"Le mauvais genre " a graphic novel review

Hi friends;

Today’s post is a review of a graphic novel I have read a month ago, a book that got me thinking a lot, and helped me clarify a notion that I had little information about; I wanted to share also the little research I did about the subject mainly because of a video that went viral awhile now and showed how ignorant a lot of people are about that notion just like I was, so let’s get started.

The graphic novel’s name is “mauvais genre” the bad gender by Chloé Cruchaudet, what made me pick this book was its cover, which presents a women dressing a man a bra it looked like the story would be interesting which was the case, the story is the true story of Paul a soldier who would no longer stand his job during world war two and goes back to his city Paris, in order to not get recognize by authorities he would starts dressing up as a women, Paul will became Susanne for 12 years, after the amnesty he would go back to his old life as Paul yet nothing is as it used to be. The story’s main theme is gender and it was a term that I have heard about before but I never really paid attention to it, I just considered it as a synonym of sex while it’s not, gender is way complicated than sex.

Sex is just a biological classification, if a body produces ovals it’s classified as female if it produces sperm it’s classified as a male, the bodies that produces both or none are considered as intersex. While gender which took me longer to understand what it was is the person’s self representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual’s gender presentation. This is the simplest definition I could find, yet it’s still complicated, this video helped me understand more.

Back now to the book, so Paul was male by sex, yet his gender after 12 year of living like society wants or waits from a female to act, was torn between two genders beside the fact that he discovered that he was bisexual which is a different thing his sexual orientation wasn’t what made him go crazy by the end of the book, it was his gender he couldn’t accept nor understand that he was now after 12 years of being a women a transgender; this book made me realize that our gender isn’t like our sex that we are born with but is chapped by our society and the experiences we go through in our lives. 

What made me write this article was because one, I wanted to share a review about a book that I found so interesting, and well written and drawn, but also because of a video that have been getting a lot of buzz lately on facebook made by Adam lhlou or adouma like he calls himself, the video is either him acting or him being himself in both cases nothing justifies all the hate he got, all he’s doing is acting in what our society calls talking and acting a feminine way, which means he is different and that is something not well received by most people in this country, it’s like we all should be like this mental model they have in their mind to get their respect, any one with different gender than the usual would have some really hard time on this country, I’m not saying that this adam is transgender he could be like he couldn’t be a trans, but in both cases he’s hurting no one and a little research on the web and you would find out that he is normal or she is normal there is a lot of people just like him or her all around the word, gender is really complicated and no one has the right to judge others just because he belongs to the people considered normal according to society.

The problem is that some people or at least the ones commenting those really hateful comments on Adam videos are afraid to do that small research that would get them a bit knowledgeable and more tolerant and prefer to stay ignorant in that comfortable zone of ignorance, a really sad fact to end my post with but it’s the truth. 

 

Peace.