Title: "Gender Issues" Date Run: October 10, 2006 (Not Published) Credit To: Comments: This strip wasn't published in the Daily Sun because Cornell was on fall break, and the Sun doesn't print when classes are not in session. Anyway, the strip only pertains very slightly, but it is meant to commemorate National Coming Out Day. The point of the strip is that, on The Lawn, none of the characters are supposed to have genders because a preconception of gender could sometimes sway the direction of the joke. Rather, I don't want my jokes to have to rely on social devices. The issue has come up before, when a viewer interpreted one of my comics (specifically, "Lovestruck-Starstruck") as revolving around gender, but he was actually missing the entire point of the strip because he was assigning gender to the characters, therefore assuming that they were in a heterosexual relationship. So, by doing this, he was missing the actual message, which was meant to be 'love of a concept'. On National Coming Out day, we should be reminded not to have preconceptions of people based on gender or orientation, because we could be missing out on whole facets of their personalities. This was one of the first strips of The Lawn ever drawn, back in 2004. Look how young it used to be!