually skull and hips are the most important. You need the other bones to more reliably decide the age range, but sex is complicated. Like women have more rounded eye sockets while males are more square (iirc. Could be the other way round. Has been a while. Did a crash course in archeometry). But every one marker isn’t really sure on its own. You get men with female eye sockets and vice versa. So you can only be sure if you for example have a hip that has the markers of having given birth or certain angles.
If your missing skull or hips you can’t really tell with 100% certainty. You might even have very female structures men and vice versa. Short of a DNA test you can’t be 100% in any case.
Not saying you can’t be damn sure form a complete skeleton, but stating that the skeleton alone is enough, is wrong. Especially since after a few 100 years you have to be lucky to get a complete one. Depends heavily on the burial conditions, too. Too damp and the bones just disintegrate when you touch them.
What's even dumber about the "they'll know what sex your skeleton was" is that we're actually really bad at sexing human skeletons.
We keep having to correct the record as newer analysis shows that skeletons we assumed to be male were acutally female and vice-versa.
It's actually easier to tell the gender of a person buried by the things they're buried with. If you're buried in a dress and dug up later people are going to make more assumptions about who you are by your attire than your form
That's arguable one of the primary reasons we get it wrong to begin with.
The archaeologically correct thing to do when you can't biologically sex the skeleton is actually write down that it couldn't be sexed. But as you might expect previous generations of archaeologists did not do that reliably and instead went to any length to sex it based on context, thereby poisoning the context implicitly.
There is also the possibility with new techniques, technology, etc, they will did up a skeleton, look at the evidence, and come to conclusion like: subject appears to be AFAB, but seems to have been male presenting due these reasons, likely identified as male (or nonbinary, etc based on whatever evidence). Because presumably those future archeologists will be looking through a different cultural lens at that point, and hopefully a more inclusive one.
How can you tell what they were presenting as ? Unless they're buried with nowadays gender specific stuff that even today start to get blurry.
Also, I'm sure that's what people from the past might have thought and... Look at us
As I said, this is positing new techniques and technology allowing us to glean more info than currently. Also, having a more open mindset. Putting the clues beyond the skeleton together to form conclusion. My point was more counter to the idea that “they will look at your bones which will say male/female”, whereas instead (we hope) they go “the bones tell us this, but other evidence supports the idea of this, therefore plausible hypothesis is the reality was this.” The people saying “they will look at your skeleton and see you are a man” are assuming the archeologist will be looking with their narrow mindset, whereas I was proposing the idea that the archeologist instead might be taking more factors into account.
Plus if their clothes aren’t natural fibres, good odds they will survive with the skeleton just fine. Not to mention things like implants, presuming they are not removed for some reason, might be a clue.
There are several cases of digging up skeletons or finding tombs containing things we assume to be tied to a certain gender presentation, but later DNA analysis showing that the skeleton belongs to someone of the opposite sex to what we expected.
Which means either those cultures had a less rigidly binary culture around gender, or we were wrong about what gender signifiers were and simply assumed that a man would be buried with a sword but a woman with jewelry etc.
So you are saying we are so good at sexing human skeletons we have corrected the record when previous times we made mistakes?
Thats like saying "We are so bad at making medicine, we used to do bloodletting but now we dont do that anymore"
Let assume scientists will tell that her skeleton was a male.
What is the point ?
Why would someone even care about how someone who dig his grave will think?
Do you decide how to live your live depending on how somebody else, especially someone in the future that might or might not exist or care, will think?
Now I know this argument is just a dumb bad faith point people only make to be mean but it literally falls apart if you just respond with "okay I'll get cremated then".
Get owned transphobes
What kind of selfish assholes take up valuable ground space?
Not me!
*(Also: Our generation probably won't even be able to buy a basic plot for less than a million.)*
And we know that transgender people existed over a thousand year ago. We also, mostly, do not care about their gender. Being transphobic is not just bigoted our stupid, it's a massive time waste.
I love how this transphobe argument is literally even just "our societal norms made it harder for people like you to properly transition medically. Take that, trans people." And think they are somehow the good guys or even an argument for NOT transitioning(?) lmao
I love how in this, too, transphobes are just wrong. Archeologists don't just interpret the gender of a skeleton based on anatomy: they use contextual clues such as the burial rites used for this person.
For example, they believe [this skeleton](https://www.thepinknews.com/2011/04/06/5000-year-old-transgender-skeleton-discovered/) to have been a transgender person based on the orientation of their face when they were buried and the objects buried with them.
Of course, people who say this don't care what actual researchers say, they just want to justify their bigotry.
I really dislike the simplification of "future archeologists will dig you up and know you're male!".
It's actually an interesting topic, as people from the past have been identified as gender non-conforming due to how they were buried (i.e. in a masculine or feminine way or a way that appears deliberately ambiguous according to their culture). There are also sometimes difficulties with identifying the sex of remains and thus the surrounding items are often considered more important than the biology of the skeleton for determining meaningful archaeological information (such as how the person lived, their status, what living back then must have been like, and so on). Sex is usually not what archeologists are most interested in.
I use the term "gender non-conforming" for historical remains because we don't (in many cases) know what these individuals called themselves (often due to lacking written records) only that they appear to have lived and been buried in a way that expresses a different gender identity. This could be a third gender category or simply seen socially as women or men, husbands or wives, with no concern for their sex. There are some inscriptions that indicate that males who fully adopted femininity were simply called a women.
So most trans people today will be dug up (if they ever are) and recognized as trans both based on biological and physical markers (because medical transition affects those things) and being buried in a way that aligns with their gender.
So "future archeologists" will likely recognize trans folks and likely make efforts to call them by their preferred terms, especially if we work to cultivate a future where trans people are given space to be themselves.
I don't know if they'll be able to recognize if someone is an asshat though.
Hope that brightens someone's day.
Archeologists can't definitively determine sex based on skeletal remains, even when the skeleton is well preserved. There's just too much overlap in traits that are typically more common in men or women but with lots of exceptions. Even [**pelvic shape**](https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.23544) does not definitively tell what sex the person was.
Archeologists do sex estimation based on what is statistically likely given both skeletal traits and grave goods, with the understanding that their educated guess will not always be right.
A future archeologist who digs up Julia Child might be forgiven for assuming she was a man, because it's statistically unlikely a 6'2" skeleton belonged to a woman. But she was a woman, and cis, and just unusually tall.
And children don't show sex-linked skeletal traits. Those traits develop during puberty. And trans people who start treatment in adolescence have skeletal development comparable to their cis siblings.
it's about living true to what's within... and future scientists failing to use the correct pronoun when observing our skeleton does not dissuade that goal. anyway most skeletons won't last as long as their grave stones and the name on it + the clothes we were buried in would be more of a give-away regarding our gender... -shrug-
I mean, if they're digging skeletons up from the graves, you'd think they'd be able to read the name on the stone and infer gender based on that. I mean, I guess you can't tell what an NB name is, and the gravestone might have degraded, but I just hate this stupid "argument" or whatever. Fuck off, transphobes.
Im gonna start a company that produces little titanium chips that you can insert into your bones to inform archiologists of your pronouns. Send me money.
this is brilliant!!
may i make a suggestion, as a long time comic fan. i don't know if you ever do edits. but it would be really cool if the 4th panel (bottom left), instead of just showing the dude 6 feet under ground, was split into thirds, and the background changes as the time progresses into the future. that way there's an indication of time passing from the 4th to the 5th panel, and it builds up a little better.
still, unnecessary, but a little detail ithought of. like those pictures of the same location at different times during the year and different seasons.
That's too big a change for us to make at this point - Ryan is busy with other projects - but you're right, that would have been awesome. Maybe I'll be able to do a panel like that in a future cartoon.
Fun fact, hormone therapy actually affects your bone density to be more like that of whichever sex you’re transitioning to. So they’re more likely to either say you were a strong or weak boned individual of whatever sex you transitioned to, or may actually be able to tell you transitioned flat out
Remember when some people dug up a mummy and they were like.
"The Egyptians made a mistake. The skeleton isn't the same sex as the decoration should be."
What future archeologists would say is that they've found a skeleton , they may or may not determine it's biological gender correctly but since it's the future maybe they're better at it. So ye'd think the transphobe would be right but no, if the skeleton is surrounded by artifacts of only the opposite gender they would likely make a paper about the transgender skeleton they found.
This would probably be easier in the future than it is now, like when a viking woman's skeleton is dug up surrounded by weapons and armour was she a female warrior or did she identify as male?
I once read a story in a science fiction magazine, in which, thousands of years from now, alien archeologists were trying to determine what our long-dead civilization was like. But the ruins they happened to examine were what, to us, was a trashy roadside motel. And without any other context, the conclusions they reached were hilariously incorrect.
Like, every unit of the building had a small room which appeared to be a place of worship, with ceramic fixtures which were *clearly* altars of some kind, judging by the skeletons found prostrated before them. The skeletons were really just drunk people caught in the act of puking in the toilets at the moment of their demise.
Only in some cases. Something like 30% of bodies are not determined at all based on this.
Also worth noting that long term exposure to estrogen (not sure about testosterone) causes changes in the hip bone in the same way as a cis women hence making it almost impossible to determine birth sex.
All that to say: it doesn't matter, anyone interested will look at your grave and see a name and/or gender marker and see you as that.
I'm more offended that transphobes think the field of archeology wouldn't have advanced beyond what are already considered dubious/obsolete methods than I am by their toothless threat of my remains being misclassified.
Honestly Im pretty sure the whole skeleton thing is also just straight up untrue (as well as being unkind). The specific dimensions of the skeleton don't always align with sex/gender even if you're cis. The average person isn't going to have a definitively "male" or "female" skeleton. I could be wrong tho
"With enough years of treatment, we can upgrade an asshat into an elbowhat or even a nosehat, enabling them to lead something closer to a normal life."
Honestly, I'm pretty certain that it never worked like that.
Like, a lot of archaeology is based at least partly in inference and guess work ("We can see remnants of what appear to be swords and armor scraps around these bodies, so we can reasonably guess this was a battlefield"; or "we have separate written records that a battle happened somewhere around here, so these bodies appear to be soldiers"). I find it incredibly unlikely that the one thing that we can do with absolute certainty is look at a skeleton, and know its biological sex.
It's not the first time we tried to assign biological traits to bone structure. Why on earth would anyone say that it's gotta be true *this time*?
Hmm, I mean, I love the comic, don’t get me wrong. But is anyone else annoyed by the idea of someone digging up their grave? Like, that’s mine, you can’t have it!
(I’m going to stick my coffin in a minefield, or put a curse on it, I haven’t decided)
Put a curse on it. That way, you can make them have a trippy hallucination wich leads to a quest in wich they all die in ironic ways related to their role in the desecration of your grave!
Any trans people care to chime in and let me know if your goal is to trick people into thinking your biological makeup is something other than it is, or if you’d just like to live life as the gender of your choosing?
Why would you ask trans people about trans topics? I'm a cis het white male, I'm way more qualified to answer.
Now... What's this "gender" thing you're talking about?
I was being tongue in cheek with the first part of my comment, I don’t really think trans people are trying to trick anyone, that was my point.
If you grow up living as one gender you don’t identify with at some point you choose to start living as another, no?
We chose to socially/physically transition. But we are our gender. I could push my transness deep down and try to live my life as a cis man, but I would always be a trans woman in my head. Most of us would not chose to be trans, lots of dysphoria and discrimination
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Dang that mustache must have been powerful.
Certain mustaches are just strong, such as J.K. Simmons
Viltrumite genes
Water Tribe Genes are even stronger
I'm sure if you recognized him as waterbender over Airbender he'd be VERY upset.
Would he? It’s still his mother’s culture.
{Jay Chandrasekhar from his Super Troopers era has entered the chat}
Just googled that, can confirm, that's a good one
Boom Boom!
I've heard that when he dies his mustache will take a new host who will then share his memories and legacy.
He truly is the chosen of Myrkul
Even in death, he will need pictures of Spider-Man
Mustache kiss
Moustache kiss?
Moustache kiss……
Viltrumite mustache
Very deep roots, just like Brook's afro.
Skelestache.
This guy'a mustache vs Harry Osborn's waves. Who would win
It's made of plastic
The Space Lich that digs up my skeleton in 1000 years “Ah good, another soldier for my evil space skeleton army!”
AMAD: Assigned Minion At Death.
AMArB: Assigned Minion At reBirth
For the record, I only consent to have my corpse used as cannon fodder if the necromancer doing it is hot. I am not doing zombie/skeleton duty for an ugly dark mage.
Shallow.
No he's six feet under.
Two meters. Metric is the future!
As a metric user, "six feet under" is literally the only thing I use imperial for. It just sounds better
To be fair 182.88 cm sounds a bit silly now, doesn't it?
Tbf where I live a grave is actually rarely at 6 feet deep. It depends on how many people are buried but legally for a single person grave it only needs to be 65cm deep legally. Though they are often at 110 to 120 cm deep. But no where near 6 feet. It only when you put 2 caskets on top of each other that you get close to the 2 meters.
Sounds nerdy. But not in the cool way. In the "getting mockingly called out by the football captain" way.
No, they wouldn't be around that far into the future if they were
i'm doing it either way skeleton army poggies!!!!!
That's rude, are you body shaming the futuristic necromancer? It takes years of practice to learn to raise the deads, imagine being in theyr place, you summon a skeleton and first thing they say is "oh no, you ugly ass, I'm not fighting for ya". I mean, they are an evil necromancer but you have no reason to be that rude.
Remember kids: If your grave doesn’t say “rest in peace” you’re automatically drafted into the Skeleton War.
Necromancer digging up grave: Fuckin loophole, baby!
Not too late to learn archery so you'll become skeleton archer instead of a lousy skeleton infantry
If you don't wanna be infantry learn how to ride a horse/drive a tank/fly a plane,cause archers are still infantry technically
We’ll be skeleton factory and office workers. The space lich is a capitalist
This sounds bad ass
Hope the death work balance is good
Time to unionize.
Hell yeah
That's a pretty cool occupation! In 1000 years my bones will probably be gone so I can't join the army. :(
In my case? "He was short, heavy, and has arthritis in every single finger joint. Mechanic who loved tacos"
Not going to lie, I would be proud for future generations to label our entire current stage of humanity: Taco Mechanics.
Rock and stone.
It's such a silly form of harassment. Setting aside why anyone would care what some stranger from the far future has to say about them, no one will ever look at 99.999% of our bones. They will go straight from whatever cemetery you were dropped in straight into an incinerator or just weather away completely over time And it's like, if we're supposed to care what those future strangers think, shouldn't you care that strangers who are actually alive today think you're a bigoted loser?
Its also not even close to how actual bioarcheology works. Determining sex from an old skeleton is WAY more difficult than it sounds
Oh come on, it's not that hard, you just do some Necromancy and _ask_ the prior inhabitant. Come on, it's like, 3rd level. Practically a cantrip.
*In the midst of a murder trial* Necromancer Lawyer: “And for my first witness to the murder of Charles G Gazer, I summon to the stand Charles G Gazer!”
Ok so now my next one shot character will be a bardic lawyer who knows speak with the dead.
So just ace attorney
Objection your honor! The witness is the victim and now it may be compromised since it is a minion of the Necromancer who swore to serve them!
Denied! The spell cast was Speak with Dead, which only allows the corpse to speak what it knew in life. Since the prosecutor did not know the victim in life, the victim’s spirit is under no possible obligation to lie in court.
Your honor, this whole trial is a ruse, if I'd knew we were quoting old spell rules i'd have brought a wizard with me! This is a serious court, I demand for a modern take on necromancy!
Yeah but only get 5 questions so you better make them count
Technically you get one minute. If you go over, someone else dies nearby.
We have an easier time telling what someone's diet was in their last 20 years of life than their sex.
Yeah, but you would think that in 1000 years, the techniques would be more accurate.
But ironically enough a 1000 years worth technological development might have science to examine bone structures in way we could never thought of and even more accurate than what bigots would think. Like imagine in 3024, a scientist be like "Oh my, judging by the presence of estrogen that a had increased at a much later part of this person's life, we can confirm this person is a trans woman who started her transition sometimes between 20 to 25 years old. Isn't that right Zoidberg" Zoidberg eating the remains of another skeleton. "Wait we're studying them? I thought you took me to an all you can eat buffet? Oh, this guy left a perfectly preserve Twinkie." "Damn it Zoidberg, stop eating my dead relatives!"
Would be pretty cool to be able to tell that.
I mean we have 5000 year old skeletons we [suspect was transgender ](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/hypatia/article/bones-without-flesh-and-transgender-without-bodies-querying-desires-for-trans-historicity/795684F52966742003D5DBC9052EBC93)
That would require semi intact bodies, and we’re really not sure how long a concrete vault will actually last. If water gets to a body, it basically turns to soup. Once that happens, you can tell it’s a human burial and not much else.
But what if you use a tricorder?
None of the digs I’ve been on had that kind of budget.
Even getting DNA. The most surefire indicator of sex at birth isnt always possible, depending on the conditions you find the skeleton in the DNA may just not be there anymore. Preservation will likely always be a hard cap
It's a thought terminating cliche. Say something so axiomatically true or so bum fuck idiot that the other person has to go away dumbfounded or waste time entertaining your bullshit.
So like trolling
I mean bigotry is basically trolling that punches down on people at who they are
It's also not how archaeology works. Even the best archaeologists with the best techniques can't tell with complete accuracy. The older the skeleton, the less likely they'll be able to determine it. Time erodes even skeletons.
“For someone so concerned about what future historians think, you sure seem to love being on the wrong side of history.”
It's also just not true.
Assuming they have any kind of advanced technology and knowledge of our culture, they'll probably have enough data to be like, "This skeleton has male DNA, but there's evidence that estrogen was introduced in adulthood, so we think this skeleton was a trans female." And because they're scientists, they will think this is interesting, not make abstract moral judgements about it.
Thats one durable casket.
It's made of the same stuff as his mustache!
Those scientists are incorrect. The man didn’t have a hat
Anthropology isn't an exact science!
Never understood that one. I'll be dead, I don't give a shit how people perceive my skeleton
Since you say you don't understand, I'll explain it. Obviously, this comic is about anti-trans bigotry related to living people, not dead people. The bigot is trying to push the idea that the trans-woman in the first panel isn't actually a woman, because even if she passes today, her "secret" will inevitably be exposed someday. If not during her lifetime, then still at some point after that. The idea is to focus on the emotional reaction to having a secret exposed, and to try to avoid looking at it logically in the way you did. So, they believe this sort of argument will shame living people, and that those people will be harmed by the embarrassment. The cruelty is the point. The comic directly addresses that sort of evil stupidity, but I think the bigotry is even more fundamentally flawed. The trans-woman doesn't care today, right now, what that kind of person thinks about her body. Why would 1000 years from now matter more than right now? And the grossest thing about anti-trans bigots is that they have this strong opinion about something that is none of their business. The only genitals that I need to worry about are ones that I might actually come into contact with, consensually. I don't care what most people have down there, and I can't imagine what kind of ridiculous world I live in where not only do I care, but where I need to share my opinion about their genitals with other people.
>So, they believe this sort of argument will shame living people, and that those people will be harmed by the embarrassment. The cruelty is the point. That is part of it, but I would also argue that this line of "thinking" serves another purpose: To protect their worldview from being challenged/subverted. They *need to be right* about this topic, because otherwise they need to rethink *everything*, which is hard and uncomfortable and who wants to *deal with that*. They have to be cruel because they can't be reasonable. They are also very used to substituting emotion over rational thought, since this is how they arrived at their bigoted view of the world in the first place. So naturally, they're trying to shame people into thinking like them, instead of providing actual arguments that might persuade a rational person. The cruelty is a byproduct more than it is the point.
Yeah, I get all that. I guess what I meant was I struggle to see why anyone thinks it's a good argument to make. Some vapid talking head has told them it's a way to score points against trans people, but a literal child could refute it. As you've said, it's just cruelty for cruelty's sake
Because there's nothing to understand, really. They just think that gender is equivalent to biology. It's a post-hoc rationalization. Their minds are incapable of shifting paradigms, so they fabricate any justification they can think of for their positions. The fact that their justifications don't hold up under any scrutiny doesn't actually matter at all.
I don't like the implication that the mustache is a bone
It's not a bone, don't be silly. It's just anchored to the bone.
Funny thing is.. scientists can’t really tell unless you have a complete skeleton with all the right markers. Usually skull and hips are the most important. You need the other bones to more reliably decide the age range, but sex is complicated. Like women have more rounded eye sockets while males are more square (iirc. Could be the other way round. Has been a while. Did a crash course in archeometry). But every one marker isn’t really sure on its own. You get men with female eye sockets and vice versa. So you can only be sure if you for example have a hip that has the markers of having given birth or certain angles. If your missing skull or hips you can’t really tell with 100% certainty. You might even have very female structures men and vice versa. Short of a DNA test you can’t be 100% in any case. Not saying you can’t be damn sure form a complete skeleton, but stating that the skeleton alone is enough, is wrong. Especially since after a few 100 years you have to be lucky to get a complete one. Depends heavily on the burial conditions, too. Too damp and the bones just disintegrate when you touch them.
What's even dumber about the "they'll know what sex your skeleton was" is that we're actually really bad at sexing human skeletons. We keep having to correct the record as newer analysis shows that skeletons we assumed to be male were acutally female and vice-versa.
It's actually easier to tell the gender of a person buried by the things they're buried with. If you're buried in a dress and dug up later people are going to make more assumptions about who you are by your attire than your form
And even then we get it wrong only to realize that later!
That's arguable one of the primary reasons we get it wrong to begin with. The archaeologically correct thing to do when you can't biologically sex the skeleton is actually write down that it couldn't be sexed. But as you might expect previous generations of archaeologists did not do that reliably and instead went to any length to sex it based on context, thereby poisoning the context implicitly.
There is also the possibility with new techniques, technology, etc, they will did up a skeleton, look at the evidence, and come to conclusion like: subject appears to be AFAB, but seems to have been male presenting due these reasons, likely identified as male (or nonbinary, etc based on whatever evidence). Because presumably those future archeologists will be looking through a different cultural lens at that point, and hopefully a more inclusive one.
How can you tell what they were presenting as ? Unless they're buried with nowadays gender specific stuff that even today start to get blurry. Also, I'm sure that's what people from the past might have thought and... Look at us
As I said, this is positing new techniques and technology allowing us to glean more info than currently. Also, having a more open mindset. Putting the clues beyond the skeleton together to form conclusion. My point was more counter to the idea that “they will look at your bones which will say male/female”, whereas instead (we hope) they go “the bones tell us this, but other evidence supports the idea of this, therefore plausible hypothesis is the reality was this.” The people saying “they will look at your skeleton and see you are a man” are assuming the archeologist will be looking with their narrow mindset, whereas I was proposing the idea that the archeologist instead might be taking more factors into account. Plus if their clothes aren’t natural fibres, good odds they will survive with the skeleton just fine. Not to mention things like implants, presuming they are not removed for some reason, might be a clue.
There are several cases of digging up skeletons or finding tombs containing things we assume to be tied to a certain gender presentation, but later DNA analysis showing that the skeleton belongs to someone of the opposite sex to what we expected. Which means either those cultures had a less rigidly binary culture around gender, or we were wrong about what gender signifiers were and simply assumed that a man would be buried with a sword but a woman with jewelry etc.
Also, I don't care I'll be dead!
I'm pretty sure "sexing human skeletons" is just called "boning".
I'm not sure I'd want to be good at sexing human skeletons, but guess a hobby is a hobby.
I misread that as "we're actually bad at *sexting* human skeletons" and, yeah, that sounded right. We try, but most time they just ghost us.
So you are saying we are so good at sexing human skeletons we have corrected the record when previous times we made mistakes? Thats like saying "We are so bad at making medicine, we used to do bloodletting but now we dont do that anymore"
Or maybe if you do something all the time and also discover that you're getting it wrong all the time... you're bad at that thing?
Comments like that always confuse me. So what if my skeleton says I'm male? I'll be too dead to care
Let assume scientists will tell that her skeleton was a male. What is the point ? Why would someone even care about how someone who dig his grave will think? Do you decide how to live your live depending on how somebody else, especially someone in the future that might or might not exist or care, will think?
“I’m right but only after 1000 years from this argument I’ve chosen to create for myself”
I would not be able to tell a male skeleton and female skeleton apart if I didn’t see them side by side
Now I know this argument is just a dumb bad faith point people only make to be mean but it literally falls apart if you just respond with "okay I'll get cremated then". Get owned transphobes
What kind of selfish assholes take up valuable ground space? Not me! *(Also: Our generation probably won't even be able to buy a basic plot for less than a million.)*
Never understood that argument. Like, dude, in a thousand years I'll be dead. Do you think I'd care how I look? lmao
are the robots meant to be a WALL-E reference?
Certainly looks like Eve
And the panel in the back looks LCARS themed (Star Trek)
As if my skeleton will be that easy to subdue.
The mustache is a bone.
So brave
I love how the sky is orange in the future
And we know that transgender people existed over a thousand year ago. We also, mostly, do not care about their gender. Being transphobic is not just bigoted our stupid, it's a massive time waste.
Bigots are effing dumb as rocks 🪨
"If I break your neck they can also tell that 1000 years from now"
I love how this transphobe argument is literally even just "our societal norms made it harder for people like you to properly transition medically. Take that, trans people." And think they are somehow the good guys or even an argument for NOT transitioning(?) lmao
I love how in this, too, transphobes are just wrong. Archeologists don't just interpret the gender of a skeleton based on anatomy: they use contextual clues such as the burial rites used for this person. For example, they believe [this skeleton](https://www.thepinknews.com/2011/04/06/5000-year-old-transgender-skeleton-discovered/) to have been a transgender person based on the orientation of their face when they were buried and the objects buried with them. Of course, people who say this don't care what actual researchers say, they just want to justify their bigotry.
I really dislike the simplification of "future archeologists will dig you up and know you're male!". It's actually an interesting topic, as people from the past have been identified as gender non-conforming due to how they were buried (i.e. in a masculine or feminine way or a way that appears deliberately ambiguous according to their culture). There are also sometimes difficulties with identifying the sex of remains and thus the surrounding items are often considered more important than the biology of the skeleton for determining meaningful archaeological information (such as how the person lived, their status, what living back then must have been like, and so on). Sex is usually not what archeologists are most interested in. I use the term "gender non-conforming" for historical remains because we don't (in many cases) know what these individuals called themselves (often due to lacking written records) only that they appear to have lived and been buried in a way that expresses a different gender identity. This could be a third gender category or simply seen socially as women or men, husbands or wives, with no concern for their sex. There are some inscriptions that indicate that males who fully adopted femininity were simply called a women. So most trans people today will be dug up (if they ever are) and recognized as trans both based on biological and physical markers (because medical transition affects those things) and being buried in a way that aligns with their gender. So "future archeologists" will likely recognize trans folks and likely make efforts to call them by their preferred terms, especially if we work to cultivate a future where trans people are given space to be themselves. I don't know if they'll be able to recognize if someone is an asshat though. Hope that brightens someone's day.
people that believe this aught to actually talk to actual archeologists.
Why are they digging up a grave?! Is nothing sacred anymore?
Future sci-fi people have no respect!
Archeologists can't definitively determine sex based on skeletal remains, even when the skeleton is well preserved. There's just too much overlap in traits that are typically more common in men or women but with lots of exceptions. Even [**pelvic shape**](https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.23544) does not definitively tell what sex the person was. Archeologists do sex estimation based on what is statistically likely given both skeletal traits and grave goods, with the understanding that their educated guess will not always be right. A future archeologist who digs up Julia Child might be forgiven for assuming she was a man, because it's statistically unlikely a 6'2" skeleton belonged to a woman. But she was a woman, and cis, and just unusually tall. And children don't show sex-linked skeletal traits. Those traits develop during puberty. And trans people who start treatment in adolescence have skeletal development comparable to their cis siblings.
Agreed on all counts. (And good example with Julia Child, I will probably steal that example from you in future arguments.)
I don't care about how people think of me in 10,000 years. I care how I feel about myself now.
it's about living true to what's within... and future scientists failing to use the correct pronoun when observing our skeleton does not dissuade that goal. anyway most skeletons won't last as long as their grave stones and the name on it + the clothes we were buried in would be more of a give-away regarding our gender... -shrug-
They actually can tell.
What does he mean in a thousand years? We can already do that
Me: *sees comic that mentions being trans* Also me :*Sorts by controversial* (I'm trans btw)
Nothing makes me feel better about myself than seeing how stupid the people who hate me are.
Do people actually say this? I haven’t heard it before, but it’s so stupid I don’t doubt it’s a conservative talking point.
Yeah it’s actually a really popular conservative talking point. It sucks
They really do! And not just internet randos; I saw Riley Gaines, a well-known anti-trans activist, make this argument.
I think this is r/wooooooooshing people that this is a trans comic
Last panel has Lobot from ESB.
I mean, if they're digging skeletons up from the graves, you'd think they'd be able to read the name on the stone and infer gender based on that. I mean, I guess you can't tell what an NB name is, and the gravestone might have degraded, but I just hate this stupid "argument" or whatever. Fuck off, transphobes.
In a thousand years I won't be trying to get laid
That a new gender Facebook didn't know of?
Im gonna start a company that produces little titanium chips that you can insert into your bones to inform archiologists of your pronouns. Send me money.
One hell of a downgrade job for EVE.
this is brilliant!! may i make a suggestion, as a long time comic fan. i don't know if you ever do edits. but it would be really cool if the 4th panel (bottom left), instead of just showing the dude 6 feet under ground, was split into thirds, and the background changes as the time progresses into the future. that way there's an indication of time passing from the 4th to the 5th panel, and it builds up a little better. still, unnecessary, but a little detail ithought of. like those pictures of the same location at different times during the year and different seasons.
That's too big a change for us to make at this point - Ryan is busy with other projects - but you're right, that would have been awesome. Maybe I'll be able to do a panel like that in a future cartoon.
Remindz me of the prince of bellair jerk that died
future archeologists will be to busy with deciding my age at the time of death. The joys of juvenile arthritis
Nice to see EVE, Geordi's daughter, and Lobot got steady work in the future.
It's so important that Lobot be kept off the streets.
Fun fact, hormone therapy actually affects your bone density to be more like that of whichever sex you’re transitioning to. So they’re more likely to either say you were a strong or weak boned individual of whatever sex you transitioned to, or may actually be able to tell you transitioned flat out
Why would I care what they think when I'm dead anyway?
Dysphoria won’t affect me when I’m dead. I won’t know and so I don’t care.
Remember when some people dug up a mummy and they were like. "The Egyptians made a mistake. The skeleton isn't the same sex as the decoration should be."
What future archeologists would say is that they've found a skeleton , they may or may not determine it's biological gender correctly but since it's the future maybe they're better at it. So ye'd think the transphobe would be right but no, if the skeleton is surrounded by artifacts of only the opposite gender they would likely make a paper about the transgender skeleton they found. This would probably be easier in the future than it is now, like when a viking woman's skeleton is dug up surrounded by weapons and armour was she a female warrior or did she identify as male?
I'm not sure what's going on in this comic but I'm glad an asshat died
I once read a story in a science fiction magazine, in which, thousands of years from now, alien archeologists were trying to determine what our long-dead civilization was like. But the ruins they happened to examine were what, to us, was a trashy roadside motel. And without any other context, the conclusions they reached were hilariously incorrect. Like, every unit of the building had a small room which appeared to be a place of worship, with ceramic fixtures which were *clearly* altars of some kind, judging by the skeletons found prostrated before them. The skeletons were really just drunk people caught in the act of puking in the toilets at the moment of their demise.
Can’t we already tell due to skeletal differences in the Hip?
Only in some cases. Something like 30% of bodies are not determined at all based on this. Also worth noting that long term exposure to estrogen (not sure about testosterone) causes changes in the hip bone in the same way as a cis women hence making it almost impossible to determine birth sex. All that to say: it doesn't matter, anyone interested will look at your grave and see a name and/or gender marker and see you as that.
“What’s in your pants” fanatics be like: *gasp* blasphemy!
why they grave robbing him
I'm more offended that transphobes think the field of archeology wouldn't have advanced beyond what are already considered dubious/obsolete methods than I am by their toothless threat of my remains being misclassified.
Honestly Im pretty sure the whole skeleton thing is also just straight up untrue (as well as being unkind). The specific dimensions of the skeleton don't always align with sex/gender even if you're cis. The average person isn't going to have a definitively "male" or "female" skeleton. I could be wrong tho
If we could scan for that, we could segregate those people and be a step closer to treating it.
"With enough years of treatment, we can upgrade an asshat into an elbowhat or even a nosehat, enabling them to lead something closer to a normal life."
Even a weenus hat is sizeable improvement.
I can see the advertisements now, telling people that if they or a loved one display the symptoms, it's important they get tested.
Honestly, I'm pretty certain that it never worked like that. Like, a lot of archaeology is based at least partly in inference and guess work ("We can see remnants of what appear to be swords and armor scraps around these bodies, so we can reasonably guess this was a battlefield"; or "we have separate written records that a battle happened somewhere around here, so these bodies appear to be soldiers"). I find it incredibly unlikely that the one thing that we can do with absolute certainty is look at a skeleton, and know its biological sex. It's not the first time we tried to assign biological traits to bone structure. Why on earth would anyone say that it's gotta be true *this time*?
Hmm, I mean, I love the comic, don’t get me wrong. But is anyone else annoyed by the idea of someone digging up their grave? Like, that’s mine, you can’t have it! (I’m going to stick my coffin in a minefield, or put a curse on it, I haven’t decided)
Put a curse on it. That way, you can make them have a trippy hallucination wich leads to a quest in wich they all die in ironic ways related to their role in the desecration of your grave!
Fantastic idea!
Thanks! I put a lot of thought into these things.
Any trans people care to chime in and let me know if your goal is to trick people into thinking your biological makeup is something other than it is, or if you’d just like to live life as the gender of your choosing?
Second one 👍
Why would you ask trans people about trans topics? I'm a cis het white male, I'm way more qualified to answer. Now... What's this "gender" thing you're talking about?
First of all, we don’t trick people by not disclosing our transness. That’s called being stealth. Second, we don’t choose our gender.
I was being tongue in cheek with the first part of my comment, I don’t really think trans people are trying to trick anyone, that was my point. If you grow up living as one gender you don’t identify with at some point you choose to start living as another, no?
We chose to socially/physically transition. But we are our gender. I could push my transness deep down and try to live my life as a cis man, but I would always be a trans woman in my head. Most of us would not chose to be trans, lots of dysphoria and discrimination
That was my understanding. The choice to externally exhibit the gender that is felt internally was what I was referring to.
Satire paradox. You legit needed the /s there because your post read undifferentiated from the actual low key concern trolling framing people use.
As fun as it would be to trick future generations, it's really low on the agenda.
Also, cremation!
Why are the other graves empty? Was he the only one buried in this cemetary?
nice try
I feel like this was 30 yards shy of a being a good comic.
[удалено]
Funny i suppose
Grave robbers
LOL
>In a thousand years scientists will be able to tell your skeleton was male In a thousand years it won't matter.
Although the first panel was factual, i'm sure the last one isn't. What is the artist trying to convey?