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Sometimes I feel like my sexuality is broken and my gender is broken. I feel like there are all these wires in my brain that were supposed to connect BODY to GENDER IDENTITY and SEXUALITY. But they’ve all been twisted into a HUGE SNARLED MESS.

Maia is hurt by eir aunt’s comment that genderqueer people reject their womanhood due to internalized misogyny. This is not how Maia feels, but e isn’t able to articulate why, and e spirals into self-doubt. Normative society treats “body,” “gender identity,” and “sexuality” as a well-integrated matrix, with a person’s bodily characteristics determining their gender identity and sexual attractions. Genderqueer people disrupt this matrix by challenging the very categories it is premised on. A book by Patricia Churchland helps Maia reaffirm that many bodies have nonnormative genetic, chromosomal, and hormonal makeups, explaining why some people felt a mismatch between their biologically assigned sex and their perceived gender identity.

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