The Samalander

In the first few chapters I really feel Taylor struggling with this contradiction - the fact that being cis isn't saving her from being the victim of transmisogyny. She's a deeply analytical person digging into all the ways the world works to try and find some reason womanhood isn't working for her. It's telling that the first chapter features her attempting to take refuge in a bathroom. She's calculated that it's the place she's likely to face the least amount of harassment. She has bought into the idea that restrooms and other gender-segregated spaces are meant to be safe for women.

It doesn't work. Her tormenters find her there too.

Which they thought was very funny, even if I was slightly less amused, but I bided my time until they got tired of the joke and stopped specifically asking. Then I poured all the remaining zombie ass chili-garlic worm powder into a bag of party mix. The first guy to take a bite spluttered, and I laughed, and everyone said WHAT DID BABS DO, and I said THE WOOOORMS… YOU FORGOT TO ASK… OHMYGOD… and then I laughed so hard I actually cried. Derailed the start time almost an hour.

But unlike the adult in this strip, Calvin’s dad actually APOLOGIZED for yelling at him when he saw how guilty his kid was:

>look inside

The Indigenous people who farmed and hunted here (and still farm and hunt in what land they have been able to keep and reclaim) were able to grow miles of upon miles of crops with multiple harvests a year, encouraging this biodiversity by creating forest gardens with incredible amounts of food from staples like corn and squash to local fruits like pawpaws to European imports like apples alongside controlled burns which allowed fields and buffalo ranges to expand.

Nowadays my state is known almost exclusively for its fields of nothing but corn and soy beans. Driving through in between the comparatively small cities you'll see nothing but fields where the plethora of different trees and plants were chopped down mile by mile, the remaining wetlands drained and flattened, and the rich black soils robbed of their nutrients through decades upon decades of monocrop agriculture now preserved through the life blood of petrochemical fertilizers which destroy the surrounding environment.

This process was done mile by mile as the tens of thousands of Indigenous people were killed and displaced by settlers and the US army, the land measured and sold acre by acre to white settlers who raped the land as described, filling the pockets of wealthy land speculators (like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) who bought the land directly from the government in schemes so corrupt historians have dedicated entire careers to mapping out their dramas.

Day & Night, Arches National Park, Utah