This is one of many great illustrations by Jeffrey Lewis that appears inside Gender & Sexuality for Beginners.
  • Jeffrey Lewis
  • This is one of many great illustrations by Jeffrey Lewis that appears inside Gender & Sexuality for Beginners.

(Jaimee Garbacik and Jeffrey Lewis will read at University Book Store on Friday, July 5th at 7 pm. The reading is free.)

If you want a symbol of how little thought we put toward gender, consider the stick figures on the doors of public restrooms. One wears a skirt; the other, presumably, wears pants. Boom. One binary choice. You don't even need to be able to read to get it. But just about everybody understands now that a significant portion of the population doesn't fit into that binary, and more progressive corners of society are pushing for us to understand that the "binary" is actually a spectrum of sexuality and gender. But people seeking some level of understanding when it comes to, say, transgender issues might have a hard time educating themselves—after all, asking someone you barely know about their genitals is pretty much as rude as you can get. So how can you expect people to learn?

Local author Jaimee Garbacik's Gender & Sexuality for Beginners (For Beginners, $16.99) is a skinny book that aspires to cover a lot of ground. Here you'll find chapters on the history of feminism, a timeline of the fight for gay rights, a dismantling of the idea that certain genders are born predestined for certain tasks, and a biological discussion of sexuality and gender. It's a book that anyone at any educational level can pick up and start reading...

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