Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones

Excellent trans fiction, some of the best stuff out there. I read this ages ago (around when it came out iirc?) but reread it after Stag Dance was published. The post-apoc setting is really a backdrop for the romance between the two mains, which is painful, messy, heart-breaking and wonderful.

I have mixed thoughts about this one. It felt like it was written specifically and only for other trans women, meaning even I, as a trans man, feel like I was missing some vital piece of the puzzle to understanding it. That isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The writing style was pretty mediocre, and though I was expecting it to spend more time on the repercussions of cis-people having to decide which hormones to take, no time was actually spent exploring this premise. Our knowledge of what happened in society after the infection spread is limited to a couple of throwaway lines at best and a pretty generic dystopian setting, leaving most of the questions I had going into this novella unanswered.

Instead, the point of this novella seems to relate to trans women's anger, and what would happen if they gave into their worse impulses. So it isn't what the infection actually does to people that's important, so much as the fact that Lexi decided to unleash it on the world, playing out her revenge-fantasy. I think it's good that this novella isn't written for cis audiences to understand, but even I don't think a really “got it.” Personally I find this an instance of a good premise wasted, but if you're a trans woman, then maybe this novella will speak to you in some way it didn't speak to me.