Ortega, Jace - 024

Pardon my terrible punctuation Recently a good friend of mine asked me if I could refer to her with male pronouns, Gender being a subject that is rampant upon most college campuses. It's a subject I wanted to avoid all my life but now I had to deal with it head-on. I told her no and she respected that. But the situation made me upset and frustrated toward her even when there was no clear reason as to why. I truly wanted to know why I was frustrated because frustration is a catalyst for knowledge, wisdom, and character building. My reason for saying no was because I was brought up to refer to people who I recognize as female as she and her. Being the heterosexual male that I am, I'm pretty good at recognizing and distinguishing who is and isn't female, most likely because of evolutionary purposes. The way these distinctions are manifested by my speech is through the use of female pronouns. To refer to a female by anything else would be fundamentally false by my standards (

3 days ago one of the journalism people asked me if I'd be interested in creating a comic strip for the December issue of the newspaper. I emailed her for further details on what the paper would like me to make. She said I have full creative license over the comic strip--whatever I'm interested in--as long as it's not too graphic or controversial. I probably had the scheming grin of the Grinch upon reading the message. How far can I push the limits of whats acceptable in the paper? How bizarre can I make it? These thoughts were flooding my head until I read: " I am thinking like the artists who do 'Peanuts' or 'Family Circle.'" She would like it to be in the styles mentioned, I'm guessing because it will be around Christmas. I was gonna throw the suggestion right out the window but I figured it would add to the absurdity of what I plan to make while also satisfying the theme of Christmas. So the comic goes like this: a student cries for help