welcome to the fest

Hi all,

I've been reading this comic for a long time now. I wanted to ask if I'm missing something here.

In the recent story arcs, it seems that Devil corp has taken over certain things. They own "Woke" TV. They appear to be the owners of pharmacies that dispense gender drugs.

Does this mean that being "woke" is bad? Or does it mean that Devil corp is trying to twist the narrative of what being woke means?

Am I misreading the whole gender thing? It seems like Devil corp is the one who is "owning" the gender issues and I get the impression that anything outside of the "norm" (male/female) is bad? Or does the fact that Devil corp is pushing the gender pills mean that they are trying to keep everyone in the "normal" roles of traditional male/female/he/she?

I guess overall, I just wanted some clarification on where all the characters stand on the whole gender issue?

As you may be aware already, the comic generally has a Radical Feminist perspective these days. From what I can gather, Tatsuya's perspective views people with less radical feminist ideals as equal to overt misogynists in their role as part of the systemic problem. I can't do the archive binge now to find it, but there's a strip explicitly showing that he thinks the "left" and the "right" are just putting different masks on the same oppressive system, with the left using "woke" as little more than a smoke screen (at least when it comes to issues of feminism, Tatsuya's views on the difference of these camps on matters of race, economics, etc, is less often shown in the strip, but one might infer he believes similarly), while treating women as property and commodities.

Based on the comics themselves and some of the comments and culture here on the forum, one can also determine with a fair degree of certainty that Tatsuya's school of thought as a radical feminist is that transgender people are a part of the oppression of women as well, with transwomen coopting "real" women's identities for example (or as one active forum poster here has argued, posing a physical threat to "real" women by invading their safe spaces such as abuse shelters), and the idea that gender identity is a continuous spectrum seems to be seen as a threat to women and the existence of their own identity. Some people call this school of thought and the people who subscribe to it, TERF(s) - Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism/Feminists. Some who hold to this find that term offensive, even calling it a slur

To be clear, I'm not trying to condemn or condone these views either way, simply describe them as best I can as it relates to the strip and your question about Tatsuya's intent and messaging around "wokeness" and transgender issues

Thanks I think that answers some of my questions.