Originally a comment by Sackbut at Miscellany Room.

Among the comic strips I follow is Heart of the City, a charming strip about a young girl named Heart, her friends, and their lives in Philadelphia. It was created by Mark Tatulli, and he wrote the strip for many years. A few years ago he passed the strip along to Christina “Steenz” Stewart. She is Black, and she made significant changes to the strip over the few years, in addition to having a drastically different art style. Many characters were added, several faded away, the cast became much more racially diverse, and there was a bit more focus on the differences between the life experiences of girls and boys. I was wary at first, change is hard, but I’ve really come to like where Steenz is taking the strip.

Recent outrage over the use of the phrase “people who bleed” reminded me that a current plot line is Heart starting her period. This is the first standard newspaper strip I can recall that has ever touched on that topic. It’s being handled really well.

I looked up information about the strip and about Steenz. She was inspired by seeing an African-American woman cartoonist, which helped her realize she could do this, too.

But she identifies as non-binary and prefers “they”.

So this woman, who writes so well about the experience of being a girl, and who was inspired by another Black woman, has decided she’s not a woman. This makes me sad. She gets a “first” added to her bio, but it’s unfortunate to see her reject such an important aspect of her life and what (not who) she is.