Panic! Humanity's Cis-Heteronormative Fear of the Transgender Android

Abstract

Androids occupy a position of fascination within US pop culture and science fiction television, yet they rarely acknowledge their own experiences of gender. Reading Wendy the entertainment android from Syfy Channel's Dark Matter (2015–2017) as trans*, this article analyzes the material, cultural, and imagined bodies of the android through an intersectional lens of gender, sex, and race. At times, the article slips between different versions of the transgender android, wading through their cinematic representation, theoretical conceptualization, socio-cultural construction, and material reality, striving always to relate these overlapping categories to the android's trans* and technological body. First, the article delves into gender, race, and David Huebert's ‘species panic’, arguing that the triply othered transgender android would inspire a triple panic with direct ramifications for trans* bodies, especially trans women of color. The article then addresses the role of the multilayered cinematic, scientific, raced, cis-heteronormative gaze in the biopolitical ordering of life. Using Susan Stryker's theorization of passing and micha cárdenas's practice of the shift, the article then views sexual encounters as creating both the potential for and then panic of transgender otherness. This potential and potentially real panic then directly impacts the bodies of trans women of color and transgender androids through a reliance on sex work narratives and the commodification of sex.