Gender Queer

This one has raised a storm of fake rage in the US states where book banning is the new normal. So I decided to check it out.

It's a graphic novel of a woman's memoir about growing up non-binary. She is three years old at the beginning when her family moves to a backwoodsy house with no electricity, water, etc. Her parents are kind of hippie but well educated. At the end of the book she is approaching thirty and considering top surgery.

Her life is one of continuing identity crises as she struggles to fit in but feels she is pushed into silence about herself. While I can see that the religious bigotry of the US would hate the book, it seems to me to fill a real need with young people trying to navigate their way through the minefield of opinions versus the emerging genetics and neuroscience of how bodies and brains are gendered in utero.

Gender Queer is the most banned book in the US, and I was curious to see why. Well, I’m just embarrassed to be human. (Let’s stop pretending children don’t have genitals, shall we?)

Anyhow, this work is informative and helpful, full of relatable private moments we don’t often get a glimpse of in others.