Gender Queer: A Memoir

Gender Queer was the most banned book in the United States in 2021. Most young adults and adolescents who encounter Gender Queer experience the book with this controversy in the background. Gender Queer is part of a tradition of LGBTQ+ memoirs (often focused on coming-of-age stories) including Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Super Late Bloomer by Julia Kaye. While LGBTQ+ memoirs are challenged disproportionately by parents in school districts, the unusually high number of proposed bans levied against Gender Queer is notable.

The book is frequently targeted due to the graphic sexual depictions in its illustrations. The illustration on Page 140 is cited most frequently in these proposed bans, which depicts an older man touching a youth’s erect penis while the two figures are naked. Importantly, this image is a replica of a famous, red-figure pottery painting, the red-on-black style of pottery artwork most typically associated with classical Greece. The panels where Z sends Kobabe sexually explicit texts and performs oral sex on em are also often cited.

It is critical to view this controversy through the social context of LGBTQ+ rights and representation in the United States, especially the representation of