Susan Stryker: "Sex-Change Science Fiction in the Radium Age"
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, medical scientists isolated and synthesized the so-called “sex hormones.” Genital transformation surgeries became more sophisticated, and advocates and bureaucrats crafted new administrative procedures for changing legal sex/gender. You might think that speculative fiction written during the “Radium Age” (1895-1935) would offer some insight into how popular culture imagined new possibilities for technologically-driven somatic sex-change—but you’d be wrong. In this preview of a forthcoming anthology of the few such stories known to exist, due out from MIT Press’s HILOWBROW imprint series in 2027, trans historian Susan Stryker explores the limited presence and curious absence of transgender themes in early science fiction.
Susan Stryker is the Clayman Institute's Distinguished Visitor.
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