2014/01/27 [Matilda #45] So What Happens Now?

[Nightmask]

I like how Matilda's expression throughout all of this basically says "This is total BS, but I'm rolling with it."

I'm really not seeing where all the 'she's a transman' stuff is coming from here.  Her behavior is completely covered under being a loving sister feeling rightly betrayed by the brother who committed suicide without a thought to how it would affect his sisters.  She savaged his corpse as a futile effort to express that rage she felt over the betrayal and while she hasn't admitted he was already dead she's running on emotion rather than cold calculation or 'the soul of a male'.  She certainly doesn't have to be male or have a male's soul to react as she did (even if because of her culture females are considered weak and kept from competing and being strong like the males).

You answered your own question with that last one - Matilda isn't a trans man, but her culture considers her one because physical and emotional strength are qualities that females aren't expected to have. The elders' way of thinking is clearly wrong.

Just because a culture recognizes the existence of transfolk doesn't mean their concept of them isn't royally screwed up.

NAILED IT

I was really referring to the Forum Members who seemed to think she was a transman or spoke of her like she was one, rather than how the culture in the comic tries to deal with it.  Humans (generally) recognize that being physically capable or combative or even capable of killing isn't exclusively a male thing and that it's equally possible from females and doesn't tend to go 'well she beat that guy up she must be a man in spirit'.  So while I would expect the characters to have trouble with the concept of females being capable of violence and acting 'like a male' I wouldn't expect the forum members to be thinking like the characters in the comic and simply recognize that she reacted as she did out of a basic drive common to both sexes.

[Lying Foo]

...but I don't see anyone saying that, though.  GreyWolf comes the closest, but even then, that post is on the subject of the culture's attitudes, not Matilda's own self-image.  (I mean, gods - look at the name she'll choose!)

[Grey Wolf]

Eh? At what point did I indicate that I saw Matilda as trans*? Every time I included a qualifier to make it clear I was speaking of the characters' reactions. My apologizes if I didn't make that obvious enough.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Eh? At what point did I indicate that I saw Matilda as trans*? Every time I included a qualifier to make it clear I was speaking of the characters' reactions. My apologizes if I didn't make that obvious enough.

You did, yes. Lying Foo was using you as an example, I think, to query who the heck Nightmask was talking about...

... just in case that wasn't clear. ;-]