Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
2.) Back when Roy put on the belt of gender-swapping, I went to a convention. At that convention, I met a man who told me that he had enjoyed the comic up until recently. I asked him what had changed. He told me that he, himself, was transgendered, and he found the inclusion of the "cursed" magic item offensive, that the idea of gender-swapping should not be used for comedy, and that it had permanently reduced his opinion of the comic.

I was shocked, because it had never occurred to me that anyone would see it as any sort of allegory for real-world transsexuals. It was an overtly magical situation, based on a magic item that already existed in the source material, that was forced on a character with no inclination toward it. In the same way that I would not have expected that one of the characters being paralyzed by a ghoul would be offensive to people who are quadriplegic. But maybe it is. At any rate, the situation surprised me and has, most likely, contributed to my gunshy nature about LGBT issues in the comic.
Probably this person was not familiar with the source material and had suffered bigoted jokes like the ones Belkar makes Roy, so he could not see those strips under any one other light than that. I think the blame of that is not on you, but on the persons who made him feel like that in the first place.

Then again the transsexual colective has had it pretty rough, and most of the society is unable to really understand them, gays and lesbians included. So maybe I am being unsensitive here?

Mhm. I see how could this be troublesome for an author.