Read: Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones by Torrey Peters

I was planning to put this with the other books I read recently, because I don't feel like I have something profound to say about it. But when has that ever stopped me. So when my inadequate review didn't get shorter than three paragraphs no matter how hard I tried, I decided to give it its own post.

In Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones by Torrey Peters, joking revenge plans on The Cis go a bit too far, and two trans women start the apocalypse – they spread a thing that makes people unable to produce the hormones that shape bodies into gendered forms. Everyone depends on externally produced hormones their entire life, and, theoretically, has to choose which kind they prefer. It's such a nicely bizarre plot that I was incredibly excited to read this, and even more excited when a friend got me the paper book.

Even though nicely bizarre, it was also a hard-ish read, and not just because of the still sexist and anti-trans society, or the not-so-great relationship of the main characters. There are discussions, winks and nods to issues that tend to pop up in trans spaces, and I couldn't keep myself from trying to figure out if I'd get along with the main character and with the author. This isn't a great approach imo, but I totally got stuck in that mindset. And then there are the essentialist views of the main character, where for example, testosterone makes people aggressive or violent. (I am decidedly not talking about the clueless trans guy here, I thought he was a rather good representation of that type of trans man.)

Some things were super fun, like how boobs are carried proudly by people who take T, because look, I'm taking so much T that my body converts it, soooo much T, look.

In the end, my opinion doesn't matter much, since I'm not the intended audience – I'm pretty sure that this story is written mostly for an audience of people who personally experience transmisogyny. I read it from a distance, and confusion about positions aside, I definitely enjoyed that. Especially the ending, where two women get a chance to finally work to improve their relationship, now that the world has ended.