Issue 7, Page 19
Transcript
1: Jocelyn, with thin arms extended, explains.
Jocelyn: She is the queen, Ikal. She is the female.
Ikal: But aren’t those eggs yours?
Jocelyn: They were laid by… well, you don’t have a word for it. It’s something between man and woman. They laid the eggs, I fathered them.
2: Ikal looks flustered and confused by the concept as he puts his hat back on.
Ikal: You mean to tell me I sat with a nancy in a dress for all that time?
Jocelyn (off-screen): This is similar to how males dress in our culture.
3: Jocelyn looks to him, concerned.
Jocelyn: I am sorry to have lied to you, but it’s the easiest way for us to pass among your people. We don’t have the frame or the… aggressiveness… necessary to comfortably portray Earthly males.
4: Ikal has his hat back on and avoids eye contact with Jocelyn, clearly out of his depth in the conversation. He picks up the lantern.
Ikal: Reckon we’ll talk more ’bout this later, you’ve caught me all abroad on the whole berdache topic an’ I’ve got eggs to save.*
5: Ikal heads towards the tunnel the queen bug escaped down, not looking back.
Ikal: Keep Maximon company.
*While the term “berdache” used by Ikal is used descriptively, and was the term Native Indian people adopted from Europeans for certain atypical gender roles or identities in their society, it is also a term that fell out of favor as a pejorative one before the 1990’s adoption of the term two-spirit (which is also, arguably, less encompassing). While it is an accurate term used at the time (1850’s) the editor also acknowledges that it is a loaded term given the discrimination towards LGBTQ+ peoples in history who were categorized by the term. It is also worth noting that Jocelyn might have more parallels to a transvestite, in that he identifies as male but finds it easier to present as female for his cover.
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