How Banning Harms Self Expression in Gender Queer

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    In class, we've discussed mostly how book-banning harms the potential readers of those books, but banning harms the authors too. Most of the books we have read have incorporated the author's personal experiences, especially Gender Queer, a memoir of its author, Maia Kobabe. In this memoir, Kobabe expresses through comics eir personal experiences of eir journey of gender identity. Self expression is such an inate human thing, most people leave their mark on the world in creative ways, be that writing a book, writing their names on things, creating art, etc. Gender Queer does not tell people what to do or how to act (so its not pushing an agenda) it is simply Maia Kobabe sharing eir life experiences, gender identity, and pronouns. Also eir growth from internalizing eir feelings to having the confidence to share emself with others. Sometimes words are hard or there isn't language available to articulate what you want to say. Kobabe found a way to achieve this through the artform of comics because art is like another language and can sometimes convey more than words. So banning this book hinders Kobabe from expressing emself and sends the harmful and untrue message that eir life isn't acceptable or okay.