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 102-155Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 102-155 Summary
Kobabe enters college and realizes that when eir mom and dad met one another in college, at ages 19 and 21 respectively, they were “babies” (102). E goes to college to study art. College “glow[s] with potential” for the first few weeks but quickly loses its sparkle (104). Kobabe joins the drama club, which casts em in male roles, requiring em to bind eir chest with ace bandages to flatten it. E experiences gender euphoria but feels ashamed of using ace bandages to bind offstage. Kobabe is jealous of men and their flat chests and wishes e did not have boobs. E does not know binders exist yet; in retrospect, e wishes e knew about them in college.
Kobabe gets a work-study job at eir school’s library, and e comes out as bisexual to a coworker named Rae. It’s the first time e has come out to a coworker, and e feels happy that e has the courage to do so. Kobabe is introduced to Autumn at work. She is a student that has been crushing on Kobabe from a distance. Eir coworker tries to set up Kobabe with Autumn. Kobabe flees and tries to talk to Autumn about the possibility of a relationship over Facebook and phone calls; Kobabe, being asexual, feels uncomfortable with the physical intimacy that relationships tend to bring. E confides in eir dad about the situation and tells Autumn they cannot be together. E decides e is done with romance and dating because friendship fulfills all eir needs for closeness.
Erotic, gay fiction and fan culture become central to Kobabe’s life and friendships throughout college and graduate school. Kobabe is shocked when e makes friends who do not enjoy gay, erotic fiction. In 2010, e begins idolizing figure skater Johnny Weir, who dresses in flamboyant and gender-nonconforming ways. Phoebe helps Kobabe create a Johnny Weir costume for Halloween. Kobabe develops a new metaphor for understanding eir gender in college: a scale. In the two-page illustration of the scale, “assigned female at birth” tips the scale all the way down, and Kobabe scrambles to add traits like “short hair” and “top surgery” to the other side to balance the scale (125, 126). Dressing as Johnny Weir at age 21 allows Kobabe to experiment with androgyny and feel as if e were assigned male at birth (AMAB).
Kobabe has eir first visit with a gynecologist and eir first pap smear shortly after Halloween. E is deeply traumatized by the experience of objects being inserted into eir body and vows nothing will ever enter eir vagina again. Kobabe graduates college and tries to keep in contact with eir fellow art majors. E is surprised when some of them do not seem to realize e is part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Kobabe sets the stage for exploring eir sexuality through the lens of asexuality. E recalls being 14 and first telling a friend e is asexual. Eir friend dismisses eir identity because e “lusted” after people. E discovers masturbation at the same age Allison Bechdel does in Fun Home, shortly after eir first period, but e finds that eir erotic fantasies and feelings are only enjoyable when they do not involve eir own body. This leads to long hiatuses in “wanking” (141). This “annual pattern of asexuality” makes Kobabe feel that something is wrong with em and needs fixing, so e buys a bullet vibrator (142). The vibrator cannot change how Kobabe feels about sexuality, so e gifts it to Phoebe.
When Facebook adds gender marker options, Kobabe has a panic attack over sharing who e is with people on the social media platform. E draws a comic in 2014 to celebrate a decade of keeping eir book list. Sharing eir reading habits is the most personal information e feels comfortable sharing; e feels either ashamed or afraid of sharing anything more personal about emself. Kobabe has a conversation with a cis male friend about the term “cisgender,” which results in em accidentally coming out to the friend. E recounts this conversation to a queer friend, also coming out to this friend in the process. E decides to talk to eir mom about eir genderqueer feelings. She has difficulty processing Kobabe’s gender dysphoria and eir desire to never have children.
Pages 102-155 Analysis
Kobabe begins this section as a “baby” entering college who doesn’t know much about eir identity and ends it with coming out to people as nonbinary. The freedom of college and the colorful cast of people e meets there expose em to viewpoints and experiences that allow em to understand eir own experiences in a new light. This section also marks a new struggle for acceptance from emself and eir family. While e and eir family have previously accepted eir bisexuality, everybody struggles with eir asexuality and nonbinary identity. This underlines the importance of Family and Acceptance for LGBTQ+ people; Kobabe feels supported in eir bisexuality, which makes em more comfortable identifying as such. By contrast, eir mother’s confusion surrounding asexuality and gender dysphoria compounds Kobabe’s struggle to understand who e is.
Kobabe buys the vibrator because e reads a review that says “It was the first time I ever loved my body” (143). The implication is that Kobabe believes there is something to be fixed in eir relationship with sex and e hopes the vibrator will fix that by letting em love eir body as well, but the vibrator cannot change eir relationship with sex. Eir attempt to change this relationship shows that Kobabe feels something is wrong with em compared to everybody else. This feeling is reinforced when eir mom has difficulty accepting eir feelings towards eir body and eir desire to never have children, feelings that are partly due to eir gender dysphoria, asexuality, and aromantic identity. Despite these difficulties with self-acceptance, Kobabe also makes eir biggest leaps in Self-Discovery in this section. E experiments with eir gender presentation, first by binding eir chest and then by dressing up as Johnny Weir. Imitating Weir’s glamorous androgyny is the only time Kobabe describes emself as “sexy” and “joyful” (127). The insecurity in acceptance Kobabe feels from both emself and eir family contrasts starkly against the euphoria e feels in understanding emself.
The horror of the pap smear is a difficult section for both readers and Kobabe. Despite the euphoria e feels in eir gender presentation on Halloween, e still deals with massive body-based dysphoria. Being confronted with what eir genitals and reproductive system are capable of creates a wave of “psychological horror” that haunts Kobabe (133). This vignette shows Kobabe speared through the abdomen by a bloody pin and floating in white space, first in a gruesome close-up on Page 133 and then from a more distant perspective on Page 134. Kobabe is pinned to this white space like a dead insect pinned to a corkboard. The reference to pinned insects is a visual metaphor for Kobabe’s psychological horror. Kobabe’s genital dysphoria makes em feel reduced to a body to be observed, much like dead insects in a lab or museum. The two perspectives shown in this illustration—intimate and distant—mirror the complexity of Kobabe’s feelings here. The image shown in the close-up creates a visceral feeling of horror in the reader, alluding to Kobabe’s embodied feelings like pain and revulsion. By contrast, the image that shows a distant perspective is more clinical and almost detached, emphasizing Kobabe’s mental distance from eir AFAB body and female gender roles.
