Speculative Queerness: How Science Fiction Ruined my Relationship with the Gender Binary
Arrate Hidalgo's lecture from Tohu Magazine conference - Space is the Place: Afrofuturism, Arabfuturism and the Search for New Dimensions
Before Judith Butler’s gender performativity, before Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, way before all social media were bursting with genderqueer and trans awareness, speculative fiction sent Arrate Hidalgo on a one-way trip to the universe of the gender grayscale. We will explore literary and visual manifestations of sci-fi and fantasy, including 1990s anime classics, Second-Wave feminist utopias, afrofuturist music videos, and Pokemon-inspired memes, to discover how non-realistic fiction is expanding our notion of gender and possibly shaping what non-binary might look like in meatspace.