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Trans Humans & Transhumans

Essay I wrote for my first university class ever. A discussion on transgender people and their affinity/appreciation for cyborg beings and robots.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
31 views16 pages

Trans Humans & Transhumans

Essay I wrote for my first university class ever. A discussion on transgender people and their affinity/appreciation for cyborg beings and robots.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Trans Humans &

Transhumans
A brief reflection on the
transgender affinity for
cyborgs, robots, and
androids in media

KJ Jean
ENG201 TR
June 8th, 2023

1
In the Absence of a Mirror

I’ve always wanted to write the beautifully moving pieces that my transgender peers do

about what it is to transform your body. I want to be able to put into words the relief and

heartbreak of coming out to yourself, or the numbness of coming out again and again to

coworkers and nursing assistants. I want to write something, anything, describing the feeling of

having your pronouns and “preferred name” listed on a hospital bracelet as I found mine to be.

Trans people spend so much of life focused on just surviving as transgender, on maintaining our

bodies and navigating a world that constantly rejects us. I do not pretend that it isn’t crushingly

difficult. The narrative that transition is immoral and deviant permeates the 556 American bills

proposed thus far, just six months into the year. Americans see no interruption in news regarding

the most recent state to limit access to healthcare or the newest story of a hate crime, both the

victim and their trans siblings reduced in print form to a set of genitalia. I dream about creating

fluid descriptions of an estrogen injection, or accurately explaining the sensuality of using

testosterone, and yet I am aware of how monumental a task that truly is. Members of the

transgender community face repeated dehumanization, both in life and death. Is it not a mark of

our own humanity, then, for trans people to continue to see the beauty in an experience not

always so beautiful?

As evidenced by more popular works of trans literature, the transgender community is not

often approached in a way that leaves room for sentimentality. As defined by McNeil et al. trans

as a descriptive term refers in modern circles to “a diverse range of people whose personal

experience of gender is different from the conventional construction of gender as associated with

the sex they were assigned at birth (McNeil et al. 2017)”. Yet in analyzing the autobiographical

takes of transgender peers on their own transitions, a number of concerns regarding this diversity

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become apparent to the discerning eye. The vast majority of artists, writers, and academics

upheld as the narrators of the transgender story are ethnically European, a known issue through

the trans community as a whole. Such works coming from these privileged (namely white)

backgrounds are disturbingly lacking in the representation of those who do not fit those narrow

categories (Hausman [Stryker], 337). What about those who are not white, or those who are in

some form disabled? What about those without the option of taking the courses that gave me the

ability to even view the articles I reference here? The Transgender Studies Reader, a fascinating

compilation of significant works of gender study, currently costs over $75 on Amazon, with the

PDF accessible to me only by providing my academic login from the moderately expensive

university I attend. A well-referenced TED talk by Vicki Estrada discussing the vast social

negatives of transitioning has received millions of views, with multiple lectures and essays by

Estrada on the positives of being transgender remaining hidden behind paywalls. The culture of

liberal arts and sciences from which such analyses originate often cites the cisnormative barriers

to transition, to the heterosexual standards that slam doors in our faces. Yet there is little

reference to those who have made it through these doors and did not prop them open. Can we

surmise that this is because the privileged few who represent the trans community are not

interested in their fellow members? Or can it be because those who have made it past the barriers

are overly invested in rejecting the very concept, feeling a need to assimilate with the norm in

order to continue to reach a wider audience with their work (Thanem [O’Shea] 2011)? We find a

mass of transgender opinion and experience condensed into one, easily swallowable, bitter pill

for the masses. This lack of representation for so many within the community leads to finding

relevance in the non-trans, forced to create imaginary connections with characters and parasocial

relationships with actors. Where else would we go to see us?

3
Network Access Points

In an excerpt from her book Changing Sex Bernice Hausen, a self-identified transsexual

woman, explains that “collecting the autobiographies of successful transsexuals—either through

personal contact or by print media—constitutes an important part of transsexual

self-construction, self-education, and self-preparation for encounters with clinic personnel”

(Hausman [Stryker], 337). The chapter in its entirety is located in The Transgender Studies

Reader (Stryker) which is, ironically, where I first came across it. Hausman goes on to reference

Sandy Stone’s essay “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-Transsexual Manifesto”, including that

transgender people are not just collecting such trans-focused literature, but filing it away for later

and necessary use (Stone, 155). As I came into my own personal definition of what it means to

be a trans person, I also began to instinctually analyze (read: collect) the feelings of my

community members around what it meant to be an other, simultaneously above and below

human in the same body within the same moment in time. Patterns undoubtedly begin to appear

when you look closely enough at any one thing, and it was not long before I could identify an

appreciation and affinity among transgender-identified internet accounts for cyborgs, robots, and

the concepts therein. Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto explains the cyborg as “the

illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism”,

describing the “fatherless” nature of the beast and the social stigma this automatically comes

with (Haraway 9-10). One can make the connection here between the cyborg’s lack of blood

family and the estrangement of familial relationships known to happen during gender transition,

as well as the sociopolitical rejection of transness as valid identity. Transgender folks online can

often be seen engaging in “discourse” about characters that helped them realize they identified as

transgender, referencing an uneven ratio of aliens, cyborgs, and robots to actual human

4
characters. Hundreds of popular transfemme accounts on Twitter have donned screenshots of

Serial Experiments Lain as profile pictures, enamored with Yasuyuke Ueda’s 1998 anime series

about the meek and isolated Lain Iwakura, capable of uploading her consciousness to a future

version of the Internet via implanted wiring throughout her body. Transgender men on the

popular blog site Tumblr went through a fascinating period in 2012, consistently citing John

Silver, the animated cyborg father figure in Disney’s 2002 film Treasure Planet, as “transition

goals”, i.e. a representation of the visible effects they desired after a long term on testosterone.

Though I can no longer locate their profile, I recall a nonbinary makeup artist on DeviantART

creating a series of instructional posts on using makeup to draw realistic-looking metal joints and

rivets on the arms and legs, saved by many users of the site to recycle in cosplays and day-to-day

fashion. Why do the concepts of cyborg politics and the cybernetic individual, be it cyborg or

robot, relate so heavily to members of the trans community? I consider this to be a result of

cyborg tech being a post- and transhuman condition, with transness falling under these umbrellas

as well.

This cataloging of one’s personal reference points for the future self mimics a computer,

forming a paper trail of sorts that medical personnel or mental health specialists can easily

follow. And in doing this, transgender people are often reduced to a list of medical terminology,

the words initially published in the 1980 edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of

Mental Disorders (Stone, 153). The words that trans people must use in a clinical setting are

required to be something familiar to a person who is in all regards a stranger, forming the

primary barrier between who you are and what they think you should be. The utilization, then, of

cyborgs, androids, and robots within trans culture points heavily to this knowing and unknowing

of self. We can easily separate the cyborg from its human counterpoints, the “us” from the

5
“them”. And this is of course a reflex, not necessarily an instinct, driven by a need to protect the

flock, herd, or what have you. Transgender people must explain that they too are part of the “us”,

and if not, find beneficial comparison to others within the same identity to form a group that will

not be othered as “them” (Hausen [Stryker 337]). In this manner many transgender ideas fall in

line with Haraway’s concept of the cyborg as a creature of a postgender world, an existence

where the boundaries of sex and gender hinder advancement in a way that is truly untenable

(Haraway, 8).

A Prosthetic Imagination

Within the circumstance of experiencing cultural stigma around transness, the difficulty

of creating a sense of self comes with the inability to avoid censorship. The use of media as an

extension or supplement of the human has created an ability to use artforms like television as

prosthetic imagination, a way to envision oneself in a different set of parts. Mark Seltzer’s

analysis on Henry Ford’s autobiography contains an idealistic description of the prosthetic, akin

to Haraway’s idea of cyborgs as regenerative, especially after injury (Haraway 67). Seltzer looks

critically at Ford’s idealistic assembly line, devolved into sets of jobs ranging from those which

only the able-bodied could undertake, down to minutely simple tasks that Ford would

intentionally hire disabled workers to perform:

“If from one point of view, such a fantasy projects a violent dismemberment of the natural body

and an emptying of human agency, from another it projects a transcendence of the natural body

and the extension of human agency through the forms of technology that supplement it. This

double-logic of technology as prosthesis (as self-extension and as self-mutilation or even

self-canceling) begins to make visible the interlaced problems of the body and uncertain

agency. (Seltzer [Jain] 1992, 157)”

6
The medicalization of transgender bodies is a result of transition being seen both as a

self-extension and self-mutilation; it is the addition and subtraction of pieces and parts. And as

those with atypical parts are judged on the sum of said parts, whether from disability or transition

or something else entirely, so too is the robot. The viewer may find solace in such a character

fitting in and belonging, or empathetic understanding in stories about being removed from the

norm. In this way, the plight of the robot within the bulk of such characters acts as a container for

the existence of the aforementioned lack of human agency. One can visualize that within this

container lies an imbalanced see-saw, the fulcrum containing the definitive traits of humanity.

The leftmost section holds the traits that categorize the subhuman; this can and often does

include a lack of empathy for humankind, an uninviting appearance, or perhaps an aggressive

nature. The rightmost side is where one can place superhuman qualities: high intelligence,

exaggerated physical ability, and in many cases extreme violence. For each robot, cyborg, or

android you can reduce them to traits and parts, add each one to the side of the see-saw it belongs

on, and reveal which side leans heaviest. This will undoubtedly answer the base question of how

close they are to humans, but it will leave much room for error, especially when the “acting” of

such humanity is antithetical to the very idea of human nature (O’Shea 2018).

This question of what is below and above the concept of human has plagued me for much

of my life. While some of my transgender peers had unhindered access to the Internet, searching

databases and social media for evidence of the gender crisis they experienced, I began to look for

answers in the form of daytime television. My obsession with Grey’s Anatomy began in middle

school, racing to pre-program the DVR after my parents left for work so I could rewind the

reruns after class. Every weekday, from 3:04 to 6:08, I would sit in my dad’s La-Z-Boy recliner

and watch the episodes I hadn’t seen, mulling over Meredith’s relationships and writing down

7
medical phenomena to later Google during my monitored timeslot with the family computer. I

spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to determine which female character I was most like;

was I intelligent and reserved like Cristina, or overly empathetic and motivated like Meredith? I

didn’t much care for the emotionality of Izzy, and knew I was definitely not like the intimidating

and maternal Dr. Bailey. It did not occur to me that I could, in theory, relate to the male

characters with no extra effort, until I watched “Begin the Begin”, the 13th episode of the show’s

second season. The story of Bex Singleton is woven through a lengthy B-plot involving Izzy’s

affair with a patient who, incidentally, is a medical cyborg. Though this patient was incredibly

fascinating to me, and by no means unimportant to the premise of cyborg politics, the story of

Bex affected everything I thought I knew about my self.

Bex is by all appearances a “normal” teenage girl, brought into the hospital experiencing

the painful enlargement of a pelvic lymph node. Testing reveals that Bex has been taking very

large doses of birth control in an effort to grow her chest, saying “I wanted to be normal for once

in my life” (Koenig 2006). Though the parents ascribe the reasoning to be run-of-the-mill school

bullying, Bex emphasizes that this bullying is only partially to blame for vast feelings of despair

and suicidality. I remember feeling a wide range of emotions at this point in my first viewing of

the episode, both from Bex drawing comics, which I was also interested in doing, and the

bullying for “looking like a boy”, not uncommon by any means in teenage circles. Both the

enlarged lymph node and Bex’s lack of development stem from the same internal issue: Bex is

physically a hermaphrodite.

Secluded in a hospital meeting room, Bex’s parents and doctors argue over whether or not

Bex belongs on one side of the gender spectrum or the other. A psychologist informs the parents

that intersex kids “have a choice to make” and will at some point with the advent of this news

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begin to identify very strongly with one sex, not always the sex in which they were raised

(Koenig 2006). The doctors emphasize that Bex will need to make this decision, with the parents

asserting that Bex is a girl, and do not want Bex to know. Because Bex is a minor this is

technically up to the parents, and all three physicians have serious qualms about that. The parents

request that the parts of Bex that are intersex, namely the single testis found in place of an ovary,

be secretly removed to protect their child. This is medically and nonconsensually a form of

sexual reassignment surgery, often performed on the intersex as close to birth as possible and

resulting in the absence of the patient having any say later on in how they want their body to

function (Morland 2022). When the parents finally concede to the physicians, informing Bex of

the results of the pathology, Bex exclaims “does this mean I could be a boy?” And in that

moment, Bex’s choice is clear. It would be tragic to remove an organ that has answered, in all its

suddenness, the psychosocial question of where Bex fits in the world.

Inhuman Identities as Humanizing

In conceptualizing the psychosocial place of the robot, we can turn to a very modern

example: Comedy Central’s science-fiction cartoon Futurama. Saorise Caitlin O’Shea dryly

references the show’s robot character Bender in her essay “I, robot?”, analyzing the

dehumanization of transgender people in politics and media. O’Shea cites a second article by

Pullen and Rhodes criticizing the episode “Raging Bender”, in which Pullen and Rhodes ask

whether a robot, sexless and metallic, can crossdress. “Raging Bender'' follows the character’s

push to become a robot wrestler, a reference to The Twilight Zone episode “Steel”. Both plots are

built on the foundation of Richard Mathesen’s critical look at the replacement of humans,

specifically boxers, with robots in his work Real Steel. Each step of the unraveling of reference

and parody in “Raging Bender” traces back to the posited question of whether or not a machine

9
can perform as human. While it is obvious that Bender’s crossdressing is the butt of a

queer-focused joke (it was the year 2000, after all), does his ability to don drag embody the

Butlerian concept of gender as performance (Bodies That Matter, [1993] 122)? Does this robot

even have a gender to cross and if so, does the enactment of gender roles indicate their necessity,

or uselessness? And if gender did not exist, would crossdressing? Is Bender subverting gender or

reinforcing it, establishing the hyperbolic and overzealous portrayal of gender as a set of physical

traits and visual aids (O’Shea 2018)? Bender’s repeated drag performances are also heavily

sexualized in the context of Futurama, akin to the sexualization of trans bodies as tools for the

cisnormative gaze. In O’Shea’s perception, the necessity of identifying as just one of two

heteronormative genders is another way to dehumanize and pathologize trans people (O’Shea

2018). O’Shea describes the ways trans people are likened to robots and cyborgs: feared and

vilified for their nearly superhuman potential in some circles, and in others loathed and

subjugated for what is seen as subhuman weakness. Are we trans humans, or transhuman?

The advent of television allowed such atypical stories to be broadcast directly into the

homes of those who needed them most. The first television episode of Gene Roddenberry’s Star

Trek franchise debuted in September 1966, a work intended to fill a valuable niche in science

fiction media and create an opportunity for social commentary. Star Trek: The Original Series

aired amidst public opposition to the Vietnam War, ending just prior to Neil Armstrong

becoming the first man to set foot on the moon. The Next Generation, Roddenberry’s follow up

to the acclaimed series, completed its own run the year that AIDS became the leading cause of

death for Americans between the ages of 25 to 44. Understanding both the long-term effects of

AIDS on the global queer and trans population and the use of Star Trek as a political means of

expression, one can compare the plight of Data in the episode “The Measure of a Man” (1989) to

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an allegorical transgender experience. Data’s transference from his regular post on the USS

Enterprise is not known to him, at first, to be a result of prejudice. Though he is loyal to his

employer, and is sentient enough to have friends and lovers, a Starfleet commander who until

this time was barely aware of Data’s existence determines unilaterally that he should be

disassembled for the purpose of study. The commander, known as Maddox throughout the

episode, reassigns Data, claiming that because he lacks sentience there would be no reason to

seek the transfer through proper channels, choosing instead to use his hierarchical authority to

forcibly remove Data from his home. As often happens in episodes of Star Trek, there is both a

political and moral spin behind the plot: if one could not do this to a human, why should this

work on an android?

Data’s sentience is assuredly defended by Captain Picard, who throughout the

long-running series is referred to as a friend of Data, at least often enough to remove any doubts

that Data is capable of relating to someone human. Maddox is forced to back down, as expected.

The 50 minute runtime is up, and Data has returned to his post, veritably proven sentient. This

begs the question, why would Data’s sentience need to be proven at all? If he has the ability to

express he was displeased with the transfer, and when he so obviously had a crew that he was

emotionally connected to and loved by, how could this have been the choice by Maddox? Was

Data unsettling to him? It certainly seems so, given his emphasis on Data as a tool rather than a

being. Could it have been Data’s unusual eye contact? Maybe his slightly unstable gait, or halted

way of speaking? Was his vocabulary too large, or his facial expressions too minute? Could it

have been his unexplainable affinity for a very specific color…

If this is starting to sound a bit familiar to you, I want you to know that it is intentional.

The cataloging, the mannerisms, the immediate othering by so many members of the group that

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trans people should belong to, unquestioningly, as humans; the need to prove oneself, the need to

explain that they are people rather than parts. This is the transgender experience, especially in the

realm of those community members who don the labels of disabled, autistic, or mentally unwell.

To love and be loved is not enough to prove sentience; they need more. Like Data, trans folk

explain that they are not quite like the others who are invariably around us. And like Data, the

defense of those closest to us is often a requirement just to attempt to explain our truth. As the

world has not often been kind enough to allow trans people to experience a life without

consequence, neither are the books found in the finite library of a gender clinic. The knowledge

of the doctor claiming to be an “expert” on the process of a medical transition will not align with

the patient in front of them and yet one must trust them, even after they have referred to a

specific surgery with a specific name as a “sex change” for the seventh time. By reading the

works of those who were successful in their transition, trans people are ever closer to achieving

the form they truly want, for varying reasons (Hausman [Stryker], 336). With the term successful

I aim to emphasize that one must be convincing and privileged enough to acquire the prescribed

diagnosis for just the opportunity to be seen by a surgeon, much less have the procedure properly

performed, healed, and paid for. Transgender people are forced to “game the system”, portray a

convincing (but not unsettling) visage of a man disturbed and confused, or a woman at odds with

the trauma of her assigned sex (Hausman [Stryker], 337). Even when this couldn’t be further

from the truth, trans folk are forced to cherry-pick from the list of symptoms the doctor will

expect and regurgitate them without appearing too knowledgeable, as though they are aware this

is all just a game. Transgender people like myself temporarily align with the original assumption

of the obstetrician who removed us and declared that we were either born correct, or needed

12
correction. We tell the doctor we are depressed but not suicidal, anxious but not riddled by

compulsions. We must indicate that our current existence is painful. Please help us make it stop.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Transitioning, or the task of identifying as transgender, is not something that truly has a

stopping point. It is continuous, a fluid motion involving blood tests and hormone adjustments,

surgeries and revisions. Trans folk will reveal this secret of their body and mind an uncountable

amount of times in their lives, forced to keep developing their tolerance for social ineptitude. I

unfortunately know this intimately: while my long-term partner was temporarily out of town and

my family was virtually non-existent, I came to the realization that if I was not going to

transition then I no longer wanted to live. The absence of anyone to influence me on this,

whether intentionally or accidentally, led me to schedule an appointment for February 4th at a

Planned Parenthood in Seattle. A doctor with vibrant orange hair and an almost uncomfortably

supportive tone asked me a series of questions regarding my mental and physical health. She

wrote down my answers to how long I had been questioning my gender, and whether or not I had

enough support to do this. I said yes to that question, understanding that, at least for a while, I

was the only support I had. I figured I was all I needed. My endocrinologist at our next

appointment warned me that testosterone would exacerbate my thyroid condition, in what I now

understand to be a vague attempt at discouraging me from ever taking it. I never heard from him

again. He disappeared from his practice two months later, at which point (April 29th of 2021) I

took my first hormone injection. With this I finally understood that the first step is not truly the

hardest, and that none of the steps to permanently modifying oneself come with any ease at all.

After my voice dropped, and my physical features began to take on the traditionally masculine

effects of the androgens my body was absorbing every week, I began to experience the

13
discomfort of strangers assuming my pronouns, or refusing to allow me to help them at my job.

Two weeks before completing this essay I was referred to as “it” by a woman informing her

children that they did not need to speak to me. My transition is often seen as a mistake, a

malignancy in my family line. My friends have been spit on and insulted while walking down the

street, anxious about the potential for such actions to escalate. Cyborgs throughout modern media

make it blatantly clear that they are just as removed from society, with characters as a result

experiencing emotionality ranging from apathy to rage. Trans folk run the same emotional

gamut, some having been so numbed to the medicalizing and demonization of their identities that

they have nothing left to say (Stone 1993). Still others can be found actively and angrily

protesting the gender norms that categorize them.

In this fashion, Stone’s “Empire” emerged as a response to Janice Raymond’s The

Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, often cited within anti-trans and

trans-exclusionary radical feminist arguments. It is worth noting that Raymond’s novel is

brimming with personal and political attacks on Stone, devoting an entire chapter to the

argument that Stone had usurped her job at a record company from some potentially more

deserving cisgender woman. Raymond continuously defines transness, namely the identity of

transgender woman, as a reinforcement of stereotypes surrounding femininity, stating that “the

problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence”

(Raymond 1979, 178). This single quotation articulates the modern framework of transphobia,

utilizing the moral question of sexualization in the form of a changed sex. The likes of US

Representatives Ron DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Greene have used this argument to emphasize

both religious and social opposition to sexualization in their efforts to write transgender

healthcare out of the laws of their respective states. Those who join town halls and speak in front

14
of legislative bodies plead with government agents to give queer people the right to choose, the

right to remain in their homes instead of becoming political refugees of a state that seeks to

reduce them to nothing. Like robots, like cyborgs, those who identify as trans know that they are

othered; like most mammals, as humans, we desperately need to be included. Though we call this

representation today, it is simply community.

All this to say, the affinity for robots, cyborgs, and androids is a result, not a cause, of our

own othering and removal from society. We appreciate these cybernetic beings for their

resemblance to our own lived experiences, among humans but not human enough. Even those

who do not have cable TV with which to view the television shows and movies mentioned here

have at least had some form of access to a robotic character, a facsimile of humankind made cold

and unfeeling, inanimate and objectified (O’Shea 2018). We are required in many instances to

conform with our birth gender as a form of protection, another mask to layer over the mask we

are already considered to be wearing (Stone 1992). As an x-ray would reveal the cybernetic

metallic elements of a cyborg, it also reveals the physical modifications made in our own trans

bodies. And much like the cyborg, we are required to disclose our status as other, as different, as

modified to those who are important to us, and even those who are not. To see without is not to

see within, though many believe they “can tell” despite a lack of extraordinary vision or access

to medical records (O’Shea 2018). Watch any science fiction cyborg navigate their way through

the world; you’ll get a decent idea of what it’s like to be beyond gender within the story of

someone beyond human.

15
Works Cited:

* Butler, Judith. “Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’”. Psychology Press. 1st Ed, Routledge:

New York, 1993. Web.

* Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Manifestly Haraway. Preface by Cary Wolfe. University of Minnesota

Press, 1985; 1 Apr. 2016.

* Hausman, Bernice. “Body, Technology, and Gender in Transsexual Autobiographies.” The Transgender Studies

Reader. Edited by Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle. 1st Ed., Routledge, 26 May, 2006. Web.

* Koenig, Kip. “Begin the Begin.” Grey’s Anatomy, season 2, ep. 13, 15 Jan. 2006.

* McNeil, Jay, Sonja J Ellis, and Fiona J. R Eccles. “Suicide in Trans Populations: A Systematic Review of

Prevalence and Correlates.” Psychology of sexual orientation and gender diversity. Vol. 4 Iss. 3, 341–353,

2017. Web.

* Morland, Iain. “Intersex Surgery Between the Gaze and the Subject.” TSQ: Transgender studies quarterly, Vol. 9

Iss. 2, 160-171, 1 May 2022. Web.

* Morton, Lewis. “Raging Bender.” Futurama, season 2, ep. 8, Comedy Central, 27 Feb. 2000.

* O'Shea, Saoirse Caitlin. "'I, Robot?' Or how transgender subjects are dehumanized." Culture and Organization,

Vol. 26, Iss. 1, 2018. Web.

* Pullen, Allison and Carl Rhodes. “Parody, subversion and the politics of gender at work: the case of Futurama’s

‘Raging Bender.’” Organization, Vol. 20 Iss. 4, 512-533, 2013. Web.

* Raymond, Janice. The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male. Teacher’s College Press, New York,

1994. Web.

* Seltzer, Mark. Bodies and Machines (1992). Quoted in “The Prosthetic Imagination: Enabling and Disabling the

Prosthesis Trope.” Sarah S. Jain. Science, Technology, & Human Values. Vol. 24 Iss. 1, 31-54. 1999. Web.

* Snodgrass, Melinda M. “The Measure of a Man.” Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 2, ep. 9, 13 Feb. 1989.

* Stone, Sandy. “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.” Camera Obscura, Vol. 10, Num. 2, 1

May, 1992. Web.

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