Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - Gender Queer: A Memoir

Reviews tagging 'Panic attacks/disorders'

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

27 reviews

hawksrye's review

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4.75

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whitneymouse's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

2.0

25 reread: read again for a work book club. Did not like it more a second time. I stand by the one chapter about the brain research and the analogy about gender with the beach and mountains being the part I got the most out of but a lot of the stuff I mentioned before still makes me uncomfortable. Also, still doesn’t read like a coherent memoir. I feel bad but I think there has to be better books on this topic.

22 original: I read this for work. I knew that, since it's been banned a lot of places and because I work with students and in a library, eventually this topic would be brought up and so I wanted to be informed.

I've come to the conclusion that the reasons people are upset about this book on a large scale are the wrong reasons to not like this book. The author identifies as nonbinary and this is an adult memoir about that experience. That isn't a reason for the book to be vilified and people who are pretending it is are overreacting. Also want to note that this review will contain spoilers and also the author uses Spivak pronouns (e/em/eir), so I will use those when referring to em.

My reasons for disliking this book is that, to start, there wasn't really a "plot." Memoirs usually follow even a loose timeline and this one felt like it jumped around a lot and like there wasn't a greater point to them. It felt kind of like a collection of short stories made into a graphic novel. So I wasn't a super big fan of that.

Additionally, the author admitted to many strange behaviors for an adult in this book, which made me uncomfortable. These include:
-writing sexual fanfiction about One Direction while they were still teenagers and e was in grad school
-buying a sex toy, deciding e didn't like it, washing it and then regifting it to a sibling 😐 That story gave me the "Lena Dunham's rock story" vibes and made me so uncomfortable. That's too close for family.
-mentioning Plato's Symposium in a sexual fashion and then drawing a picture of it on a vase, which depicts an adult man and a much younger (read: probably teenage and therefore a minor) male engaging in sex. There are books about this situation where the point is to condemn the behavior. I felt very weirded out by that panel, especially because the point was for it to be sexual.
-The repeated refrain of "wanting to cut off my boobs". I have no issue with top surgery. If that's what's needed for a person to feel most comfortable in their body or in life, you do you. But I feel like the wording for this could have been worded so as not to give an example for TERFs and right-wing extremists to point at and claim that people are "indoctrinating" their kids to "mutilate" themselves.
-portraying a medical treatment in a graphically traumatic way. I understand this book has won an Alex award and has crossover appeal for teens. Due to that, many teens with a uterus may read this before they go see an OBGYN and that could make what is a relatively routine procedure traumatic or cause anxiety. I understand the need to explain how it made em feel and that e had such bad anxiety that e needed anxiety meds for the appointment, but cervical cancer screenings aren't something to play around with. It's necessary, even if you don't like it, for health reasons.

Honestly, I am of the opinion that this book was kind of middle of the road and that it probably wouldn't have been as hyped if it weren't for TERFs overreacting 🤷🏽‍♀️ I'm happy for people who feel seen in this book. I'm glad you're getting representation because that's important. I also want to note that there was a really good illustration used to explain what being nonbinary or trans felt like that I think would make it easier for cis people to understand. But I don't think that outweighs the lack of plot and other questionable moments in this book. I'm not the target audience, so I just want to be clear that I know it wasn't written with me in mind, but I read and love a lot of books that aren't "for" me. I think there are other books about the trans or nonbinary experience I would recommend before this one.

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