xkcd: Making Rules
Now this comic is making a great point, but why does the girlfriend have to be the object of the exchange?
She doesn’t have any say in the matter - she has no agency or independence. Obviously in the reality of the characters, she may have been the mastermind of the whole exchange. But we don’t know, and since women are currently and regularly considered objects of exchange, especially sexually, a new punchline would be fantastic!
Filed under: comics on March 13th, 2008 by Anna Lisa
Who’s to say that the two non-haired figures are guys? It seems to be implied, but women can be just as immature as these two.
Is heterosexuality or patriarchy even being implied in this comic? Or is it being read into it because we think nondescript stick figures are male?
Anyway, would it change the dynamic if the two androgynous figures were women (they just have shaved heads?), and the girlfriend being exchanged was one girlfriend among several, rather than one woman being exchanged by 2 males? Would it still be patriarchal? Or what if the line was “Sleep with your boyfriend buggy blue” and the third figure being exchanged was male?
Would it make it any more subversive to give all of the characters female names? Or female hair (whatever that looks like)?
Those are great questions, Travis!
Here’s my initial response:
I assume that when stick figures are drawn this way, the norm is male, and the exception (with hair, in this case), is female.
That has been true in all of the xkcd comics I’ve seen, though I haven’t read every single one.
Also, all relationships depicted in xkcd have been heterosexual.
It would be fundamentally different if the person being exchanged was male, though certainly could still be offensive. The objectification of living beings is a central piece of patriarchy. In our current consumer culture, that objectification often has overtones of commodification as well. Nonetheless, the vast majority of people being sexually objectified are women, and most commonly, by men.