Maia Kobabe, _Gender Queer_

 THIS IS THE graphic memoir that is being banned and attacked all over the country. Briefly, it is about Kobabe's personal journey of discovery that ey (Kobabe's preferred pronoun) are nonbinary and asexual.

The boiling outrage over it had led me to expect that it was quite a bit edgier, or more militant, or more confrontational, or more shocking, or more something than it is. There is a little bit of nudity, but not much--some sexuality, but not much. Kobabe's drawing style is clean, in a kind of juste milieu between realistic and cartoon-y. The story line is clear and easy to follow as Kobabe moves, sometimes painfully but nonetheless steadily, from one breakthrough realization to another. The book is eminently accessible.

So--is that the problem? Kobabe presents eir circumstances lucidly and unaffectedly, in a way that any middle school student could read this and understand. Is that why Moms for Liberty et al. are all frantic about it? If it were weirder, more avant-garde, more experimental, more out-there, more obviously intended for a niche readership, would the guardians of morality have left it alone?

Kobabe also makes the point that she has family and community support. Her parents are unreconstructed hippies who are somewhat bewildered by their offspring's development but want Kobabe to be happy and do their best to support em. Her school is a private, non-traditional one with a flourishing pride group. Ey have a lot to deal with, but eir parents are not bloody-minded Southern Baptists who rush em in to conversion therapy, and eir schoolmates are not out to bully em into suicide. 

Is that too a problem? That Gender Queer not only presents clearly and understandably that gender and sexuality are complex, but also makes clear that sympathetic and supportive communities exist, that not all one's fellow Americans are red-hot to judge and persecute?

I would not say that Gender Queer is one of the great graphic memoirs, but I am convinced it ought to be in every library for middle and high schoolers. It is a valuable and timely book.