Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Peters has used the spotlight to redirect focus onto many in this old guard.
The titular story, the books longest, is a western set entirely before our modern conception of transness.
The other three pieces launch the genre gamut from romance to dystopian sci-fi.
Notably, Peters seems to intentionally avoid writing into the trans experience.
She examines the messy underbelly of DIY trans culture, diving into the cringier aspects of queer growing pains.
Her collection asks the question, What if some people knew they were trans but refused to transition?
TheOutmagazine honoree is a nag, just someone in the way of a good time.
But he bristles at a trans womans description ofThe Silence of the Lambs a bleak psycho-sexual fate.
Stag Dancefeatures many characters who seem to be repressing their attraction to trans culture.
Does this actually make them trans?
Maybe, maybe not.
Once the games begun, the men challenge each other to win over the women.
For men new to the allure of femininity, being pursued is intoxicating.
Still, its not as if the effeminate lumberjacks are treated well.
Bottoms compete for their favorite butchs attention even as they face crude bullying.
Wanting to be a woman is an extremely punishable act.
Long passages of natural description set the scene as we encounter the whole of creation preened in bridal finery.
The narrator frets over his looks even though no mirror had ever befriended him.
As soon as he pins the triangle to his crotch, he becomes a target.
Options are limited for our tender lumberjack.
Meanwhile, The Chaser features two male students at a Quaker boarding school trapped in a vicious love affair.
The narrator is obsessed with what is super gay and what is hetero.
The narrator, however, soon discovers he enjoys sleeping with his bunkmate.
Its an intimate act of rebellion.
Suddenly, Robbie owns him.
Theres a secret that could destroy the main characters social standing.
So he ignores Robbie.
The narrator is too afraid of paying the cost for loving a boy.
Shame is his portal, another glimpse into the crossroads of sexuality and gender.
But this doesnt erase their gender deviance, merely complicates it.
Theres a romantic pang to these characters not quite reaching their full potential.
Pigs abound in these tales.
The narrator is a pig keeper in The Chaser.
Elsewhere, in Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, porcine critters offer an alternative form of hormone-replacement therapy.
Testosterone-fueled ranchers harvest third-rate estrogen from hogs and sell it on the black market.
The narrator is flailing, doing grunt work after a mysterious event has turned the world into a wasteland.
How possible is solidarity when everyones grasping over a dwindling stockpile of resources?
Only after the apocalypse do they reconnect, becoming comrades rather than lovers.
This isnt to say the vigilante trans group in the new world is free of petty catfights.
Any sustained group dynamic is a hard-won affair, full of strife and discord.
The term originally refers to a lack of obvious motive in certain Shakespearean characters like Hamlet and Iago.
A lumberjack wants to be a woman just because he does.
Gender, like art, Peters argues, is not always explicable.
Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.