There's another genderqueer memoir out now (since mid-spring, I guess, but I just obtained my copy); this one's a graphic novel, an autobiographical comic book from a talented comic book artist.
One thing I particularly like about Kobabe's account is that ey drives home the lack of simplicity in figuring out one's own gender identity. Kobabe didn't have the possibility of being genderqueer dangled in front of em as a possibility growing up. For years e knew e was different from the other students in eir class or in her culture, but did that mean e was a lesbian? (No that's not quite it); Transgender? (Not exactly, not precisely...) Well then what I am I?
It's messy and complicated when none of the choices you're familiar with resonate with you as the correct answer, and you have to figure it out all on your own. It's not like ordering from the takeout menu. If having an "etcetera" category is useful as an umbrella term, that convenience runs in both directions. It is important to be able to offer a welcome mat to people whose experience is only sort of akin to our own, people whose specific gender experience is not something we could have predicted and described in more precise language.
Kobabe's tale also points out the importance of retaining "genderqueer" as a not-fully-defined "etcetera" category. I've read several essays and memoirs from genderqueer people, not to mention oodles of posts on Facebook and elsewhere from people explaining what they mean by genderqueer. Until now I had not had the privilege of reading a genderqueer coming-of-age story from an asexual agender person, though. Nor had I read a first-hand account from anyone who did not identify as transgender who had strong physical dysphoria. Dysphoria is typically regarded as a definining characteristic of transgender people, even if it isn't required of everyone who identifies in that fashion. Kobabe explains a genderqueer identity with physical dysphoria. In eir case, it is not so much focused around the pain of failing to be identified as a specific other sex, but more around the pain of being stuck with being identified as belonging to a specific sex e doesn't embrace as eir identity.
Interestingly, as the number of genderqueer memoirs starts to accumulate, the subcategory that I tend to think of as the most typical thing that people have in mind when they say "genderqueer" -- being genderfluid -- has yet to be represented. Audrey MC wrote as an AMAB person who had transitioned to female and then found that too confining; Jacob Tobia wrote as a person who is male but identifies as a sissy. Which makes two of us, since that's effectively my identity as well (male, sissy/femme/girl), although we have material differences in our storylines. Now Maia Kobabe gives us a genderqueer story from an AFAB agender / asexual person.
So if you're genderfluid and have a memoir to lay on us, you should definitely get it out there.
Gender Queer, Maia Kobabe. 2019, Oni Press
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