Gender Queer: A Memoir

At the start of Kobabe’s second year of graduate school in 2014, eir roommate puts up a One Direction poster in their shared dorm. Kobabe is quickly sucked into the One Direction fandom. The band’s fourth album is important to Kobabe because its release coincides with eir “first crush in several years,” a “family health crisis,” the death of a friendship, and eir last year of graduate school (158). Kobabe begins writing One Direction fanfiction, pouring all eir feelings into it and writing nearly 100,000 words in a year. Kobabe’s fanfiction is premised on the band members all being in love with one another, but e never experienced firsthand kissing or other intimate activities that might happen in a relationship. To fix this so e can finish eir fanfiction, e downloads the dating app Tinder. After a failed date with a woman referred to as Y, Kobabe has a wonderful date with another woman referred to as Z. After a frank discussion about eir boundaries, desires, and lack of experience, Kobabe and Z begin dating. After two months of dating, Z buys a strap-on harness to fulfill Kobabe’s fantasy of having a penis. While the visual image is exactly what Kobabe wants, the actual experience gives em dysphoria because e doesn’t feel anything. Kobabe realizes that sex throws eir issues with gender into “high relief” because of genitals. E breaks up with Z to give emself space to figure out eir gender.

Kobabe meets many different transgender people after breaking up with Z. E first meets Melanie Gillman, who uses they/them pronouns. Phoebe begins dating Amila Cooray, a transgender man. Amila’s use of testosterone and lack of periods leaves a lasting impression on Kobabe, who explains eir nonbinary identity to Amila. Kobabe contemplates redownloading Tinder so e can finish eir fanfiction but decides against the idea and asks a friend to write all eir erotic fanfiction scenes.

Kobabe realizes e never has to have children, get married, date, or have sex. This series of realizations feels incredibly freeing. With Phoebe’s help, e also learns e can wear masculine briefs while on eir period and no longer has to wear feminine underwear that causes dysphoria. Kobabe’s journey after breaking up with Z makes it apparent that female pronouns are not right for em and that e is certainly not cisgender. Kobabe reconnects with Jaina Bee, a person e met originally in 2003, at a New Year’s Eve party in 2015. Jaina uses e/em/eir pronouns, which immediately resonates with Kobabe. Kobabe feels anxious about using new pronouns, and Jaina convinces em it isn’t worth the constant discomfort of using she/her/hers pronouns that don’t fit em. Kobabe develops a new metaphor for eir conception of gender as a landscape rather than a scale. Eir illustration shows an ocean and a beach, which transitions to forest and then mountains. E describes male and female as mountains and the sea and says that “[b]etween the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home” (196).

In winter 2016, Kobabe comes out to eir aunt Shari and cousin Michael. Aunt Shari views transgender people as having a “deeply internalized hatred of women” (200). Kobabe convinces her of eir feelings and identity, but Shari’s anti-transgender biases hurt Kobabe and cause em to doubt emself. Kobabe begins reading the book Touching a Nerve, which provides possible biological explanations for why transgender and nonbinary people exist.