Dissenting Pens

In doing so, it manages to address, without prejudice, the fear of becoming pregnant in a country where reproductive rights are not guaranteed.

An epistolary work that turns into an autobiography combining comic and poetic prose. This does not tell a story but rather describes transition as a common and essential existential state in the dance of our construction, deconstruction and or reconstruction of identity.

We all transition “to become”, so what justification can there be for transphobia?

Piracema is a graphic narrative about a short yet intensely symbolic journey towards the discovery of pleasure and sexual connection with another. 

It is no coincidence that the protagonist is a young woman with no clear references to the mechanisms of female sexuality, which is always portrayed as an obscure and foreign object until the end of the story.

A person with four eyes and goat horns is the graphic self that LittleGoat uses to depict their personal journey of deconstructing the gender binary that once confused them, until they discovered that it is not necessary to fit into either the feminine or the masculine to live.

A fictional graphic novel written collaboratively, that tells the story of two women, both sex workers, who enjoy playing football in a São Paulo neighbourhood. 

This is not merely a book where football serves as a moment of exclusively feminine leisure, but also a work where cisgender men are marginal figures, to the extent that it even passes the Bechdel Test (See more in Merriam-Webster, 2024).

Boy Dodói is a brief collection of graphic stories that seeks (and succeeds) in creating a space for both denunciation and humour about the world of dating. 

Based on stories shared by women and non-binary people who responded to a call on social media, the book illustrates the various forms of violence and mistreatment that cis-hetero men perpetuate in intimate relationships.

To address the violence that the state system imposes on people who do not fit within the gender binary, Kael Vitorelo chose a hybrid between graphic memoir and graphic essay. 

This is how Filosofia do Mamilo tells the story of the author’s nonconformity while simultaneously reflecting on mastectomy and other elective body modifications as spaces for experimentation and innovation.

Being a woman in a patriarchal society is no easy task, and one of the greatest and most common challenges is the internalisation of the symbolic dogmas associated with the female body. 

Helô D’Angelo addresses this topic from her own experience as a woman, describing, through the technique of cartooning, the processes of self-depreciation in which many women engage and the strategies she has found to reconcile herself with her own body.

In this webcomic available on the Agência Pública website, the authors use the tools of graphic journalism to narrate the challenges faced by individuals living at the complex intersection of disadvantages created by being women, migrants, and survivors of incarceration.

Initially published as a series of digital strips, Mundo Meio Roxo is a choral story that invites the reader to dive into a fantastic world where diversity is the norm, embodied by the protagonist, a cheerful travesti child.

This autobiographical work, initially shared on social media and later published in book format, recounts the author’s story with the aim of describing the psychological and social challenges involved in the process of gender transition.