Gender Queer

A person’s identity and sense of self is not only defined by themselves but altered by their environment and the people they interact with. In Gender Quuer, Maia Kobabe demonstrates how em is affected at a young age by other older figures that pass influence on em. A section that comes to mind is when Maia goes on a field trip to the beach with es class, e is told to put a shirt on essentially because that isn’t what “girls” do. “I walked to put my shirt on again. But I didn’t feel that I had done anything wrong. It was everyone else being silly NOT ME,” (Kobabe 26). This section is the one of the first times that Maia is confronted with a moment of miscommunication about gender identity and the vagueness of what it means to be a stereotypical boy or girl. When Kobabe says “I didn’t feel that I had done anything wrong,” it’s quite powerful because as a 10 year old child how could e have ever known about the “societal norms,” and how people are expected to behave. This becomes even more prominent because Maia feels comfortable in not wearing a shirt and takes it off to look like ems dad. The last part of the quote is interesting as it can easily be seen now with the backlash that Gender Queer is recieving as of late. Maia Kobabe isn’t the one “being silly,” it’s everyone else who is afraid to accept that people are not all exactly the same, the differences that everyone has is what makes the world fun.