Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Can we just grow up?

It's the most banned book in the country so naturally I asked my public library for a copy. Happily, the San Francisco Public Library obliged within a week.

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, a graphic novel, is a sweet, relentlessly positive young adult account of trying to figure out sex and gender. It currently has many homophobes and misogynists in a tizzy.

Considering the book has been around almost 10 years, it's a little surprising that Governor Ron DeSantis's Florida should have gone ballistic about it last year, condemning it as a danger to kids.

Oh well, young people will find out what they need to find out regardless of adult anxieties. Adults can make this easier or harder. The availability of books like Maia's may make it easier for some.

A couple of comments on this highly recommended volume:
• Maia describes parents, family, and a community that seems amazingly supportive of e's exploration of a non-conforming identity. We can hope that such an environment is available to many people -- and I certainly see more of this around me. But most gender non-conforming people are still certainly not so lucky. Those of us who feel stable in where our gender identities have landed owe it to the searchers to provide as much support and acceptance as we can.

• Maia defaults to approving the (to my mind) pseudo-scientific view that felt gender and sexual identities are genetically determined. That is: "We're born this way." It's a convenient notion while struggling for social acceptance. And I'm sure this is true for some; but I am also profoundly aware that social and power dynamics influence how people can express their inner felt identities and that, in different social circumstances, people have and will make different accommodations. Often this is and has been literally about survival.
Finally, here's a panel from this book -- juvenile Maia's reaction to discovering that eir Mom thinks e can't swim without a bathing suit top. It captures the naive truth about gender norms that I wish we could all preserve:

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