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Jabin Botsford

Earlier this week, regular viewers of C-SPAN stumbled onto a truly singular moment of politics and television when John Neely Kennedy, the conservative 71-year-old senator from Louisiana, began to read aloud what sure sounded like it could be the beginning of a porn scene.

“I got a new strap-on harness today,” Kennedy drawled, peering through his spectacles from the dais of the Senate Judiciary Committee and reading the words into the official record of U.S. government. “I can’t wait to put it on you. It will fit my favorite dildo perfectly.” (He continued for a few more sentences, to the amusement of online politics watchers.)

The topic of the hearing was a new Illinois anti-book ban law, and Kennedy’s excerpt was from “<a href="https://amzn.to/3Ph3uwU" target="_blank">Gender Queer: A Memoir</a>,” a coming-of-age comic book by Maia Kobabe that was published in 2019 and became the most challenged book of 2021 and 2022, according to the American Library Association. Kennedy’s argument: that librarians alone shouldn’t get to “decide whether the two books that I just referenced should be available to kids.”

I called up Kobabe to talk about what, exactly, had happened. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune

Q: So … I take it you have seen the clip?

A: I have seen the clip. Another trans-activist friend texted it to me with a very “Congratulations and also I’m sorry” attitude.

Q: What was your first thought?

A: The main thing was it was very clear that the senator picked the one page out of a 240-page book that he thought would be the most shocking. And it’s interesting he chose to read the words without showing the images. Because the images on that page are not salacious at all — it’s an illustration of me sitting at my job, which was in a library, reading text messages from someone I was dating.

Q: “Gender Queer” is about you learning to define your own gender identity. Can you tell me how you came to write it?

A: I started writing an early draft in mid-2016. I was already out as queer to my family, but I wanted to come out as nonbinary and ask them to start using the pronouns that I use today — which are e, em, er — and I was having a really hard time explaining this. I have a supportive community. My parents are super open! But they hadn’t thought that much about gender identity. So the point of the comics were initially to be a tool to help me come out to my own family. A way to say: “This is what I’m talking about when I talk about gender. The pronouns are the tip of the iceberg.”

Q: The way protesters have described the book online — they make it sound like it’s marketed to 6-year-olds.

A: It keeps being called a children’s book. Senator Kennedy implied it was a children’s book. But I think that’s coming from a misreading of the comic-book form. “Gender Queer” is a comic, and in full color, but that doesn’t mean it’s for children. I originally wrote it for my parents, and then for older teens who were already asking these questions about themselves. I don’t recommend this book for kids!

Q: Having read it, I definitely wouldn’t give it to a grade-schooler in my life. But I could see recommending it to my kid if they were 17. If they were looking into chest binding, for example — I’d rather they learn about how to do it safely, as you discuss in the book, instead of winging it.

A: Many books that are being challenged often wrestle with a difficult topic, like historical atrocities, or experiences of racism, or something dealing with sexual health. In my opinion, books are one of the safest places to encounter that information for the first time. It’s less visceral than watching a movie or documentary. And you can go at your own pace. If something feels overwhelming, you can set the book down and walk away from it. I would rather young readers encounter information in books than in random unstructured Googling.

Q: Back to Senator Kennedy and the one page he read out loud. If he’d kept reading, we would have learned that the following page shows you and your partner beginning to have sex, and then you deciding you don’t actually want to have sex.

A: Right. The whole scene is really about consent. It’s about one character saying, “Hey, what we’re doing right now isn’t going the way I thought it would. It isn’t giving me the feelings I thought it was going to give me. Can we stop what we’re doing and do something else?”

This is the page that most conservatives cite when they say my book is too explicit. But it’s a scene about showing the reader that it’s okay, even mid-sexual experience, to stop and check in with your partner and say, “This isn’t working for me, and I need to back off.” I think that’s a message that’s important to share, and it’s not one that I heard often when I was a teenager.

Q: Something you thought might sound great and sexy in theory — the text messages you received — might end up not being what you expected. And if that happens, you can stop, and that’s okay.

A: Exactly. And also, fantasy is different than reality. You can fantasize about something that you don’t actually want in real life, and it doesn’t mean you’re wishy-washy, and it’s not shameful.

Q: I had never heard of your book until Senator Kennedy read it from the dais. That night I bought it. Does that happen often? That people end up hearing about your work specifically because activists are trying to make sure people don’t hear about your work?

A: I have so many readers telling me, “I heard about your book because it was banned.”

Q: Final question. In “Gender Queer,” you talk about loving to read queer erotic stories and books. If Senator Kennedy feels moved to conduct another live reading from the dais, might you have some recommendations for him?

A: I mean, could he just read some other passages from my book? There’s a whole passage where I talk about my asexual identity, and realizing that dating and sex might be something I don’t care about at all. There are parts where I wrestle with whether to come out and share nonbinary pronouns as a teacher in a classroom and whether or not that’s too political. There are other sections about connecting with friends and being met with love and support. He could read any of those other passages out loud. Literally any.

Society for Features Journalism, first place, Narrative Storytelling, 2017 

Livingston Award, finalist in Local Reporting, 2015 

Washington Post Publishers Award, 2014

Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest, winner, 2014.

Society for Features Journalism, third place, General Feature, 2014

James Beard Award, finalist in Humor, 2014

GLAAD Media Awards, finalist, Outstanding Newspaper Article, 2010

Edgar Allan Poe Award presented by Mystery Writers of America, winner, Best Young-Adult Mystery, 2016

Indies Choice Book Awards, finalist, Young Adult Book of the Year, 2016 

Pulitzer Prize finalist, Commentary, 2022

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Bryn Mawr College, B.A. in English

Johns Hopkins University, M.A. in Nonfiction writing

Monica Hesse is a columnist for The Washington Post's Style section, who frequently writes about gender and its impact on society. In 2022 she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the field of commentary. She's the author of several novels, most recently, "They Went Left."

Monica Hesse

Sen. Kennedy’s sexually explicit reading of ‘Gender Queer’ left some things out

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