How Maia Kobabe’s ‘Gender Queer’ became the most banned book in the country
Coming out as bisexual in high school had been relatively easy: Maia Kobabe lived in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area and had supportive classmates and parents. But coming out as nonbinary years later, in 2016, was far more complicated, Kobabe said. The words available failed to describe the experience.
“There wasn’t this language for it,” said Sonoma County’s Kobabe, 33, who now uses gender-neutral pronouns and doesn’t identify as male or female. “I just thought, I am wanting to come out as nonbinary, and I am struggling with how to bring this up in conversation with people. And even when I am able to start a conversation about it, I feel like I am never fully able to get my point across.”
So Kobabe, an illustrator who lives in Santa Rosa, started drawing black-and-white comics about wrestling with gender identity and posting them on Instagram. “People started responding with things like, ‘I had no idea anyone else felt this way; I didn’t even know that there were words for this’,” Kobabe said.
Kobabe expanded the material into a graphic memoir, “Gender Queer,” which was released in 2019 by a comic book and graphic novel publisher. The print run was small — 5,000 copies — and Kobabe worried that the book wouldn’t find much readership.
Then, last year, the book’s frank grappling with gender identity and sexuality began generating headlines around the country. Dozens of schools pulled it from library shelves. Republican officials in North and South Carolina, Texas and Virginia called for the book’s removal, sometimes labeling it “pornographic.”
Suddenly, Kobabe was at the center of a nationwide battle over which books belong in schools — and who gets to make that decision. The debate, raging in school board meetings and town halls, is dividing communities around the country and pushing libraries to the front lines of a simmering culture war. And in 2021, when book banning efforts soared, “Gender Queer” became the most challenged book in the United States, according to the American Library Association and free speech organization PEN.
Many of the titles that have been challenged or banned recently are by or about Black and LGBTQ people, both groups said.
“ ‘Gender Queer’ ends up at the center of this because it is a graphic novel and because it is dealing with sexuality at the time when that’s become taboo,” said Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at PEN America. “There’s definitely an element of anti-LGBTQ+ backlash.”
Some who have lobbied to have the memoir removed from schools say they have no issue with the author’s story or identity. It’s the sexual content in “Gender Queer” that is not appropriate for children or school libraries, they say.
“It’s not a First Amendment issue; this is not going against LGBTQ groups; we’re citing it for sexually explicit content,” said Jennifer Pippin, a nurse in Sebastian, Florida, and chairman of Moms for Liberty in Indian River County, where “Gender Queer” was banned from school libraries in the fall after Pippin filed a complaint.
The recent spike in book challenges has been amplified by growing political polarization, as conservative groups and politicians have focused on titles about race, gender and sexuality, and framed book banning as a matter of parental choice. Liberal groups, free speech organizations, library associations and some student and parent activists have argued that banning titles because some parents object to them is a violation of students’ rights.
The American Library Association counted challenges against 1,597 individual books last year, the highest number since the group began tracking book bans 20 years ago. In many cases, the titles that have been pulled aren’t mandatory reading but are simply available on library shelves.
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