About this comic

I guess part of what I’m doing here, perhaps a little accidentally, is introducing people to a lot of new concepts. I think most people probably don’t need to think about a lot of the stuff I draw here, so I thought a little glossary might be handy for those who’re unfamiliar with the terms.

Polyamory

The idea that you can meaningfully and honestly be in a loving relationship with more than one person at a time. There are lots of different types of non-monogamy, and a few of them are connected to or included in polyamory. If you want to find out more, the resources page might help.

Gender

Where sex is your biological situation, gender is your sense of who you are. The more I learn about gender, the more I realise that what we think we know as “man” and “woman” are at best a little squiffy. In summary, most people are cis-gendered in that their gender and sex match up, or that they’re happy to belong to the gender they were assigned at birth. Transgender (or just trans*, the * being a wildcard that accepts many different labels) people have experienced some kind of gender shift. Some male-to-female (MTF) or female-to-male (FTM) people have switched from Mr to Miss, or vice versa. Some genderqueer or non-binary people don’t fit the gender binary of male or female, and prefer neutral pronouns such as singular “they” or zie/hir instead of he or she.

Generally speaking, the gender of the characters in this comic won’t be obvious unless it’s useful to make it so. Please feel free to impose your imagination onto the stick people!

Sexuality

That’s who you can be sexually attracted to. Some of these labels rely on a binary idea of gender.

  • Heterosexual – people of the opposite gender
  • Bisexual – both men and women, or by some definitions, more than one gender
  • Pansexual – anyone, regardless of genital configuration
  • Homosexual – people of the same gender
  • Asexual – no one at all, though many asexuals are romantically attracted
Combinations of the above
For a lot of people, none of these (sexuality, romantic attraction, gender and polyamory/monogamy) need to be related to each other. So you can be, for example, a homosexual heteroromantic polyamorous man who was assigned female at birth. Or you can be a homosexual monogamous cis-woman. Or anything else.
Me? Asexual aromantic agender. *cough* My preferred pronoun is singular “they.”