39 pages • 1 hour read
Maia KobabeGender Queer: A Memoir
Nonfiction | Graphic Memoir | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 59-101Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 59-101 Summary
Kobabe’s longest-lasting crush in high school is on a butch, punk girl who uses a boy’s name. E overhears eir crush talking about how much she loves David Bowie’s music. E decides to listen to David Bowie to have something in common with eir crush and asks eir dad for a cassette. David Bowie’s music resonates strongly with Kobabe due to the music’s LGBTQ+ themes and Bowie’s androgyny.
Kobabe begins exploring eir sexuality and relationship with eir body when e is around eleven years old. E begins fantasizing about having a penis and does not enjoy sexual activity when it involves directly touching eir genitals. Kobabe realizes e is primarily attracted to androgyny in others, further complicating eir understanding of eir sexuality. At this point, Kobabe does not have the language to conceptualize a third option as an alternative to being a man or a woman, which e draws as a seed sleeping in the soil that will sprout later in life (70-71). Without knowledge about trans people, e thinks of emself as “born with two half souls—one male and one female” (68). E also imagines an opposite to eir own situation: a long-lost twin who is a boy that wishes to be a girl. When e learns about what it means to be transgender from feminist zines, e begins a long spiral of self-doubt about eir identity.
Kobabe is an avid reader through high school and begins keeping a list of all the books e reads. E begins seeking out literature with LGBTQ+ themes and characters to better understand emself. The gay sex scenes in these books are like “lightning” to Kobabe. Kobabe’s sexual education classes, however, only focus on cisgender and heterosexual sex, which sounds “risky and unappealing” (80-81).
The gendered nature of haircuts bothers Kobabe, who is often given feminine cuts by hairstylists. E decides to get masculine haircuts in high school, and eir mom and Phoebe begin cutting eir hair to give em the cuts e wants. Phoebe is a capable sister and somebody Kobabe leans on eir whole life for support. Phoebe is also queer, though her exact LGBTQ+ identities are left unspecified. Phoebe helps Kobabe with bra shopping and ensures Kobabe doesn’t get bras that are too tight and might injure em. Phoebe is the first to call Kobabe a “genderless person” (90).
Drama and theater captivate Kobabe in high school. E falls in love with the works of Oscar Wilde, a famously gay Irish writer who lived in Victorian Britain. A friend who is graduating high school asks Kobabe for a single date before he leaves for college. Kobabe reluctantly agrees, only for the friend to call em his “girlfriend.” Kobabe immediately cancels the date and feels terrible, venting to a friend who assures em that nobody would ever consider em girly.
Kobabe recounts two dreams e had in high school. In one, e dreams of having an erection. In the other, e grows a salt-and-pepper beard. This leads to Kobabe’s “high school coming out timeline,” over e draws in gold over a background of purple “clouds of […] gender confusion” (99). E comes out to eir mom as bisexual in 2007 at the end of high school. She is entirely supportive. Kobabe graduates high school and is the only assigned female at birth (AFAB) person to wear pants at graduation.
Pages 59-101 Analysis
In this section, Kobabe begins discovering emself. E learns the word transgender from pagan magazines and feminist zines, discovers music that feels like eir own, and works up the courage to cut eir hair how e wants it. All these changes and discoveries represent Kobabe growing closer to who e is. Because Kobabe doesn’t meet other transgender and genderqueer people in the community until college, e is still ignorant of many things, but e finds representation and alternative ways of being through media. This section contains Kobabe’s biggest period of Self-Discovery and acceptance before college; as e grows up, e begins to leave gendered social cues behind along with eir childhood.
Books become the center of Kobabe’s life as a teenager. Kobabe quickly begins seeking out books that contain LGBTQ+ themes and characters. This highlights the importance of representation early in life, especially for kids who don’t know many LGBTQ+ people. The character Alanna the Lioness from Tamora Pierce’s The Song of the Lioness is Kobabe’s earliest role model. The Song of the Lioness is set in a fantasy world that bars women from being knights and adventuring, and Alanna is a girl who disguises herself as a boy to be a knight. The series follows Alanna across four books as she defies gender roles. Alanna’s feelings mirror Kobabe’s about “being born a girl” (35) and having a period, and her character helps Kobabe feel less alone in eir genderqueer feelings.
Kobabe contrasts the “lightning” gay sex scenes in the books e reads to the cisgender and heterosexual sex in eir sexual education courses. E finds the sex described in the sexual education courses dangerous and bland. This symbolizes a problem Kobabe and many LGBTQ+ youth face: the lack of information on identities outside of cisgender heterosexuality. If Kobabe was taught about bisexuality or asexuality, e would not have felt confused about eir sexuality. Many LGBTQ+ people suffer under the assumption that everyone grows up to be cisgender and heterosexual, which shapes everything young children learn about themselves growing up. This problem is at the root of all three major themes in this work, and Kobabe’s promise to be open with eir students at the end of the memoir reflects a desire to change this for younger generations.
Kobabe’s world expands not only through media but by cultivating bonds with the other LGBTQ+ teenagers in the queer-straight alliance. These friendships blossom over literature as well, specifically the Lord of the Rings series. The alliance spends most of its time discussing the books and deciding which characters are LGBTQ+. Here, literature’s role expands by giving Kobabe a chance to bond with other LGBTQ+ people over shared interests. With this, Kobabe emphasizes the importance of community in the self-discovery process. A lack of community made eir feel isolated in elementary and middle school, but eir strengthening relationships in high school helps em figure out what eir comfortable with. This is shown through the queer-straight alliance, Kobabe’s best friend who reassures em that “you are one of the least girly people I know” (93), and eir sister, who is the first person to suggest that Kobabe is genderless. Phoebe’s acceptance of her sister combined with Kobabe’s mother accepting eir bisexuality also establish the importance of Family and Acceptance for LGBTQ+ people, especially youth.
The art in this section continues the trends established in the first section. Kobabe begins injecting humor into eir journey through eir art. One example includes a slow-motion technique where the panels look nearly identical to indicate that time is barely passing as e tries to taste and is grossed out by eir “vagina slime” (68). Another example is when e falls in love with Oscar Wilde’s work and wears a smirk while searching for the “gayest”-looking biography of him at the library (92). Humor is an important factor in Kobabe’s lighthearted tone and allows em to deal with serious topics like eir dysphoria without making the overall tone somber and serious.
