French-Canadian author Sophie Labelle is touring the Okanagan as part of her Serious Trans Vibes Tour to discuss her webcomic series Assigned Male, which details the life of a transgender girl.

Labelle began drawing in 2014 while attending post-secondary to become an elementary school teacher. After her series gained international attention, she began to tour across the U.S. and Europe, giving talks and lectures to an array of audiences.

“When I was doing my U.S. tour and people started to see I was travelling all over the continent, people asked ‘When are you going to do a Canadian tour?’ so that’s how it happened,” said Labelle. “So I’ve started this tour and it will last until the beginning of May.”

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Labelle said that she has been in the area before and is excited to be bringing her talk to Penticton on Jan. 19 at the Penticton Art Gallery. Her presentation will touch on her background in creating the series and what she wants her audience to take away from her content.

“I talk a bit about how I got into these comics, which started as a hobby while I was studying to become an elementary school teacher,” said Labelle. “It became very big and started getting a lot of attention worldwide. So I’ve been travelling across the planet just talking about my work and the impact it has on people.”

“My goal isn’t too educate, it’s to create something for the trans community and queer people. So talking about issues in a way that is relatable for LGBTQ+ people,” said Labelle.

Labelle said her comics don’t show the characters undergoing gender or sex transitions, like is widely depicted in documentaries. She said she aims to be humorous throughout her work, primarily providing entertainment to this demographic like any normal comic series.

“We see trans people in documentaries in a setting that is meant to educate people who aren’t trans. So every time we see ourself reflected in fiction or the media, it’s always through that weird lens like you’re in a wildlife documentary,” said Labelle. “I never focus on the characters transitioning — in documentaries they explain what it is like to transition and what trans people go through — there’s nothing like that in my work.

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“I decided to evacuate it from the comic because the media keeps focusing on that and it often ends up being dehumanizing — whenever we see a trans person represented it’s always very dramatic, like when you talk about coming out, hormones and surgeries.”

Labelle said she has encountered hardships in everyday life because some people “feel that they don’t know enough about trans people, to know how they are supposed to treat you.” She recalled seeing a doctor recently who wouldn’t treat her for flu symptoms because “he wasn’t specialized in trans issues.”

“Very often people will see trans-ness as this weird objective knowledge that they need to acquire before even treating us with basic human decency,” said Labelle. “I think a lot of people read my comics and find out we’re just like normal people, not an academic subject.”

While her main goal is humour and entertainment, she also prides herself on creating a space within her comics that is safe and empowering and an overall message of positivity for the LGBTQ+ community.

This is also the hopes of the SOS Pride Foundation, the organization behind Labelle’s upcoming tour stop in Penticton. The organization’s treasurer and assistant transgender community director, Samantha Nystrom, said she had been following Labelle’s Facebook page, which is where she got the idea to book her on her tour.

Nystrom anticipates a good turnout for the event and hopes it will create meaningful discussions between the LGBTQ+ community and their allies. The presentation starts at 6 p.m. and tickets are $20 each on Eventbrite or a the door before 5:45 p.m.

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