Gender Queer: A Memoir

“Because she is a girl and girls have cooties!”

Kobabe runs into gendered expectations between boys and girls at school when e tries to play with the boys alongside Galen. Being treated as a girl quickly becomes distressing for Kobabe.

“What even are you, a boy or a girl?”

Kobabe finds comfort in confusing people about eir place in the gender binary, as opposed to the stress and dysphoria e feels when e is called a girl.

“I walked back to put my shirt on again. But I didn’t feel that I had done anything wrong. It was everyone else being silly, not me.

Kobabe is perplexed by the unspoken and invisible rules e is supposed to know about gender and how to behave. Kobabe’s teacher doesn’t explain why e must wear a shirt.

“Everyone around me—but especially girls—seemed to have access to information I lacked.”

Kobabe spends eir early life feeling as if e is missing information that lets girls act naturally as girls. For Kobabe, it feels like nobody taught em the rules, and e is expected to know them intuitively.

“Because of the Alanna books I knew: periods involved bleeding every month, were related to the ability to become pregnant, and were a totally normal and natural thing to happen to young teen girls. But I never thought it would happen to me.”

This quote shows the importance of representation in fiction and media, especially for LGBTQ+ people. E understands eir periods through a fictional character who also does not wish to have periods. Despite identifying with Alanna, Kobabe still struggles to cope with having periods of eir own. This is because periods are a heavily gendered bodily function, and Kobabe is unable to think of emself as a girl.

“I still have [the necklace] in the original box. I’ve never worn it. I couldn’t see this new development as a reason to celebrate”

The onset of periods is often considered a cause for celebration since it marks a child becoming an adolescent. The necklace from eir parents symbolizes that celebration. Kobabe cannot celebrate due to the severe gender dysphoria that periods cause em.

“Bowie’s music was the first that felt like mine.”

David Bowie is known for queer aesthetics and themes in his work, particularly in his androgynous alter-ego, Ziggy Stardust. Kobabe’s love for Bowie’s music lasts into the present day.

“The main trait I’ve always been attracted to is androgyny. Which made categorizing my sexuality difficult.”

Kobabe’s attraction to androgyny makes a straightforward label like “gay” or “straight” hard to apply to eir sexuality. This mirrors eir gender, which exists outside of the binary between man and woman and the traits typically associated with each.

“The knowledge of a third option slept like a seed under the soil. This seed put out many leaves, but I didn’t have the language to identify the plant.”

The seed that sleeps in this quote sprouts in the landscape metaphor later in the book as one plant among many in the wilds between the ocean and mountains. Metaphor is useful for Kobabe in exploring eir identity, especially since as a child and teenager, e lacked any language to describe eir experiences directly.

“A few weeks after the show ended, I went to a formal school event wearing the ACE bandage and a too-long tie. What had felt liberating onstage felt embarrassing in public. I put the bandage away and never wore it again.”

The stage and fiction give Kobabe space to experiment and play with eir gender presentation long before e is comfortable doing so in real life.

“I assign sensation to a body part I don’t have all the time. Sometimes I can almost feel where it would be resting against my thigh.”

Kobabe illustrates what gender dysphoria can feel like. Vividly imagining having a penis is a way for Kobabe to deal with eir dysphoria surrounding eir genitals.

“The clearest metaphor I had for my own gender identity in college was the image of a scale. A huge weight had been placed on one side, without my permission. I was constantly trying to weigh down the other side. But the end goal wasn’t masculinity—the goal was balance.”

The metaphors Kobabe uses to understand eir gender are always evolving and becoming more nuanced. The scale metaphor represents a time in eir life when e understood that e needed to balance out the AFAB portion of eir scale with more masculine traits to achieve a gender-neutral appearance.

“Dressing up as a male character let me play with the idea of how I would choose to present myself if the weight of assigned sex had been placed on the other side of the scale.”

Kobabe uses dressing up as Johnny Weir for Halloween as a safe way to explore gender presentation, just as e did while on stage. Dressing as a flamboyant and androgynous man allows em to experience androgyny from a different angle.

“I felt as if I had been stabbed through my entire body and with this came a wave of psychological horror at the realization that things can go inside my body. Of course I already knew this fact intellectually; embodied knowledge is an entirely different matter. What my body told me was that this intrusion of the outside world into my internal physical being was wrong on a level too deep for words.

Objects penetrating Kobabe severely agitate eir gender dysphoria. “A level too deep for words” is demonstrated by the large illustration of a naked Kobabe being impaled through the stomach by a bloody pin. This illustration dominates the page and leaves a small amount of room for words.

“I think the fact that I don’t see myself as, or understand myself as, a female person, but that most of the people I interact with do…is actually damaging all of my relationships, even ones with family and friends.”

Even though Kobabe’s family struggles with accepting eir gender identity, their temporary discomfort will ultimately improve their relationship with Kobabe. Kobabe feels eir attempts at remaining closeted for the comfort of those around em are misguided.

“I want people to be confused about my gender at all times. 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.”

Many characteristics of bodies are gendered, and this is a source of frustration for many nonbinary and genderqueer people like Kobabe. Taking testosterone as Amila does would only give Kobabe more gendered features to worry about.

“I remember when I first realized I never had to have children. It was like walking out of a narrow alley into a wide open field.”

Kobabe’s asexuality and nonbinary gender both contribute to eir lack of desire for children. Having children is often considered a fact of life that must happen. Kobabe’s metaphor of the “wide open field” illustrates how freeing it is for em to understand e can decide to never have children.

“When I started my period, I quickly realized that pads and shorts were not compatible.”

Undergarments are highly gendered and designed with only one kind of body in mind. This can lead to gender dysphoria for transgender people who experience period-related dysphoria. This compounds the dysphoria Kobabe already experiences from eir period.

“For me, female presentation has always been a performance. A fun performance, with sequins, glitter, and wild hair. But for a lot of my life, I’ve felt like a drag queen in a female body.”

E flips the script by comparing eir day-to-day presentation before coming out to drag. Kobabe’s experiences acting as or dressing up as male characters becomes a more genuine method of self-expression, where it would usually be seen as just wearing a costume.

“As I pondered a pronoun change, I began to think of gender less as a scale and more as a landscape. Some people are born in the mountains, while others are born by the sea. Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, while others must make a journey to reach the climate in which they can flourish and grow. Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.”

The metaphorical seed of a “third option” mentioned earlier in the memoir sprouts in the “wild forest” here, in the center of the frame. Kobabe’s metaphors for understanding emself grow alongside em.

“I feel like there are all these wires in my brain which were supposed to connect body to gender identity and sexuality but they’ve all been twisted into a huge snarled mess.”

Aunt Shari’s anti-transgender comments set Kobabe down a spiral. E was raised to think there should be a one-size-fits-all connection between body, gender identity, and sexuality. The connections between cisgender and heterosexual identities are presumed to be normal, which causes Kobabe both frustration and shame.

“Wearing a binder for too long makes me feel like I need to shed my skin.”

While a binder is an improvement for Kobabe’s gender dysphoria, e wants top surgery eventually. The image of a snake shedding its skin shows that binders are only a temporary solution for Kobabe.

“I want to define myself by what I am instead of what I am not.”

Kobabe’s self-identification has been negative up until this point. E knows what e is not: E is not a woman nor a man, and e is not straight. This has not left much room for Kobabe to define emself in positive terms—who e is rather than who e isn’t—which would allow em to claim eir identity with pride.