Byron flips right-wing stereotypes about trans people with her frightening and funny debut novel<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the end of September, a report<\/a> by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein indicated that the FBI was preparing to target trans people under the organization\u2019s new threat category of \u201cNihilistic Violent Extremists,\u201d which is used to classify those who seek to undermine and destroy society itself through sewing chaos. Anyone paying attention to the anti-trans fear-mongering coming out of the United States\u2014as well as the United Kingdom and the Western world in general\u2014probably wouldn\u2019t have been surprised by the news, although may have been by the category\u2019s name, which has a bizarrely and somewhat thrillingly punk bent to it. Surely a trans woman somewhere is having the phrase stick-and-poked onto herself at this very moment. I can imagine one of the characters in Herculine<\/em>, Grace Byron\u2019s frightening and funny new debut novel, doing so. The moniker might be apt for some of them: the book revolves around a cultish all-trans commune that dives headfirst into the destructive and demonic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The trans-cult novel feels particularly resonant given the political climate at the time of its release. Over the past decade, the conspiracy-minded perception of the trans community as some kind of an extreme, dangerous cult has gradually inched its way from the right-wing fringes of politics into the mainstream. It seems du jour<\/em> that the FBI might classify trans people as Nihilistic Violent Extremists, or that U.S. Republicans and the president himself frequently decry the \u201ctransgender cult\u201d and the \u201cgender ideology cult.\u201d In the U.K., lobbying groups and politicians are busy attempting to have \u201ctransgender ideology\u201d classified as a cult<\/a> as well. For the advocates of such a position, trans people and their supporters are preying on the vulnerable and ignorant, manipulating them into accepting premises that run contrary to social health and personal well-being. Just like a cult.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n