Perhaps the most well-known of these controversies has involved none other than Harry Potter author turned transphobic crusader herself, JK Rowling, whom Felker-Martin has proudly declared “dies in MANHUNT”. Since its announcement, Manhunt has been beset by a number of competing discourses by trans people, allies, and transphobes alike, all of whom have read any number of social issues into the book’s premise. In this way, Manhunt is a sort of meta-gendercide novel, examining the inherent cruelty of the genre and the biological essentialism it’s based on in bloody detail.Īnd that brings me to the novel’s controversies. Felker-Martin, a trans woman, handles her trans feminine characters with all the nuance you might expect, but she also offers a surprisingly complex view of the ways a testosterone-based apocalypse might affect trans men, pre-pubescent boys, and cis men and women who have atypical hormonal balances. While a common critique of gendercide novels is the relatively binary way that they handle sex and gender, Manhunt bucks the trend by delving deep into the messiness that its very concept creates. Vaughn and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man and Naomi Alderman’s The Power, or even Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

As a so-called “gendercide” novel-a genre in which one sex or gender, often but not always men, are killed, disappeared, or otherwise rendered powerless- Manhunt enters a crowded field, competing with entries such as Brian K.

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