Read as part of CBR15bingo: gender and banned. Maia Kobabe is a non-binary writer whose book Gender Queer has been banned at many schools and libraries across the country.
It almost made perfect sense that when I saw I had to read a banned book on gender for this challenge, I’d get to Maia Kobabe’s work. Maia’s book seems to have been the spark that ignited the fires of book banning in Florida.
I will not argue that most Americans have a complex understanding of gender. I’ve been fortunate to know several enby/genderqueer/agender/non-cis persons in my life and even I’m not sure I have a complex understanding. It’s a lot to break through the male-female binary and I applaud folk like Maia who are willing to try and do so in such a public and vulnerable way.
I will argue that despite stoking the fires of non-cis Panic, I don’t think most Americans care. Most people just want their daily bread: food, shelter, a job that pays well. When we start talking about how one half of the country doesn’t listen to the other, I think that’s a false dichotomy. It’s a minoritarian group of people pushing to ban people like Maia and punish them for existing. It’s just that they’re loud and have political power.
So we get to a book like this: an enlightening, at times moving memoir on gender exploration and understanding, and have it trashed in public because people don’t like the visuals. It makes it impossible to view this book on its merits alone. I liked it, didn’t love it, but I greatly appreciated it for what it was and Maia for what eir’s trying to do. And yet, there’s a need to have some long, drawn out opinion on it because of a vocal minority.
My opinion is that people should live their lives how they damn well please. We can all have respect for others bodies and even if we don’t understand why they would do something, we can still respond by treating them with the kindness with which we’d like to be treated. I think one can read this with an open mind and come away appreciative and, hopefully, educated. Let’s continue to do that, lest the bigots win.