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Published October 23, 2025

Swapping Genders With My Ex

We saw our future in each other, one where both of us would change.
Swapping Genders With My ExOpening Description: “Swapping Genders With My Ex” is a comic created with various shades of grey and black inkwash. At the beginning, Cee is depicted as a white feminine-presenting person with long wavy hair and round glasses, and Chana as a white masculine-presenting person with darker, shorter curly hair and rectangular glasses. Both characters’ gender presentation changes throughout the comic. Panel 1 shows Cee and Chana bundled up in winter clothes and walking alongside the partially-frozen Fleuve-St-Laurent on Montreal’s South Shore. Trees line the banks, leafless. The caption reads “We both remember that day at the shore”.
Panel 2 shows Cee and Chana the previous summer in short-sleeved shirts and shorts, sitting on a dock with their feet dangling in the water. Words tumble from their mouths and into the water, colliding and combining mostly unintelligibly: a few legible words read “remember”, various street names, “when”, “where”, etc. The caption reads “The summer before, we’d fallen into an endless stream of chatter together - and subsequently, we had fallen in love.”
Panel 3 shows Cee and Chana back on the shore in winter. They walk towards the reader, heads bowed, expressions sombre. The caption reads “That day, we were silent”.
Panel 4 shows Chana clambering up a tree, a focused expression on their face. Cee watches, face obscured, hands in pockets.
Panel 5 shows Chana perched between the tree’s branches, staring thoughtfully off into space. The caption reads “I have a photo from what I think of as the ‘moment before’ - in it, Chana sports the toque I’d soon inherit.”
Panel 6 shows Chana and Cee sitting at the booth of a ‘50s-style diner, sharing a plate of fries. Cee is wearing a baggy sweatshirt, long hair tucked into a hat, sporting an anxious expression. Chana listens attentively. The text reads “Chana remembers me saying something a few months earlier about my first fruitless attempts at binding my breasts at age 12, feeling like my new body crept up around me and slashed down possibilities before my eyes”.
Panel 7 is a close-up of Cee in the sweater, which we now see is emblazoned with the Canada Boy Scouts logo. Cee is framed by Chana’s hands and the plate of fries. The caption reads “The words only came out because I was wearing the armour of Chana’s Boy Scouts sweatshirt.”
Panel 8 shows Chana leaping from their perch in the tree, a serene expression on their face. The text reads “But Chana hadn’t needed a talisman from me to find their words at the shore -”
Panel 9 shows Chana gracefully landing in the snow, bowing and smiling. Cee looks at them admiringly, applauding with mittened hands.Panel 10 shows Chana and Cee in an embrace, looking into one another’s eyes lovingly.
Panel 11 is a closeup of Chana and Cee pressing their foreheads together. With eyes closed, Chana says “I don’t think I’m a boy”. Cee looks up at them seriously, saying “No, I don’t think so either.”
Panel 12 shows Chana and Cee from the neck down, sitting on the metro and holding hands. Chana clutches Cee’s unworn mitten; Cee holds Chana’s unworn glove. The text reads “On the train back, we held hands - something we didn’t normally do.”
Panel 13 pulls back to a wider image of the metro car. Cee and Chana are only shown in outline, their figures totally black except for a few winking stars floating in their bodies. Where their hands are holding is a bright white spark. Mysterious clouds float around them. The caption reads “There was something alchemical in this contact -”Panel 14 shows the same image, only now Cee and Chana’s silhouettes have grown amorphous and are blending into one another. The white spark has grown. The text reads “ - like the exchange had already begun.”Panel 15 shows Chana and Cee sitting across Chana’s bed, Cee on Chana’s lap focusing with an eyeliner pencil in hand while Chana presents their face to be made up. The text reads “When we’d started dating, I’d worn great dramatic swoops of liquid eyeliner everyday…that evening, I did Chana’s make-up for the first time - their warm breath on my own bare face…”
Panel 16 is a super-close-up: Cee, now wearing the dramatic eyeliner, presses an eyelid to Chana’s. Their expressions are soft and gentle.
Panel 17 shows Chana and Cee facing each other, Chana now bearing the winged eyeliner and Cee’s eyes bare.
Panel 18 shows Cee seated on a chair in Chana’s bedroom, long hair gathered in Chana’s hands as they prepare to cut it. Cee’s expression is happy and excited. The caption reads “The exchange continued…”
Panel 19 is a closeup of the scissors cutting off Cee’s ponytail.
Panel 20 shows Cee smiling down at the shorn ponytail, which he holds. His hair is now choppy and short. Chana holds an electric buzzer, preparing to further style Cee’s hair.
Panel 21 shows Cee and Chana getting ready in the bathroom mirror. Chana applies lipstick and Cee drags a comb through his hair, which now looks a lot like Chana’s. The caption reads “...And most of the time, we were happy.”
Panel 22 shows Cee and Chana facing one another with blank expressions - Cee is much shorter and a bit rounder than Chana. Cee’s hair is long again, and he wears a hair barrette, denim shorts, tights, and a tshirt. Chana wears a plaid shirt over a tee and jeans. The caption reads “Despite our very different dimensions…”
Panel 23 shows them in the same position, but their clothes now swapped. Cee’s hair is short again and Chana has the barrette in theirs. This time they smile. The caption reads “...The majority of our clothes fit one another.”
Panel 24 shows Chana sitting down and Cee, mostly unseen, upturning a plastic grocery bag full of hair accessories onto their lap. Chana is beaming. The text reads “The day after my haircut, I presented Chana with all my old hair accessories.”
Panel 25 shows Chana beaming as they look at two barrettes which have landed in their hands.
Panel 26 shows them looking up suddenly with a worried expression, saying “But I don’t have long hair!”.
Panel 27 zooms out and we see that Cee is perched on Chana’s desk. He waves a hand breezily and says “You will, though.”
Panel 28 shows Chana and Cee at a cafe table, Cee gazing adoringly at Chana as they animatedly talk. Chana’s wearing more femme-y clothes and Cee is in Chana’s old plaid and jeans. The caption reads “I wanted - desperately - for Chana to be the last person I ever loved.”
Panel 29 shows Cee and Chana lying in bed, facing away from each other. Cee looks angry and upset; Chana looks sad and clutches a pillow. The caption reads “But just as our initial genders had matched each other’s aspirational ones, all of our deepest wounds seemed to align, too.”
Panel 30 shows them in the same position, but now the bed and pillows are replaced by the jagged rocks of the river shore. Both look hopelessly sad. The text reads “And eventually, that was too much to bear. The rupture was painful, and it was total.”Panel 31 shows Cee perched on the rocks of the shore, clutching their knees despondently as Chana gracefully but sorrowfully swims out of the panel. The text reads “I wasn’t just losing Chana. In them, I saw my former self. I had to say goodbye to her at the same time.”
Panel 32 shows Cee in Chana’s old clothes, sadly looking in the mirror. Chana’s old self peers back at him from the reflection. The text reads “I wanted to get rid of everything that reminded me of Chana, but my entire wardrobe consisted of their old clothes. I tried my best to make them my own.”
Panel 33 is split in half horizontally, with versions of Cee marching across the top, and versions of Chana along the bottom. Cee grows a bit bulkier and has a mustache and stubble by his “final form”. Chana’s hair grows long and they look happier. The caption reads “Almost a decade passed.”Panel 34 shows two pale versions of Chana and Cee from the time of their breakup looking bummed out and away from one another, with two more vivid versions of them turning towards each other a decade later and smiling. The caption reads “Chana and I ceased to be copies of each other, and the painful distance between us changed alongside our bodies.”Panel 35 shows Cee and Chana texting one another. Chana texts “Walk by the shore today?” Cee texts back “I’m in!” The caption reads “...And these new selves, unburdened, found one another.”Panel 36 shows Cee and Chana walking along the shore, much like the first panel of the comic. It is now early spring. Chana laughs and Cee beams up at them. The text reads “Chana makes me laugh harder than almost anyone, and their laughter makes me feel the proudest and funniest.”
Panel 37 shows Cee and Chana walking towards the reader. A gust of wind blows Chana’s long hair into their eyes while Cee gabs.
Panel 38 shows Chana smiling and clipping their hair into place with Cee’s old barrettes while he looks up at them tenderly. The caption reads “But I still sometimes glimpse my old self in Chana, and theirs in me.”
This comic was created through Crucial Comix's volunteer editing program. It was edited by Al Benbow and Sara Ryan.

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