Trans Without Trans?

Abstract

This chapter examines the tensions between contemporary understandings of transgenderism and the depiction of easy, routine sex changes in John Varley’s works. Looking at the novel Steel Beach and a variety of stories, including “The Barbie Murders,” “Picnic on Nearside,” and “Options,” the chapter contrasts developments in contemporary trans theory to Varley’s depiction of the body as plastic and, at least potentially, detached from questions of (gender) identity. Although Varley’s work does not precede public discourses on transgender, it does offer alternative ways to think about the relationship between corporeal sex, gender identity and expression, and embodiment. In depicting a future in which sex changes are easy, affordable, reversible, and a relatively minor form of corporeal plasticity in a world which embraces bodily technologies such as “Venus Lungs,” Varley’s work prompts us to think differently about the future of gender. There are no “wrong bodies” in Varley’s worlds, leaving the question of embodiment and identity outside of contemporary popular and medical discourses about trans people.