#intersex rep

✨ BOOK REVIEW ✨

Masquerade by LR Lam

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

QOTD: Have you read any good books with circus or theatre settings?

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Review below

The Unintentional Trans And | Or Intersex Rep In Garfield And Friends (6/30/26) 

[edit of Lanolin and Bo against the trans and intersex pride flags would be ideal, but I’m shit at editing so…] 

Happy Pride, everyone! :D 

How better to celebrate it than by sharing my admittedly off-the-wall LGBTQIA+-related observations and headcanons about US Acres, which is that farm cartoon in Garfield and Friends? 

Here, I’ll start out by pointing out its…well, it’s exactly what it says on the tin. 

I am going to discuss how US Acres has some unintentional trans and | or intersex representation, namely in its major sheep characters, the brother-sister pair of twins Bo and Lanolin. 

It doesn’t take too long looking at when they’re both on screen together that you’ll notice that they’re both pretty much the exact same size. 

Lanolin and Bo are also the exact same size in the original US Acres comics, however this is far less eyebrow-raising because it’s much easier to see them as being lambs, and to this effect Jim Davis has indeed pointed out that Bo and Lanolin are supposed to be lambs in the US Acres comic. 

However, in Garfield and Friends it’s a different story. 

While Lanolin and Bo are occasionally referred to as lambs in GaF, most notably in Lanolin’s full name apparently being “Lanolin Lamb” in “Mind Over Melvin” (S6E14b) and the in-Chicken Licken character who looks like Bo being referred to as “Lamby Wamby” in “Bad Time Story” (S5E3b), there is far more evidence of them being meant to be adults in GaF. (1) (2) 

[If I had the tech know-how I’d put in screenshots, with English-language subtitles, of the relevant scenes in “Mind Over Melvin” and  “Bad Time Story”...yes, I am that much of an embarrassment as an Internet user in 2026.] 

The smoking gun of this is definitely the scene at the beginning of “Short Story” (S1E in which, in response to Booker asking to help out with carting the veggie harvest to the storage silo of the week, Bo tells him no because, in Bo’s own words, “this is grownup work.” 

[screenshot(s), with English-language subtitles, of at least Bo saying that in “Short Story”] 

Even beyond that, there’s smaller tells that these sheep twins are in fact meant to be seen as adults, such as Orson’s multiple instances of imagining Lanolin looking “sexier” than she usually does in his imagination stories because he clearly has the hots for her…Lanolin being imagined with giant boobs in “Swine Trek” despite Lt. Uhura, as played by the late, great Nichelle Nichols, not being similarly chesty in the original show “Swine Trek”’s based off of, anyone?

[screenshots of Lanolin as Uhura in Swine Trek and other instances of her being imagined as “sexier” than she usually is in Orson’s fantasies] 

Orson’s also imagined Lanolin as being at least sorta flirty-ish towards him in his fantasies, most notably in a few of the Double Oh Orson episodes and especially in “Much Ado About Lanolin” even though she’s not like that in real life…as most noticeable in “Hog Noon”, in which it’s obvious that it was probably decades ago that Orson was a schoolboy, Orson’s clearly meant to be an adult in GaF, so it’d make sense for the sheep he’s into to also be an adult. 

Why’s it relevant if Bo and Lanolin are adults or not? 

Sheep, like many other species, have a noticeable size difference between adult males (rams if intact, wethers if castrated) and adult females (ewes). 

Even the sheep breeds with the smallest difference in size between adult rams and adult ewes, there’s still a noticeable typical size difference akin to the typical size difference between adult human men and adult human women. 

This means that, by all means, Bo and Lanolin would not still be of equal size as adults if they were both perisex-that is, not intersex-and cisgender. 

And there’s two main ways you can tell this was clearly an oversight on Mark Evanier and everyone else involved in the creative processes behind GaF’s part.

For starters, neither the sheep twins’ or Orson’s character designs were visibly aged up for GaF at all beyond maybe Lanolin being switched from wearing a pink bow to wearing a blue bow with matching eyeshadow since wearing another main color besides pink and wearing visible makeup are generally more often seen in adult women cartoon characters than girl ones (but that’s definitely a reach, I’m not gonna lie). 

Also, both sheep twins are voiced by cisgender adult VAs, both definitely at least perisex-passing (there are a lot of intersex conditions that typically cause so few issues in someone’s day-to-day life, and in fact the reason why there’s way more intersex people than statistics currently state is because it’s incredibly normal for an intersex person to never even be suspected of being intersex, let alone diagnosed) of the same gender as them, Lanolin being voiced by Julie Payne and Bo being voiced by Frank Welker, and going off both Payne’s and Welker’s performances are very much meant to generally sound like perisex cisgender adults. 

Obviously, there’s a few different ways one or even both of them being transgender could play out in a way that still results in them both being of the same size as adults, and to that end both Bo and Lanolin have been depicted as some kind of trans in fanworks as of June 2026, but there’s one specific way these sheep twins can be intersex in a way that’s actually accurate to their species that’s been giving me brain worms for about 15 years now…do you know what a freemartin (link is to the Wikipedia article on freemartins) is? (1) 

So, for those who don’t know, a freemartin is in short an AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) animal who’s been both sterilized and masculinized in-utero by her AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) brothers’ sex development hormones as a result of their chorions fusing early enough in the pregnancy. 

[diagram of this happening in utero?] 

The longer story behind this is that, in some (or many, this happens a whopping 90% of multiples pregnancies in cattle) multiples pregnancies in some animals (at this point I think it’s just cattle, pigs, goats, and sheep…all those transphobes who are calling human women “freemartins” in transphobic and intersexist attacks on them are, once, again, completely ignorant of biology), the chorions (link is to the Wikipedia page on chorions, or the outermost layer of the fetal membrane, fuses for at least two of the multiples, which results in the multiples sharing blood and DNA the whole rest of the pregnancy, meaning that all the multiples whose chorions fused actually become chimeras who have their siblings’ DNA floating around in their bloodstream in addition to their own. (2) 

If both twins | all the multiples are going to be of the same AGAB (Assigned Gender At Birth), this has no effect on their development at all. 

However, if at least one twin | multiple is male | going to be AMAB and at least one twin | multiple is going to be AFAB, what instead produces a different outcome is that the AMAB twin | multiples’ cells that are already producing androgens, not only testosterone but also anti-Müllerian hormone which blocks the development of the internal female reproductive system, flow right into the AFAB twin | multiple due to the the twins’ | multiples’ chorion fusion-induced shared circulation. 

For those who don’t know, male sex (development) hormones are WAY more potent than female sex (development) hormones to the point that it’s common for people on femininizing HRT to take testosterone blockers but not common for people on masculinizing HRT to take estrogen blockers, and nonhuman animals are no different from us in that regard. 

This means the development of the AFAB twin’s | multiple’s reproductive tract is permanently stunted, with her ovaries permanently rendered non-functional, rendering her both sterile and with at least some degree of phenotypic masculinization. 

Meanwhile, the male twin | multiples is | are, outside of now being genetically intersex due to having their sister’s DNA in their blood right alongside their own, pretty much unaffected, with there being the possibility of somewhat smaller testicles and thus lower fertility, however this happens both rarely enough and to small enough of a degree that it’s not really a concern for farmers | ranchers | shepherds at all. 

Tying this back to Lanolin and Bo, what’s one of the most common tells of phenotypic masculinization in a freemartin? 

Growing up to be the pretty much the exact same size and build as an adult male, either intact or castrated, of her species and breed. 

…you starting to see my vision now? 

[screenshot of both Bo and Lanolin onscreen that clearly shows they’re both of the same size and likely the same build as well] 

Other common physical tells of a freemartin, especially in goats and sheep, include her having a more masculine-looking face and, in species | breeds that have horns, her rocking the same size | shape of horns an adult male would. 

Note that there’s a lot of sheep breeds in which both sexes are naturally polled, or without horns even as fully-grown healthy adults. 

So it’s not even that much of a gotcha against this theory that neither Lanolin or Bo canonically has horns. 

Granted, there is a pretty compelling argument in favor of Lanolin’s basically being an edited copy-paste of Bo not actually being indicative of anything at all, as there is that brief scene in “Sleepytime Pig” where Lanolin brings in a bunch of her and Bo’s biological relatives for Orson to count in which we see that Lanolin and Bo’s entire extended family are pretty much just copy-pastes of them including in both size and build. 

[screenshot of this, with English-language subtitles visible, in “Sleepytime Pig”]

However, that scene also doesn’t indicate anyone’s age so this seems to be another oversight and underdesigning of everyone to be, well, copy-pastes of each other for the joke. 

At any rate, a freemartin’s behavior is also masculinized to at least some extent as well, especially since, as her ovaries do not function at all, she doesn’t go into heat or anything like intact perisex adult females of her species typically do. 

In the real world, a freemartin’s sexual, etc. behavior ranges in how masculinized it is based on how virilized (another word for masculinized) she is, which has a wider range in goats and sheep than it does in cattle due to how the degree of masculinization, period varies much more in goats and sheep than it does in cattle (for one thing, there’s been multiple goat and sheep freemartins who’ve been found to have active testicular tissue and partially-developed other male internal reproductive anatomy such as prostates, which is to my current knowledge more than can be said for cattle freemartins). 

Cattle freemartins typically don’t really fully behave like either heifers | cows or bulls, though enough cattle freemartins will hump heifers | cows in heat just like bulls typically do that ranchers like using them as basically teasers. 

Goat and sheep freemartins’ behavior ranges from this more middle-of-the-spectrum behavior to feminine enough behavior that coupled with an overall quite feminine appearance means that they’re not even suspected of being freemartins until they completely fail to breed their first season or two to very masculine behavior that not only includes (if they’re allosexual) humping does | ewes in heat and courting them just like allosexual bucks | rams do but also, get this, an increased likelihood of increased aggression much more in line with a typical intact perisex buck | ram than with a typical intact perisex doe | ewe. 

Granted, this isn’t a side of Lanolin we see much of in GaF at all (thanks, US Acres originally being conceived as a preschool show when Jim Davis was trying to get it picked up by television channels by itself and not having all its changes for that undone when it started being aimed at older children to better match the Garfield segments the TV channels wouldn’t take a US Acres show without!) but if we take a look at how she behaves in the original comics, hooooo boy…

In addition to her very quickly becoming known for being verbally aggressive towards people, very often making use of her ability to be VERY loud while she’s at it, Lanolin’s also had multiple instances of being physically aggressive to other people, often without having been met with deliberate physical aggression first: 

[comic strips that exemplify this] 

And here’s some examples of her wielding just her voice as her weapon of choice: 

[comic strips that exemplify this] 

Not that perisex cisgender girls | women can’t also be this brash and masculine-acting, it would be highly sexist to assume otherwise, however if you’re already riddled with the “I’m headcanoning Lanolin from US Acres is a freemartin” brainworms like I am it’s just yet more evidence in favor of that. 

And that’s really where this all comes from, the fact that, 15 years ago when, thanks to Lanolin and Bo, I was obsessed with sheep and when also reading up on the sexual behaviors of sheep to add more accuracy to my more perverted anthro sheep brainworms (hey, I was a horny teenager) I learned what a freemartin is and that’s held me in a vise ever since. 

Also, like a pretty high number of other people I just fuck with the idea of Lanolin being (also) into the ladies and love that she’s so butch while looking so femme…my marrying that with something that also happens in sheep in real life was honestly pretty inevitable, now that I think of it. 

On top of that, it’s because of my wanting to be more accurate and not-offensive in my headcanoning and depicting Lanolin as a freemartin that I know as much as I do about being intersex in general, mostly about being intersex in humans, and to that end I don’t know if I would be currently looking into if I am myself intersex, probably via either Nonclassic Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (NCAH) or Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS), formerly known as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, (PCOS), right now had I not learned that much about the very wide range of intersex conditions in humans. (3) (4) 

In general I’ve learned a lot about various lesser-known forms of being LGBTQIA+ through both seeing them depicted in fictional characters and researching because I want to depict them respectfully in fictional characters myself. 

For one thing, it’s only because I started doing research on aromanticism out of a desire to portray it respectfully in my headcanon AU versions of Lanolin and Bo that I figured out that I myself am probably some sort of gray aromantic, and I only came up with the desire to depict both Lanolin and Bo as aromantic in the first place because Alastor, yes I’m talking our favorite Radio Demon himself, is canonically asexual (but not yet confirmed to be canonically aromantic as well) and I wanted to start depicting characters as aromantic but not necessarily also asexual (I decided I wanted to depict both Lanolin and Bo as aroallo (aromantic & allosexual), with Lanolin being aroallo lesbian | gynesexual and Bo being aroallo gay before I realized I couldn’t really imagine Bo as being allosexual & instead moved to depicting him as angled gay aroace) because I noticed there was a lack of really notable canonically aromantic characters compared to even the small number of really notable canonically asexual characters. 

So yeah, I do this partially because I am indeed batty and partially because, fuck it, I want my fiction to reflect more of our world and will grasp at fully-unintendeded straws to make that possible. 

Happy Pride, everyone. 

Cited Sources 

Evanier, Mark, writer. Garfield and Friends. Season 6, episode 14 (Tubi incorrectly states it as being Season 6, episode 15) , “The Garfield Musical / Mind Over Melvin / Madman Meets His Match.” Directed by Dave Brain, Vincent Davis, Ron Myrick, and James West. Aired October 30, 1993, on CBS. Accessed online via Tubi on June 30, 2026. https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/587371/s06-e615-the-garfield-musical-mind-over-melvin-madman-meets-his-match . 

Evanier, Mark, writer. Garfield and Friends. Season 5, episode 3 (Tubi incorrectly states it as being Season 5, episode 5) , “Renewed Terror / Bad Time Story / Tooth or Dare.” Directed by Dave Brain, Vincent Davis, Marlene Robinson May (as Marlene May), and Ron Myrick. Aired September 25, 1992, on CBS. Accessed online via Tubi on June 30, 2026. https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/587425/s05-e505-renewed-terror-bed-time-story-tooth-or-dare .

Evanier, Mark, writer. Garfield and Friends. Season 1, episode 

“Freemartin.” Wikipedia. Last edited June 25, 2026. Accessed online June 28, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemartin. 

“Chorions.” Wikipedia. Last edited October 18, 2025. Accessed online June 28, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorion. 

Whitten, Cheryl. Reviewed by Renee A. Ali, MD. “What Is Nonclassical Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” WebMD. Medically reviewed by Renee A. Ali, MD. Medically reviewed (and updated if that was needed) January 19, 2026. Accessed online June 30, 2026. https://www.webmd.com/children/nonclassical-congenital-adrenal-hyperplasia . 

Today on the site I’m delighted to reveal the cover of Song of Spores by Bogi Takács, a nonbinary/genderfluid Space Opera releasing November 4, 2025 from Broken Eye Books! Here’s the story: Hugo Award winner Bogi Takács spins a tale of adventure, mystery, and political intrigue in space. Plus sentient fungus! Three experienced counterintelligence operatives from Alliance Treaty Enforcement are on…

✨ BOOK REVIEW ✨

Shadowplay by LR Lam

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

QOTD: What’s a sequel you’re (im)patiently waiting on?

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Review below cut