What Comic Book Hero Nemi Taught Me About Sex, Gender and Transgender

Nemi violates your gender expectations.

On what the Norwegian comic strip Nemi can tell us about female sexuality.

The main reason for why people think ill of male to female crossdreamers and crossdressers is not found in people's understanding of men. It is found in how we look at women.

We have been taught to think of women as loving, emphatic, demure, quiet, peaceful and -- let's face  it -- far less sexually charged than men.

While women look for serious commitments in their love life, we say, men look for quick and dirty sex. The women want to raise and love kids. Men like to spread their seed to every corner of the world.

These are the implicit images that powers the world view underpinning the autogynephilia theory, conservative religious attacks on crossdressers, the rad fem persecution of crossdreamers, as well as the toxic gospel of the so-called "classical transsexuals".

Since male to female crossdreamers dream of having sex as women, they must be perverted men, they say, because only men dream about having sex, apparently. Women only fake it.

This mental map is obviously all wrong. Not only does research show that women can be as libidinous, promiscuous, aggressive, unfaithful and evil as men. Living in a country that must be the most gender equal in the world, I can also tell you that given the opportunity many of them behave very much in the same way as men are expected to behave.

That does not necessarily mean that the inborn female and male sexuality are exactly the same. There may still be variations, but these are not found in categories like promiscuity and aggression.

Our view of female sexuality is changing

Popular culture has caught up on this. As women get more and more liberated, and education, politics and contraceptives have set them free, the true variation of the female sex become more apparent.

I think the turning point in American television was Nancy Botwin in Weeds plundering her smoke detector for batteries to power her vibrator (see embedded video below). It became painfully clear that many women masturbate regularly, and therefore -- most likely -- are as horny as men. (Apparently 44 percent of US women between the age 18 and 60 have used a sex toy).

Turn me on, dammit! 
(Movie poster)

In Norway it might have been the book and movie Få meg på, for faen! about the sexual drives of a completely normal Norwegian teenage girl (-- translated as Turn Me On, Dammit! in English; the title actually means "Slide Me On, For Satan!" which is the kind of thing real girls might say in my Nordic corner of the world.)

And no, this reorientation is not caused by some sexist male conspiracy. Jenji Kohan, the creator of Weeds, is definitely female. The book Få meg på, for faen! was written by a woman and the movie was directed by a woman. And it is mostly women who kill the myths of chaste Norwegian girls who close their eyes and think of knitting.

Lise's heroine Nemi to the resuce

One of my favorite comics is Nemi, written and drawn by Lise Myhre. Lise continuously  forces the reader out of the narrow boxes of our minds by showing us how  people think and feel in the real world. She does so with love and humor.

Nemi is published in some of the major Norwegian newspapers.

Lise Myhre, creator of Nemi. Photo: Albin Olsson

Nemi is a tough and open minded Goth chick who loves science fiction, fantasy and black metal (which are -- interestingly -- passions she shares with many MTF crossdreamers).

I have taken the liberty of translating and republishing a few of her strips here to show you how a Norwegian woman's view of sex and gender breaks down the Puritan preconceptions shared by sexist scientists, previous popes, classical trans women and radical feminists.

Myth 1: Women are never sexually shallow

My girl friend told me once how she and her then teenage female friends used to  grade the bums of men passing.

If they had been men, of course, this would have been considered very sexist and demeaning. Since they were girls this was considered an act of liberation or something.

The fact, is of course, that treating men and women as sex objects comes naturally to both men and women. The crux of the matter is: Are you able to see the subject  behind the object? That is how you distinguish a sexist from  a compassionate human being.

Click on image to read!

Myth number 2: Women never look for causal sex

"MEN!" women sigh, and look at you with resignation. "Men only think about one thing."  This is, as any man who loves and protects his family and friends will tell you, a very sexist thing to say, but let us leave that for a moment.

Instead: Let us look at women looking for a one night stand:

Click on image to enlarge!

Myth number 3: Women never get horny (unless they are whores, who do not get aroused either, because they are exploited)

I have lost track of how often male to female crossdreamers tell me that women lack testosterone, and therefore they are less sexually charged than men. And if I tell them about female to male crossdreamers writing pornographic comics about  their male selves violating feminized men, they tell me that these women are perverts! You can't win, right?

No one has ever proved a connection between male versus female testosterone levels and libido. No one.

Regardless: The fact is that women, when given the chance and the social stigma is removed, may perfectly well want to go directly to what my American friends call "third base".

Click to enlarge. I have kept the original text, for obvious reasons.

Myth number 4: Women never get excited by the idea of being sexy

There is no autogynephilia among women, Blanchard says. Women do not get aroused by the idea of being sexy.

Yeah, right!

Click on image to enlarge.

Thank you Lise, for helping us free of our mental shackles!

For more Nemi strips in English, go to Nemicomics.com.

And for those who missed it. Here is the dildo sequence from Weeds. It is not office friendly, but who cares!

PS

Here is another paradox: Great many of the male to female crossdreamers I know, live up to the feminine stereotype. They are introvert, quiet, shy and would love nothing more than to take on the role of the patient and caring woman. Put them in a night club and they would look like helpless fish on land.

In other words: They are nothing like the emancipated Norwegian women presented by Lise Myhre. (Which, I guess, in a few years time will be used against them, as they are not behaving like proper emancipated women...)

In spite of this the image rad fems and sexist scientists have of crossdressers and crossdreamers is the boasting, aggressive and badly dressed man who forces his transgender views of everyone.

There are two reasons for this paradox:

Nazi caricature of the Negro Jew

The introvert crossdreamer/crossdresser is invisible, so the only one they have ever seen is the party crasher.

Secondly, the people attacking us have all adopted a stereotype of the ugly man in a frock because it fits their image of what a crossdreamers or a crossdresser should be.

In other words: The ugly crossdresser is like the child-molesting hunchbacked Jew with the crooked nose or the libidinous "negro" with the big lips and the big .....

It is fascinating to see that people who think of themselves as progressive, so easily becomes copies of the fascists they despise.