by Susan Stryker
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
8/25/2026, hardcover
SKU: 9780374123505
From the groundbreaking trans scholar Susan Stryker, a provocative, genre-bending call to reconsider the story we tell about gender itself.
That gender is a hotly contested topic becomes ever clearer as antigender ideology continues to be mobilized by the far right and transgender people's lives are increasingly targeted. But what are we talking about when we talk about gender? Where did the concept itself come from, and where might it go?
In Changing Gender, the leading trans scholar Susan Stryker invites readers to ride along on her lifelong quest to uncover what gender means and does. She traces the gender concept's roots in grammar and tells the story of how it transformed into a battleground of the culture wars. From the origins of "Yankee Doodle" to acid trips in Joshua Tree National Park, from nineteenth-century phrenology to present-day anti-trans conspiracy theorists, Stryker finds surprising places to tune in to the origins, idiosyncrasies, and generative possibilities of the gender concept. Along the way, she weaves stories drawn from her lifetime as a pathbreaking historian, filmmaker, activist, and founding figure of transgender studies.
Poignant and deeply researched, lyrical and authoritative, Changing Gender is a book for our fraught time, exposing limiting assumptions about gender across the political spectrum and imagining what life might look like if some of those limitations were lifted. Ultimately, Stryker argues, to change gender is to change what it means to be human--and to change reality itself.
Reviews:
"Beautiful and speculative . . . This is a brave book, written during a moment when such bravery matters more than ever, and it belongs alongside works of activism and advocacy while also sharing the introspective, beautiful poetics of memoirs by authors such as Terry Tempest Williams and Helen Macdonald." --Library Journal (starred review)
"This triumphant exploration of a complex topic deserves to become an instant classic . . . Susan Stryker's Changing Gender should be read and studied by students and scholars for generations to come." --Douglas C. MacLeod Jr., Washington Independent Review of Books
"What a blast! Reading Susan Stryker's rangy and original account of the evolution of the term "gender" from a central component within a grammatical system to a core principle of modern identity is moving, mind-blowing and fun. Stryker combines memoir with history and links personal anecdote to theory to great effect and in the process, she shifts the narrative from "changing gender" to changing the world. Spectacular!" --Jack Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity and Anarchitecture After Everything: A Trans Manifesto
About the Author:
Susan Stryker's historical research, theoretical writings, media-making, activism, and academic field-building activities have helped shape the conversation on trans issues since the early 1990s. Stryker retired from the University of Arizona in 2020 and currently holds a distinguished visiting appointment at Stanford University's Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She is the author of many academic and general audience works, including Transgender History. She lives in San Francisco.