Manhunt

If you're a queer person scared of sex, and the harsh realities of being queer in a world that hates you, you shouldn't read this book. If you think all queer rep needs to be "good rep" (whatever that means), this book is not for you. If rape and gore scares you, the splatterpunk GENRE is not for you (this has no more graphic rape/gore than any other splatterpunk novel I've read, y'all are just sensitive to trans characters being raped-- and you should sit with that for a while, because even if it scares you, it happens and it's worth discussing the complex feelings around it).

Fran is stupid, Beth is self-loathing, and Robbie is avoidant. All of these traits are just normal human traits, shown on transgender characters. They are not show more the ONLY traits these characters possess-- many are just being hypercritical because of the nature of the book. Even if you yourself are trans, acknowledge that your standard for media produced BY trans and GNC people is HIGHER than cishet folk. As if you expect them to be "better" because they are trans.

The book is hard to read. I wouldn't call the rape scenes "graphic," just blunt. [Character] is raped and it's horrific. That's what rape is. Horrific. Fading to black doesn't capture that same discomfort. And, whether you babyfashes like it or not, art is MADE to make you uncomfortable. If you can't handle that, step out of those spaces. I also recommend more reviewers do some research on "degenerate art," the terminology and what was produced, and by who. So maybe don't use that word so flippantly.

There are aspects of this book I hate. Fran is stupid, straight up. She gives "dumb blonde" energy. She knowingly gets into a makeout sesh with one of the fucking TERFs, while she's "dating" Robbie. It's noted that she does what she wants, and if you tell her that it's a bad idea or question her, she'll make you the bad guy. Fran ha spissed me off for the entire duration of the book I have read thus far.

Beth seems to think of herself as a "brick." There's a fantastic quote at the start of part 3 that explains this terminology. She's filled with self loathing and spite, and is sick of being mistreated by other queers. It's well-known that "theyfabs" (whether or not I think it's a great word is irrelevant, because I knew exactly the kind of person the author was talking about when I read it), AFAB people using they/them pronouns who make a big deal out of BEING AFAB ("women/nb people welcome! but nb AMAB and trans women are not" is a common one), are pretty rotten towards trans women. Gretchen being catty towards them in her book and on her Twitter is a product of a consistent behavior displayed by queers who get a moment to step out of the pool of oppression. It doesn't mean they aren't suffering, but it's a completely different world. I think Beth is partially an embodiment of that frustration. She suffers similarly before T-day, being kicked out by those who claimed to be "accepting of all genders/sexualities," and has been deeply hurt by it. When those who are supposed to be your allies treat you like a monster, you're going to be pretty damn spiteful.

Robbie, for me, was not terribly relatable. He's avoidant, got to grow up doing "boy things," and has some pretty weird bits of inner dialog. I can't relate to him, as a fellow trans man, so I didn't enjoy reading his sections. However, he did remind me of quite a few of my transmasc friends, so my inability to relate is not equated to him being a good or bad character.

This book discusses difficult-- but very real-- topics that many queer authors (you know which) refuse to acknowledge. Gretchen acknowledges them. And you know what? They're scary, they're difficult, and they're degenerate. As far as I'm concerned, that's what art is meant to be.

Edit: As of finishing the book, I realized how much I truly enjoyed the characters. The third part brings out everyone's best traits and worst flaws, and the love between them all is something rarely explored in more cisheteronormative works. Queer found family-- where found family started, mind you-- is something all its own. And, no matter how horrific the world around us is, no one can take that away from us.

Part three rocketed this up from 4 stars to 5, and Manhunt now proudly sits in my Favorites shelf. show less

Is there a non-transphobic version of “all the men/XYs die”? This book sets out to offer that, though there is plenty of transphobia expressed within the narrative, as TERFs try to eradicate trans women as a biological threat. As with the X-Men-as-analogue-to-LGBTQ+ people, where many mutants are dangerous in unusual ways to others, the book’s virus means that anyone who naturally produces a significant amount of testosterone is in fact in danger of becoming a cannibalistic monster (a Man) who will rape to death anyone it hasn’t eaten first. That means that XXs with PCOS also turn, and pregnancy testosterone fluctuations can also mean a death sentence (in a sign about how much body horror there is in the book, the babies eating show more their ways out of the uterus are not the grossest things described). Trans women survive by consuming estrogen, which post-collapse-of-society is often most easily achieved by killing Men and eating their testicles, one source of the titular Manhunt. Cis men survive, if they do, by also consuming estrogen and, in TERF territory, by being castrated. The main characters are two trans women, a trans man they join up with under dangerous circumstances, the cis doctor whose skills make her valuable in the new order, and a cis woman who rises in the TERF army despite or because of her desire for non-cis sex. I found the narrative too crapsack world for my tastes, though not particularly implausible. Class oppression manages to survive at least some period beyond the death of 90% of people, and along with the horrors inflicted by Men, there is additional torture, rape, and forced medical experimentation. There was something striking about the fact that, on the East Coast at least, the majority of survivors appeared to be cityfolk, apparently more able to band together against Men than rural dwellers. show less

TWs:
Graphic: Extreme transphobia, murder, violence, hate crimes, body horror, gore, injury/injury detail, pandemic, medical content
Moderate: Dysphoria, rape, grief
Brief: Pregnancy

It's a horrifying look into what the world would become, and feels like it's on the way to actually becoming - yet also littered with trans triumph and joy throughout, showing we're still here and always will be, no matter how much the world hates us and turns against us.

The characters are all incredible, even the TERFs (in that this highlights just how terrible, vile, and conniving they are, even nowadays). The trans unity is awe-inspiring, and I'm utterly in love with it.

It's such a genuine look into the lives of trans people and that we're not all sweet show more and innocent, and how we may navigate a hormone-based apocalypse. Gut punching, bittersweet ending, but it was also really beautiful. show less

If you've been holding off on reading Manhunt because of gender apocalypse burnout - fiction and non-fiction alike - don't. This book is a raw, white-hot genre adrenaline shot; an alka-seltzer solvent of existential horror. Pitch perfect and gorgeously gutting.

2022. A virus has turned all the men into zombies who eat women and animals. I saw this called “splattercore” somewhere. It is extremely gory and disgusting. After the plague there’s a TERF army going after trans femmes, ostensibly because they could catch the plague, if they still had testes and couldn’t get estrogen. Really just an excuse to hunt them down. A few trans people and allies band together and a massive battle ensues. Well to be more accurate, it’s about a thousand ravenous, slavering men the TERFS have led to the trans peoples’ fort, and 60 TERFS, against about 30 trans people in a fort. The TERFS also have a battleship offshore, but the trans people have people onboard who sink her before she does too much show more damage. Remarkably the TERFS don’t win, but it feels like they may as well have. One of my favorite characters, Fran, gets killed in the battle. There’s one trans masculine character, Robbie, fighting with the trans people. He was with Fran for a while, but they broke up. After the battle he decides to try to get to New Mexico to find his father’s family. The ending is bleak. You really don’t know how anytran is going to survive the hellscape that the country has become. The action takes place between Boston and southern Maine, but the TERFS hold an area all the way from Boston to Maryland, at least. There’s lots of t4t sex and transfemme/lesbian sex. It was way more sex and gore than I like. But it was refreshing to have so much trans variety in one book. It was really funny. At one point they tell how J. K. Rowling had holed up with a bunch of TERFS in her castle and they’d locked up all their men and boys in the dungeon or something, but they got out somehow and ate everyone. Basically I loved the book in spite of the gore and the bleak unrelenting hellscape. Definitely not for everyone. show less

Really enjoyed the characters Beth and Robbie, but pretty much hated everyone else. This book is extremely timely and interesting to read. The descriptions and scenes were evocative, and the writer knows how to make a clever turn of phrase. However, and it is a big however, there was a lot of unnecessary sex in it, with a sex scene happening every couple of pages. I signed up for bad ass trans women of the apocalypse and got essentially a sex romp. If the author wanted to have a discussion around the trans body, she certainly got it, and there were some very interesting discussions around body dysphoria, body euphoria, and what it's like to wish you had a body you liked. However, while trying to write a story about the literal show more destruction of the patriarchy, she managed to use the same misogynistic language she was trying to ridicule. Again, the overall subject and the writing were extremely skilled, but overall, I really wanted to like this book more than I did. show less

Pun intended - the juice isn't worth the squeeze. About all I got from it was sadness, disappointment, and some new to me derogatory terms for women of history -none of which were wanted or appreciated. This book just isn't very good. Oh, don't get me wrong - I understand the anger, the frustration, the rage that fueled it. But on every level, despite some well-founded zingers and well targeted sarcasm, it is a let down, and more than that, I think it is maleficent and gratuitously cruel.

Avoid, unless for some reason you've been short-changed on internalized misogyny and self-hate and want to spend a few hours marinating in a spicy stew of all that plus body horror, insincerity, self-sabotage, betrayal, violence with inaccurate weapons show more talk, implausible science and inexplicable decisions (for example, why wouldn't orchiectomies be sought after and relatively straight forward even in this post apocalyptic wasteland) and a central plot device that could have been lifted from The Walking Dead.

In this book, nothing is subtle, nor very deep. Certainly there is horror here, but for me the central horror is all the ways so much of the so- called LGBTQ "community" at times sells each other out, uses each other shamelessly, and fights itself.

Here's the thing - if you are yourself LGBTQ and are a functioning adult, you already know all this, and aren't going to be well served by immersing yourself in fictionalized horror based on it when you're already living it. If you're lucky, though, you've also experienced more and better.

If you're not LGBTQ, and / or you want to pick this up to deepen your understanding of women of history in particular, my advice is - don't - pick up something else instead - say, "Whipping Girl" by Serano. The women of history in this book are, by and large, exactly the sort of short sighted, narcissistic, myopic people spoken of so poorly by those who oppose their basic human gendered dignity.

The audiobook performance by a woman of history is outstanding, so none of this is a comment on her work. I'd gladly listen to more narration by her any time. show less