Gender Queer: A Memoir

Kobabe’s longest-lasting crush in high school is on a butch, punk girl who uses a boy’s name. E overhears eir crush talking about how much she loves David Bowie’s music. E decides to listen to David Bowie to have something in common with eir crush and asks eir dad for a cassette. David Bowie’s music resonates strongly with Kobabe due to the music’s LGBTQ+ themes and Bowie’s androgyny.

Kobabe begins exploring eir sexuality and relationship with eir body when e is around eleven years old. E begins fantasizing about having a penis and does not enjoy sexual activity when it involves directly touching eir genitals. Kobabe realizes e is primarily attracted to androgyny in others, further complicating eir understanding of eir sexuality. At this point, Kobabe does not have the language to conceptualize a third option as an alternative to being a man or a woman, which e draws as a seed sleeping in the soil that will sprout later in life (70-71). Without knowledge about trans people, e thinks of emself as “born with two half souls—one male and one female” (68). E also imagines an opposite to eir own situation: a long-lost twin who is a boy that wishes to be a girl.