Reading: Manhunt

     Mild spoilers ahead. More focused on themes than plot beats or infodumps about the characters though.

 

    It's been too long since I've written a book review and I wanted to get in depth about an interesting book from a contemporary author. Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin is a book that takes on the tired trope of "what if only women survived an apocalyptic event" and revitalizes it with a transgender perspective. Considering that there were recent attempts to make a TV series out of Y The Last Man, a story which trots out this premise about "biological" sex that's been fucking tired since the 70s, it feels very necessary to have a trans take on the subject. I find too with a lot of SF/F (which is often adjacent or overlapping with horror) that a lot has absolutely regressed in the contemporary despite claiming some very by-the-numbers elements of progressiveness.

    And I should note, regarding the 70's, James Tiptree Jr's (aka Alice Sheldon aka Raccoona Sheldon) Houston, Houston, Do You Read? already had a far more nuanced look at a single sex future. Her story  pictured future humans as a series of female clones all coming from a small group of originating women with some clones on HRT in order to build muscle and handle physical tasks more efficiently. While everyone in this new world was female, it felt very much like our contemporary ideas of what gender is were totally obsolete. This was contrasted against male astronauts from the past who'd traveled through a time anomaly, who reacted brutishly and with horror to the world they'd just entered. Tiptree also authored The Screwfly Solution, which shares similarities to Manhunt for its virus that turns men into uncontrollable murderers, and to which one of Manhunt's characters makes a reference to in the book.

    I'll be upfront and say the concept for Manhunt didn't appeal to me originally- which is fine. Being an adult means being able to acknowledge when something might not be one's cup of tea, which bears no value judgement on the author or the quality of the work itself. I love horror but the idea of what sounded initially like yet another zombie/infection story did not appeal. And I suppose a cynical part of me feels very numb to anything threatening to be "it's [thing] but it's trans!"

    What got me curious, however, was the extremity of the responses I saw online from other transgender people before the book was even published and available to read. The general reaction from some trans people and allies was that the very premise was transphobic, or that an upsetting grim story could somehow harm them just by existing. I thought of the horrible treatment of Isabel Fall, whose story I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter was so maligned and seen as vicious by people who'd not even read the story, and some of which was motivated by petty grudges from other writers. I really hated the idea of Felker-Martin getting the same treatment. I knew, surely, a book like this would nuanced, complex, and coming from a very genuine place. I looked into the preview online.

    Then, as I'd expected due to TERFs featuring as antagonists in the book (and just for the sheer fact that the author is a trans woman), TERFs started viciously harassing the author and review-bombing the book. Enough was enough, I pre-ordered a copy. 

My copy of Manhunt. Gosh, that cover.

    What I didn't expect was to cry so much reading it. I've learned that the way I engage with media- whether movies, books, comics, television- is not to see myself in it. Characters that are fun or who I find likable aren't necessarily ones that are like me or share my views, I just want to see stories that captivate me, characters who feel real and tangible. Perhaps some of that disconnect really is that there isn't a lot of media out there where trans people are more fleshed out, where they're not stuck in perpetual loops of Oscarbait style tragedy and trans 101 information for cis readers. And then you crack open a book like Manhunt with its lovable, flawed, hurt, and very real trans characters. Beth, Fran, Robbie. What an unexpected surprise too to see another trans masc Native alive in the text. This of course doesn't change the way I'm approaching media in general (it feels like a very identity politics thing to want to literally see yourself and no one else in a character) but it's cool when it happens.

    Manhunt is a lush yet gritty book. It's prose is sometimes flowery, sometimes very blunt and raw. It's a dark bruise of a book with gorgeous flourishes of color. Felker-Martin gives as much stunning detail of forests and moss and the beauty of New England as she does in descriptions of viscera, scabs, boils, wounds, pus, blood, vomit and shit. It's wet and creepy.

It's a good book though.

    What I also didn't expect was how extremely funny the story would be- laugh out loud funny. Gallows humor funny. It's an extremely online book and by the nature of all the topics it touches on, it absolutely has to be. In so many ways- especially politically- the space has collapsed between the "online" world and irl. Of course there'd be memes and pop culture references and online discourse and the niche kind of drama that queer people experience online and off. I won't spoil all the best bits or give away too much story, but I genuinely lost my shit at "As in soyboys? Soyface? That's real?" at the mention of a doctor processing phytoestrogens in a lab setting.

    There's funny (and sad) commentaries on queer community specific strife too. The "progressive" communal housing situation with the type of white queers that feel it's aggressive if a trans woman asks them to do their own dishes. Old lesbian drama. The untrustworthy cis ally that overperforms allyship. The ways that racism or ableism or fatphobia go unchecked in spaces that perform a welcoming environment or some promise of safety.

    The world has been turned upside down by a virus that turns anyone with enough testosterone in their bodies into cannibalistic rapist monsters. Beth and Fran are Manhunters, two trans women who hunt the feral dangerous men that roam the land in order to harvest their testicles and kidneys. Their friend Indi uses these to process and produce estrogen for trans women, menopausal people, people with PCOS and to prevent male children from hitting dangerous puberty. It's a fraught and dangerous process but the consequences of running out of hormones are even worse. In the world of Manhunt, detransition is death of the self for trans women, but a reality for the survival of trans men like Robbie, who Beth and Fran meet quite by accident in the woods. It's so interesting to see a book handle the intense fear about this aspect of transition- where in real life medical conditions or societal pressures force people off HRT, but that detransition can also have devastating psychological consequences. Heavy stuff even without a world overrun by zombies and the potential to become one if your hormones dip the wrong way.

    In this brutal new world, a fascist militia of TERFs has grown to numbers that have allowed them to annex and conquer surviving territories while killing or enslaving any trans woman or amab nb they can get their hands on. The portrayal of how fascists operate is chillingly accurate and is a testament to their influence and ability to prey on others hurt and fears. The women in this militia aren't faceless monsters, in fact one of the prominent characters in the book, Ramona, is a very fleshed out and even sympathetic despite being exceptionally fucked up as a person. You can understand her hurt and trauma and why the TERFs appealed to her- safety, belonging, some sense of control over a world gone mad, and the words of an inspiring charismatic leader. You are not asked to forgive or excuse characters like Ramona, just understand the forces that shaped them and their choices along the way. No character is a cardboard cut-out, no character is evil "just because." The most interesting thing about Ramona is that she visits trans sex workers while being a part of an organization that seeks to exterminate them. There's echoes there of historical figures like Ernst Rohm, the gay Nazi who foolishly thought he'd be exempt from the fate belying other homosexuals.

    Our protagonists also aren't stuck in the YA-influenced fiction mode of "we root for them because they're inherently good and make good moral choices." They're just people trying to survive and make the right decisions in a world that offers them so little comfort or respite.

    What's interesting too about the XX militia is that much like the ideology itself, they create a sinister copy of the patriarchy they swear to reject. Theirs is a world of violence, imperialism, rape, abuse, eugenics, and class inequality that harms cis women too. One of the most on point scenes has a TERF pushing insistently to touch another woman sexually despite the woman saying "no" repeatedly, and then upon finding the other woman has a cock the TERF accuses her of being the rapist. It brings to mind the way one of the most vocal TERFs that was featured in an interview some months ago was a notorious and violent rapist of cis women.

    I also was quite interested in the way that Manhunt talks about class and about wealth- even in a world that exists without money these structures and those that benefit from them remain in place. Sophie Widdell, a rich bunker brat and a character I can best describe as an amalgamation of Elon Musk and Grimes, is someone who illustrates that so well. Beth, Fran, Robbie and their doctor friend Indi are brought to Sophie's underground compound when Indi accepts an offer to work for her there. Immediately we are shown the disparity between the haves and the have-nots, with suffering migrant workers camped above ground while the rich and primarily white live comfortably and securely down below. 

    A recurring theme in Manhunt is the allure of safety and status- the things that people will do (or will ignore) in order to get their slice of the pie. While this is certainly heightened in the post apoc setting of the book, these are little decisions that people under capitalism make every day. Staying silent when you witness someone being harassed, not pushing back against authoritarianism or unjust laws, accepting work that contributes to the harm of others. These are decisions people make and justify.

    Indi is a character I really loved as well. It's rare to see fat characters portrayed so lovingly. With Beth, Fran and Robbie we see their relationships to their bodies, their dysphoria, and how they relate physically and compare themselves to others, notions of passing and not passing by cis standards. There's an interesting contrast between Beth and Fran in how they perceive themselves, are perceived, and relate to each other. With Indi too we see an exploration of her physicality, her complicated feelings about self image, her frustration at living in a world that views her body unkindly. But there also is pleasure. So much of the book relates to the body- whether it's about injuries, or sex, or looking at oneself in the mirror. There is celebration of othered bodies and defiance of normativity.  

    Sex features prominently in the book along with rape and with all the uncomfortable little grey areas in between. Characters fantasize about their would be murderers, fascists lust after those they wish to see eradicated. Friends seek comfort in each other and in desperation to affirm themselves. Sex is beautiful and horrifying and tender and abject and objectifying and affirming- sometimes all at once. I like that the author's stance is never to shy away from sex, nor does she seek to make a clear delineation between hot and horrible. Sex is fucked up sometimes and it can still be titillating to read about (or for those involved). I can understand why that puts people off, but I'd rather not have everything sugar coated for me. 

    Beyond themes in the story that were appealing and handled well, the author has a very good sense for pacing and tension. The book is action packed but not overly relentless. Humor and quiet moments, meaningful character building, the relationships between characters and jumps between different points of view keep the story balanced. The action and violence are heart-pounding and very cinematic, the stakes are high and I was very invested in the survival and well-being of Beth, Fran, Robbie and Indi as well as friends and comrades they make along the way.

    I blazed through the book in a couple late nights and felt a lot like a kid again who was staying up way past their bedtime reading novels. If you want to read a trans story that's refreshing, fun, scary, exciting and heart-breaking (in a good way) definitely pick up a copy for yourself.