Finding Nemo and transgender creatures

Abstract

In this short chapter I will explore the representation of transgenderism in popular culture. Using the framework of “natural diversity” adapted from a more recent stereotype in Joan Roughgarden’s book, Evolution’s Rainbow, I will read popular images of transgender beings (human and otherwise) as potential sources for the reconceptualization of binary gender. In her book, Roughgarden puts pressure on the Darwinian narrative of evolution by giving alternative interpretations of intermediate genders, cooperative behavior, and competitive struggle in the animal world. Arguing that researchers project narratives like “survival of the fittest” onto phenomena that could as easily be interpreted according to some other logic, Roughgarden allows us to see friendship systems between animals where other researchers have only seen competition; she replaces Darwin’s theory of “sexual selection” with a concept of “social selection” and she rejects “the primacy of individualism” in favor of cooperative development. Roughgarden’s interpretations of creatures that change sex, engage in same-sex erotics, or switch sex roles are refreshingly original and they reveal the extent to which contemporary theories of human cross-gender identification are limited by their commitment to dreary and unimaginative accounts of the body, the self, and diversity.