Technolandy

Day 100 (of 2024/25) a second book share (having just finished and thinking about banned books) Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe e/em/eir for #pinkshirtmonth

Start the calls to ban the book here! People gonna hate hate hate hate … but it’s a great book. I know many will get caught up on the images that are easy to bookmark and flip to… rather than the worded innuendo’s that are more easily to skim over than are images – and a picture can convey a thousand words… and an equal number of requests to ban and challenge it. Admittedly a mature read, but as I will reiterate, more of a ‘readiness descriptor’ than a number of trips around the sun (age) to be ready for this memoir. 

More challenging, for those curious but have not read it yet, might even be the honesty of Maia Kobabe’s sharing of eir life… and being a role model for others who have/are facing the same internal wonders… teenage is the time for self doubt and questioning – and we can either find good literature to share – not by age, but by readiness – or leave it for kids to figure out on their unsupervised explorations of what’s online (cuz we have banned using the device as a tool and I guess hope that they’ll figure out good ways to use it and not just find the bad stuff online…??)

And art – including literature – is okay to be confrontational and uncomfortable. But there is an image of two kids peeing, and I know that a read aloud of book about needing a new bum was already a big deal for some… 

The book does a great job looking and questioning some ‘cultural norms’ – such as shaving legs… and why some kids can go topless but others can’t —> in some parts of the world…

The book does deal with periods – and that makes many males really uncomfortable – so I’d suspect a call to ban it by some just because of that!

Which is why it also nicely deals with how often people ‘mask’ who they are; and how mind altering some explorations can be – from the mundane that most people love to talk about: music | to the topics people would prefer not to talk about… master of ones domain (to reference an old Seinfeld episode) | and how some unexpected literature can really open up some unexpected sensations… | and school based sex ed classes tend to make sex “risky and unappealing”… 

The author sharing some private thoughts: “I don’t want to be a girl. I don’t want to be a boy either. I just want to be myself.’ And sharing insights into sides of life that definitely don’t get talked about – such as a papsmear exam… and yes, there is nudity in the book – including some greek art (Plato’s Sympsoium) and some spicy scenes/inuendos… that definitely will distract some from the story that is more worth the deeper dive into to build understanding and empathy for the thinkings and feelings and experiences as people try to figure their fit… to find their identity… to be true to themselves…

To make subtle shifts: eg from ‘she graduated’ to ‘e graduated’. Pronoun haters gonna hate concepts like ‘e em eir’ but as I once argued in high school that there ought to be a ‘they/them’ singular in order to be discrete about an character without revealing gender… if it’s important to ‘you’ that there ought to be ‘just two’ genders… add that empathy for those who do not agree… and if you don’t think pronouns are important… then let those who find a pronoun they identify with to use it… or be okay if someone like me mindfully switches pronouns when talking with you if it isn’t a deal worth dealing with…

But I love how the author share the acknowledgement that getting used to pronouns takes time and we make mistakes (I still find myself occasionally making mistakes – especially with groups… some habits take time to change). But seeing a doctor visit through the eyes of a gender nonbinary certainly opens a lens into a very personal part of life – I don’t want to share my own doctor visits, let alone illustrate them!

I certainly appreciated re-reading this book after reading Andy Hargreaves Age of Identiy to help reiterate how important individual identity is – especially when someone feels alone as they don’t see role models who ‘look like them’ – and how challenging it can be to ‘be’ ar role model.

I hope readers don’t get distracted by the spicy/sexy illustrations and miss the point of this graphic novel… 

But of course many want to high light that this ‘comic book style’ is attractive to children and link it to too much sexual content… which is what often happens within memoirs… graphic novels (and indeed comics) are not created for ‘a’ age range – and even GenderQueer while a mature read shouldn’t have an age restriction… more of a ‘readiness’ restriction, as all books ought to be considered anyways… and recognize this as a great book to build empathy for a minority that are often (ironically much like this book) marginalized and banned without deeper consideration for what is seen rather than who they are.