#B: A graphic Medicine Graphic Novel
Gender Queer
Maia Kobabe
Onie Press, 240 pages
2019
978-1549304002
OK I want to be careful because I'm transfemme and transfemmes and transmascs share a lot in common but still have differences. But! The part in this book where Maia discovers the fetish "autoandrophilia" set off Kill Bill sirens in my head. I hadn't heard that term before, but I know where it's from. In the 1980s a psychologist named Ray Blanchard established the first transition guidelines for trans women in the US. The problem was, Blanchard was a huge freak, and part of his guidelines was separating "true transexuals" who just wanted to be feminine, traditionally attractive, heterosexual housewives, and the perverts who wanted to be any other kind of women. The latter category he described as men with "autogynophilia" a fetish for being and being perceived as feminine. The thing is, his test for autogynophilia includes stuff like, "does wearing lingerie make you feel sexy" and "do you find it arousing when your partner is larger and more masculine than you". And since Blanchard never tested this on cis women, he didn't realize that it would categorize most cis women as not real women but just fetishists with autogynophilia! He had discovered a very normal form of female sexuality in his trans patients and pathologized it into sexual perversion and used that as an excuse to deny medicine to trans women who didn't fit his idea of what women should be.
So when I'm reading this book and Maia say e are an autoandrophilia fetishist and are aroused by the thought of a girl sucking eir dick, I'm just like, that's the same fucking thing, you have normal male sexuality! It's not a fetish! Oh my god!
I know this is way too long for this assignment but whatever it's extra credit and that part drove me insane.