GENDER QUEER (Book Review)

By Maia Kobabe

 

(Oni Press, 2022)

 

 

I have the whole banned books brouhaha to thank for leading me to Gender Queer: A Memoir. It’s a graphic novel that may have otherwise escaped my gaydar. I’m the better for reading it.

 

Gender Queer is a quick read that should be widely read. It’s not dramatic in the events that are told. What’s remarkable is the journey the author and illustrator has taken in coming to terms with eir identity. (Finding the “right” pronouns for Maia is its own long, arduous, thoughtful pursuit, leading finally to adopting e, em, eir. I had heretofore been unaware of these pronouns. If you’re rolling your eyes over the pronoun “issue,” all the more reason to read this book. Seek to understand instead of judging what you don’t.)

 

There is a lot of talk about sex talk in the book, but all of it is relevant in Kobabe’s search for discovering eir identity. The exploration is informative but not titillating. It reminded me of all the matter-of-fact sex ed classes I’ve attended as a teacher and a principal, my presence required ostensibly to ensure the students are respectful and to bear witness in case someone discloses an experience that might be construed as abuse or an assault for which follow-up is required. 

 

References to masturbation—how nice to get beyond “you’ll go blind”—include a book ban-triggering drawing of Maia conjuring up an image of men with erections in ancient Greece, one man reading and almost touching the other’s penis. While the drawing is clear, it does not seem intended to arouse. If the banning brood paid any attention to the words below the drawing, their trumped up indignance would lose its luster: 

The more I had to interact with my genitals the less 

likely I was to reach a point of any satisfaction. 

The best fantasy was one that didn’t require any 

physical touch at all.

That’s right, kiddos. Don’t touch your privates! This seems like the kind of message prudish banners would like.

 

While we’re on the sex stuff, there’s talk about buying a vibrator. Maia uses it once. “It’s not that exciting because I don’t really like it.” E gives it to eir sister, with whom e has a trusting, close connection. At the age of twenty-five, Maia goes on a second date with a woman and says, “I’ve never had sex.” Again, sex-repressed book banners should be applauding. The author is giving a voice to the notion that sex isn’t everything; in fact, sometimes it’s nothing. 

 

The other page that book banners specifically object to portrays two graphic novel cells in which the girlfriend performs oral sex on adult Maia or, at least, an appendage attached to Maia: a strap-on penis. Yes, a sex toy, drawn as blandly as possible. Admittedly, the images may give pause. A depiction of the toy while it’s not worn would have diluted any possible objection, but that’s not the choice Kobabe and the publisher made. It’s nothing more erotic than putting a condom over a banana in a high school sex ed class. The author makes clear e doesn’t like it. 

 

Later, e rejoices in realizing, “I never have to date anyone” and “I don’t even have to care about sex.” If the cells depicting Greek men (page 139) or the strap-on (page 171) were postcards available in a high school, the distribution might indeed be shut down, but in the larger context of this graphic novel and the messages provided, any hoopla is overblown. These three cells are an excuse to try to deny access to a book about gender blurring and alternative pronouns.

 

The author’s journey does not seek to go from being born female to representing as male. “I don’t want a beard, and I don’t want my voice to change. I don’t want MORE gendered traits, I want LESS.”[1]

 

I can’t understand how that should be a problem for anyone. There will be a lot of trial and error in terms of friends, family and colleagues using non-gendered pronouns. Kobabe provides many examples of this. People mess up, but they are earnestly and respectfully trying. It reminds me of the adjustment period friends and family go through in coming to terms with someone coming out as queer. The individual’s process took time; likewise, so does the understanding of those around them. I especially appreciated the inclusion of Maia’s aunt, a “lesbian feminist,” who is honest about her struggle to understand:

If you ask me to start using new pronouns for you, 

of course I will. But I’d like you to explain why.

Right now I don’t understand and I’m going

to keep asking until I do.

This particular struggle goes largely unspoken, one in which older gays and lesbians haven’t been able to keep up with an evolution in queer identity wherein there are more options in terms of defining oneself. Online and in a few conversations I’ve had with gay men, the reflex by some is to resist or reject change. Everyone struggles with change. It presents new challenges; it means the person trying/having to change may mess up; it means altering what seemed to be known and established. Sometimes, even in the queer “community,” that doesn’t play out well. I appreciate the aunt’s honesty and her willingness to listen, learn and grow.

 

Maia Kobabe

I learned from reading this book. I have a person’s example, through memoir, to add context to understanding a path to nonbinary identity and to appreciate how this personal search and decision does not come on a whim. I hope young people will access this book, sidestepping any bans to get their hands on it. The book will help those who are struggling to understand their relationship with gender and sexuality. It will help them understand peers who are trying to figure out their own issues. As well, I hope older folks with seemingly fixed minds will be open enough to give Gender Queer a read, allowing the concepts, contexts and personal testimonial simmer long after it is finished.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] This is why the e, em, eir prounouns make particular sense. Not he or she, the h/sh has been lopped off…just e. Not them, just em. Not their, just eir. Any gender connotations are gone. 

MY FIRST PRIDE IN SEATTLE

 At Pride, there's no such thing
as too much color. 

I survived Pride, Round One.

 

Okay, that sounds like there was suffering involved. I suppose that’s my default view of gay events with too much hoopla. It wasn’t that way this time. 

 

Did I thrive? Um, that’s overshooting a bit. 

 

I took it in and I got something good out of it. That sounds right. And, from my perspective, that means my Pride weekend in Seattle exceeded expectations. I wasn’t insufferable and neither was it. We coexisted gaily enough. 

 

Evan and I spent part of the hot Saturday afternoon on Capitol Hill, first meeting his friends for brunch and then walking along the closed off blocks on Broadway where temporary outdoor stages on each block featured drag queens lip synching with painted on smiles that belied the fact they must have been battling heat exhaustion under heavy wigs and layers of garments, outer leather jackets and faux furs shed not soon enough at the midway point of Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” and Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional.” Pride is prime time for any and all LGBTQ performers. Heck, even the local men’s underwear store had a go-go boy dancing on tiny platform. He went largely unnoticed, his belly larger than what would earn him a gig in a club that evening. I always feel badly when a performer can’t sustain attention, but he didn’t seem to be feeling anything at all. He didn’t need my pity.

 

I took in much of Saturday from my boyfriend’s point of view. Evan loved it, not showing a trace of my cynicism or reticence. After a couple of years without a robust celebration due to COVID, he relished the resurgence of a festival-like atmosphere. Several times, he told me the parade used to be on Capitol Hill, only being relocated to 4^th Avenue in downtown Seattle as corporate sponsorship swept in. Capitol Hill meant something to him as a gay man; 4^th Avenue did not.

 

We began Sunday as we often do, grabbing lattes at the café on the corner, biking around Lake Union and then going through the paces of an online workout led by Heather Robertson. I tried to bat away the feeling this was the calm before the storm. I’d survived Saturday’s big Pride event which was essentially a very slow walk winding through a crowd of people, rainbows everywhere. Sunday’s events would drag on longer, the sun even hotter. The only chance of cutting things short would be if I suffered heat exhaustion and wound up under a first aid canopy, as had been the case so long ago for eight-year-old me at the Toronto Zoo at the peak of a heat wave. My mother had stayed with me while the rest of the family trekked on in pursuit of bears and dik-dik. Classic case of déjà-vu: same but different.   

 

I felt relief when Evan restated last night’s decision: we’d skip the hours-long parade and hang out at Seattle Center where the parade ends. I’ve walked around the area countless times during my solo trips to the city. It was the site of the 1962 World’s Fair and the Space Needle, the monorail and a huge fountain remain, with the Chihuly Gardens and Frank Gehry’s colorful slabs of warped metal making up the Museum of Pop to keep the grounds interesting. Seeing the area awash in the colors of the rainbow would add an entirely new association. 

 

There may have been more flashes of skin than splashes of red, indigo and violet. I imagine queers are especially grateful that Marsha P. Johnson and other patrons of the Stonewall Inn rioted in late June instead of on some cold night in January. What would Winter Pride have looked like? Would Pride organizers in the early days have adhered to calendar-authentic snowman building contests and drag queen snow angels? Somewhere in northern Finland, there’s an alternate reality coat maker with patents on beer- and snow-resistant rainbow parkas ruing what could have been to the unsympathetic glances of a herd of reindeer.

 

Yes, Sunday was hot. It was the perfect excuse for the first immodestly dressed attendee we spotted as we locked our bikes: an overly tanned Batman, baring a large chest and chiseled midriff, rendering any fake muscle suit utterly unnecessary. The look wowed Evan but made me cringe. Please don’t let the afternoon devolve into a display of gym gods. My body’s fine for the moment, but I still feel I could work off the extra cinnamon buns I indulged in while in Sweden earlier in June. I’m trying to avoid one of my full-on eating disorder panic diets. 

 

As it turned out Batman was an outlier. I can’t recall seeing other caped crusaders or superheroes. While there were plenty of shirtless men and women and a number who opted for full nudity, with or without body paint, these were normal bodies, unwaxed and perfectly imperfect. Thirty years ago, I’d have been bothered by so much exposure, but the displays seemed utterly ordinary. I didn’t read anything provocative into anyone’s state of undress. Instead, it seemed to fit within a broader theme: be Proud, whoever and however you are. 

 

I’m sure they were there, but I can’t recall drag queens strutting around the grounds. What stood out for me were all the people comfortable in their own skin and in their own clothes which defied traditional gender role stylings. This may have been progressive, but I felt a little old-fashioned—in a good way—thinking about Marlo Thomas’s “Free to Be…You and Me” album and book of the early seventies. Surely she’d be aglow gazing at this crowd of people boldly expressing themselves without a worry…on this day, at least. 

 

As Evan and I stepped into The Armory to give my slathered-on layers of sunscreen a break from fending off the sun’s rays, we drank margaritas and people-watched anew. Seattle Center being a tourist attraction on any given day, I asked him, “What percentage of people walking through here just happened upon all this?”

 

“Five percent,” he posited. Maybe so. Maybe it was ten, but Ned and Shirley from Wichita turned away, deciding to watch an encore of the fishmongers at Pike Place Market. I can’t even look at those beautiful fish on display, pulled from a seabed, now relegated to a bed of crushed ice. To each his/her/their own.

 

Without the nudists traipsing through—perhaps there was a No Shoes, No Service sign on the door—I watched an impromptu parade of people shuffling toward restrooms and the Frappuccino line. I noticed the contented smile of an older man wearing a straw hat covered in rows of shimmering rainbow tiles. I checked out the nail polished fingers of so many people half my age. Boys? Nonbinary? Didn’t matter. I saw a six-foot-seven figure peer over everyone’s heads while donning a formless frock splattered with flourishes of rainbow tie-dye. More people free to be.

 

So many in the crowd were of college age and much younger. They didn’t show the shock I probably couldn’t hide during my first Pride more than three decades ago. They’ve grown with many of the same struggles and much of the same hate, but they’ve had plenty of outlets at school, on social media and on streaming channels to encourage them to explore all facets of who they are, to absorb the pervasive message that Love Is Love and to find their people. They appeared totally at ease here. Happy without having to edit their mannerisms, their attire, their ways of interacting. 

 

In all, I felt awe. It helped to be alongside Evan, who took in the surroundings and fed off what he too observed. I’ve passed on so many Prides since 1990. My weekend in Seattle reminded my why it still matters to others and, yes, by golly, to me as well.

 

So there it is. Happy Pride. Call it a wrap.

 

Now let me catch my breath before Round Two four weeks from now in Vancouver. Yes, okay, I’m Proud. But this introvert is worn out, too.